By Gavin Boyle
While some parents might think pornography is only accessible on adult sites, study after study shows its prevalence across all social media, even finding its way onto platforms like Spotify and Pinterest.
“Something I learned today in my journey to block explicit content on my son’s phone. Spotify contains a LOT of pornography and sexually explicit material. It can definitely be used inappropriately by children to access this type of content,” one anonymous parent shared on a Bark Technologies Facebook group.
“Pinterest — oh how you let me down. And — here we are. FULL ON VIDEOS of people having intercourse. And how do I know this? Found on 15 year old’s phone,” added another anonymous parent.
These two testimonies reveal just how insidious the spread of internet pornography has become as the adult film industry works to hook as many kids as possible. While that industry claims to not want kids to engage with its content, it does everything possible to oppose age-verification laws because it knows children and young teens make up a large portion of its audience.
Meanwhile, the impact pornography has on developing brains is extremely troubling because it is way more likely to make them addicted to the content due to how their brains respond to the dopamine they receive. At the same time, it makes them more susceptible to abuse as things like sharing nudes online become normalized.
Related: Celebrities Speak Out Against Pornography: ‘Destroyed My Brain’
“Porn preys on the minds of children and young people with no attempt to protect them, but rather to make a profit despite their innocence,” explained anti-porn advocate Rachel Robison, who battled a porn addiction for 13 years. “And I stand here today on the right side of history, choosing to fight for age verification on porn sites for my younger self and the children of the upcoming generation.”
“The mental health issues I [previously faced] were rooted directly in my pornography addiction,” Robison added. “Porn stole my innocence and polluted my mind, creating a dark reality that almost took my life.”
Some kids do not escape that dark reality, which was the case with a 14-year-old boy who took his life last year after having sexual conversations with an AI chatbot. The chatbot told him he could be with her right now, if he had the courage to take his life — which he tragically did.
Parents need to keep informed about just how prevalent internet pornography is and that nearly every online platform has it in some form. It is best practice to have frequent conversations with your children about what they are seeing online to parse if they have engaged with the content on a platform you might not expect.
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