Porn and teens. Most kids are just a click away from free, hardcore porn.
So, simply attending school every day has become a battlefield for many teens, according to a report from Fixers, a UK-based organization that provides a forum for kids to help their peers grapple with life’s challenges.
When teens take their cues from porn, life at school can become very difficult. The following excerpts are comments made by teens for a Fixers Investigates study called “The Trouble with…Sex in Schools.” The students’ comments reveal that they are inundated with messages from porn that promote male aggression and female submission; they are looking for sex education to upend porn’s messages; and they need adults to step up and help them deal with this state of affairs.
“Everything you see on social media is reinforcing the worst things about ‘lad culture’. Pictures of women like porn stars with slogans like ‘What every lad wants his girl to look like’….My friend wanted his girlfriend to dress like a porn star and do what a porn star would do. Porn is so easily accessible. You see guys watching it in the classroom on their phones [and] on the bus.” — Tom, 17
“Kids get curious, and there is no warning in porn videos online that this is not real. I personally went searching and looking on the internet for sexually explicit stuff at school as any kid did.” — Stacey, 22
“My view of being a woman was so warped. I kind of felt like I just had to accept it and give men what they want. At school I should have been taught about sex and relationships, but obviously algebra was way more important.” — Keira, 25
“People just talk rubbish about other people online. But then banter turns into something worse. Like Photoshopping certain people’s mothers into poses. Then the pictures go round the whole school. You’ve got no chance of stopping that. People just do it and the school has no authority over it because it’s what goes on in your personal time. Parents can’t stop it. That’s not realistic. They don’t know what’s going on, so it doesn’t really matter to them.” — William, 17
“If we could have workshops where people tell us ways of thinking about sex, we could have conversations which would really help. I don’t think the teachers would want to do this difficult stuff, though. It’s just hard to talk about. But that would help change attitudes so people know they shouldn’t act in a sexually threatening way.” — Alex, 17
“There’s a lot on the internet, especially pornography….A lot of boys watch that at such a young age and…how graphic it can be means boys seem to get the idea that that’s how you treat a girl and that’s what real life is like and then it sort of just spreads and girls get this idea that ‘It’s on the Internet so that must be true’….” — Rosie, 17
Here is the full report on teens and porn.
