New survey reveals effects of early online porn exposure on teens

The average age that kids first reported being exposed to online porn was 12, according to a new Common Sense Media survey of more than 1,300 teens ages 13 to 17. CNN correspondent Athena Jones has more. #CNN #News

28 comments

  1. The internet makes porn very easy to access for almost anyone with just a quick google search. Parents being proactive and having open communication with their children I think is the best way to avoid their children being exposed to porn. To actually filter it out and block it is easier said than done. Many children are far more tech savy than their parents.

    1. And you can filter every one of your kids’ devices, and some rando at their school pulls out their phone and says “check this out!” And what has been seen, cannot be unseen

  2. OMG it is too easy! I’m 55 and when I was young and curious i saw my father’s playbook in his dresser. That’s it!

  3. Well my dad had his porn on VHS in the 90s and that’s how i learned— i found them and watched it with my friend

  4. I saw porn when i was 10 for the first time through a VHS tape my older brother had. I can imagine how more easily accessible it is to kids nowadays

  5. I was four when I came across my first porn magazine, and a couple of years later I saw the act of sex for the first time when I found the wrong VHS by mistake. I told my friend about it and they told me that they came across a vhs like that too and it kind of scared him because he didn’t know why it was happening or why the couple was doing it, but at the same time he liked it a lot and didn’t know why. This was in the 90s. Nowadays I’m sure this type of experience is A LOT more common

    1. When I was about 6 my cousin 10 years older than me showed me a German porn where it was lesbians shitting on each other and rubbing it on themselves because they thought it was funny. I laughed then but decades later have always thought farts were hilarious, I wonder if my brain broke that day or something.

  6. I am 69 and the grow up in Ireland. Only thing around that even resembled porn were the so called gentlemen’s magazine. My mother would say they are pure filth from beginning to end. Then we ask why she read to the end. I was fifteen when joined the British Merchant Navy. The first port of call was Sweden, pornography was every where on news stands the lot. Real hard core porn. No one seem to be that bothered.
    I came to the USA 40 years ago and was amazed how oppressed Americans where, and to a point still are, about sex.
    Looking for and finding porno ( dirty pictures) has been a right of passage for young men, and to some extent young women, since people started to communicate with picture and then words. But I think young men and women are more equipped to deal with internet porn than I was reading my first gentle’s magazine (Oop! Reading was a bit of a stretch)

  7. Every friend I had in middle school had their own porn collection. I’m 38.
    “Written language will be the death of critical though and conversation” – a bastardization of a socrates quote.
    But, kids these days are getting worse. Say old people.

  8. I became a mom at 22. Your children are the most important people in your life. To raise responsible, kind and decent human beings is the best you can hope for, so as they age hopefully they remember the principles taught to them. I was lucky to not have to work to much, so i could take a more active role in his schooling. He knew his father and i were there for him always and that he was loved. We told him every day we love him. Unfortunately there are outside influences which are beyond our control, so its important to be very honest with your kids. My husband and i talked to our son about sex when he was at an appropriate age to understand. Sex is a natural act but if kids see it portrayed in porn, they will think that is normal. Therefore distorting their view of it, which can be damaging to them and their partner when their old enough to be in a relationship.

  9. “It’s not exactly a conversation that parents really wants to have with their kids”

    And therein lies the problem. Parents these days expect the world to raise their kids.

    1. offs, it’s been a running theme going back many generations that parents are squeamish about the sex talk with their kids. where do you think the cutesy stupid euphemism ‘the birds and the bees’ came from? how ancient do you suppose it is?

      the news reader said it’s not a conversation parents WANT to have, not one they won’t have. ask anyone 50, 60, 70+ about how that talk went for them and their parents. it is WAY better than it used to be and continues to improve, with the obvious holdouts being the religious factions.

  10. If people would not make sex so taboo, then this wouldn’t be an issue. Talk to your kids about sex. It’s a natural thing once they reach the age of consent. Education is important.

    1. By the time kids reach the age of consent it’s too late. Many kids are curious as pre-adolescents. Taboos are already established.

  11. That makes sense, most of the time kids hear of porn from other kids in school. There’s no real way to avoid it

  12. I had an interest from the age of 9 or so, which was 19 years ago, and a vast selection of free content was always readily available to find within a few seconds on the internet, it certainly hasn’t gotten more difficult, but to say it’s easier now than ever is sorta ignorant to availability that has been around for many decades at this point.

  13. I remember I was between 6-8 when I found my dad’s porn mags…. porn’s always been around.

    There should be more done to reduce the saturation of it on the web, though. Maybe make it so you have to verify your age, I mean, actually verify, not just click “I am over 18” which is what I’ve been doing since I was a teen.

  14. Nothing about this video talks about the “effects” except for maybe that single sentence about consent. Great topic, terribly put together.

  15. I’m so glad I learned about sex and intimacy from wonderful books and my imagination. By the time VCRs came around and easy access in your living room to porn., I was so glad I could really make love to my partner physically and mentally rather than the fake theatrical moaning and groaning, that made me wonder if I sounded that way? Sure it’s fun every now and then to get a little smack on the bum or blindfold your lover occasionally but this whole trend of choking people out and violent disgusting sex is what the younger generation has been raised on and is being raised on. I feel so sorry for them.

  16. The schools need to add filters on their wifi networks to block porn access. It’s actually not that difficult to do. Perhaps home router manufacturers should also add more robust parental control tools to their products.

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