The answer to this question is complicated, but best summed up as: it depends. On the one hand, there’s nothing inherently harmful about children viewing sexual activity. The idea that children are traumatized by exposure to sex is a myth created by Western culture.
The truth is that up until very recently, sexual activity took place right in front of children. For 99.9% of human history, children were raised in indigenous cultures, almost none of whom made any attempts to hide the facts of life from kids. In such environments, children would not only observe adults engaged in sexual behavior, but would begin practicing such behavior themselves at a very young age. While this might seem abnormal to us, there’s nothing to suggest children are harmed by any of this. In fact, all available evidence indicates that these types of sexually open environments are far healthier for children than the repressive attitudes we have today.
Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance periods, families typically slept nude and shared the same bed. Sex would occur with children as full witnesses to it while laying right beside those engaged in it. Sex also routinely occurred in public places, so children might be exposed simply by walking down the street. Even in our current society with its mandatory clothing, large houses and separate bedrooms, children routinely walk in on their parents having sex, and there’s no evidence children are harmed by this, either, aside from the confusion they suffer when parents lie or give evasive answers about what they were doing.
So the idea that children are automatically harmed or traumatized just because they observe adults engaged in sexual activity is an urban legend that has no basis in reality. This also means that viewing pictures or videos of people having sex is not in and of itself harmful. Parents may not like the idea, and they may have moral or religious objections, but speaking strictly from a developmental standpoint, there’s no reason to suspect any harm would come from children viewing porn.
There’s also no validity to the idea that pornography is inherently harmful in the way that smoking or drinking is harmful. Although religious groups have conducted their own self-serving studies suggesting pornography is linked to all manner of evil, actual scientists have repeatedly failed to find such a link.
“There’s absolutely no evidence that pornography does anything negative,” says Milton Diamond, director of the Pacific Center for Sex and Society at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Studies have shown no link between pornography viewing and different types of sexual deviancy or dysfunction, except for a small decrease in relationship intimacy among consumers of violent porn. Nor does pornography promote sexism or engender negative attitudes toward women. Quite the contrary: one study found porn viewers held more protective attitudes toward females. In fact, one large-scale study that looked at many different variables found no link between pornography viewing and negative attitudes toward women. It did, however, find a significant link between sexism and conservatism. In other words, religious conservatism, not pornography, is what leads to diminutive attitudes toward women. (Wenner-Moyer, 2011)
That said, the type of internet pornography children are most often exposed to leaves much to be desired and it would be a step too far to say that there is no reason for parents to be concerned. Pornography typically does a rather poor job of conveying accurate or healthy depictions of human sexuality.
Most mainstream porn is almost entirely devoid of the affectionate aspects of sexual interaction. You rarely see a porn flick where two people get to know one another and then make love in a caring, affectionate way because they adore and cherish each other. Instead you encounter cheesy scripts or a plumber makes a house call and leaves finds a lonely housewife, and then 30 seconds later he’s bending her over the kitchen counter and pounding away while slapping her ass and calling her a slut. Or it’s a four way gangbang with 3 guys tag-teaming a woman.
Such is the nature of the genre. People view porn for the sexual excitement it provides, and so producers tend to get right down to business, stripping it of all those other nuances involved in sexual expression. Others try to push the envelope, since novelty, excitement and taboos can heighten arousal. Meanwhile, more thought out, well-scripted and well-produced movies aren’t allowed to depict sex without running afoul of the censors. Which means that porn becomes very 1-dimensional, providing a rather callous and artificial portrayal of sex.
“Though there’s no clear evidence, unrestricted exposure to porn could influence their understanding of sex and relationships, especially if it’s their earliest exposure to sex,” says Nicholas Allen, director of the Center for Digital Mental Health at the University of Oregon. (Flora, 2018) If kids were getting exposures that conveyed sexual interaction in more realistic, social and affectionate ways, then such exposure wouldn’t be as concerning. But when you combine rampant porn with a sexually repressive environment – one that restricts and prohibits most other types of exposure – then pornography becomes the primary educator of boys and girls in matters of sex.
This could potentially lead to a number of problems. First, the skewed perceptions children get from porn can result in clumsy or misguided sexual behavior. In her book Bodies, psychologist Suzie Orbach describes the problem one school district was having. Bus drivers complained that during the bus rides to and from school, the heads of all the 11- and 12-year-old girls were bobbing up and down in the laps of boys, in the unmistakable motion of oral sex. Further investigation revealed that girls on the bus had taken up the habit of sitting next to random boys, then undoing their pants and giving them oral sex, without any dialogue or social interaction.
The girls had somehow gotten the idea that this was normal and acceptable behavior. They believed it was what was expected of them. So they’d sit next to boys they barely knew and molest them. The boys, meanwhile, weren’t entirely comfortable with this either, and reported being embarrassed but frozen, not knowing how to respond. (Orbach, 2009) Such awkward, promiscuous exchanges where sexual interaction is entirely detached from social significance or affection is not what anyone has in mind when they speak of raising kids in sexually open environments. But it’s precisely the type of situations you get when you combine childhood oppression with rampant exposure to commercialized forms of sexuality.
The fact that porn has become the default educator of children can give rise to other distortions as well. “I heard a story about a teenage girl – she and her boyfriend were going to be intimate for the first time,” says actress Rosario Dawson, “and he freaked out we they got naked because she had a labia, and she had hair. In all of the pornography he had seen, there was no hair.” (Interview, March 2018, p. 185)
This isn’t the only body misperception kids might get from porn. Boys quite easily develop body insecurities from the messages in porn, which tells them…1) Penis size is very important; 2) Pleasuring a woman involves using one’s penis as a weapon, penetrating harder and deeper; 3) 8-12 inches is the average size of a male penis (or at least normal among porn stars). Virtually every adolescent boy in America suffers from penis insecurity, and while porn isn’t the only factor behind this, it certainly plays role.
Of course, there are also things youth can gain from pornography. It may not be the best sex educator, but it’s often the only one that will answer the type of questions youth have. Many psychologists and sociologists have argued that porn serves an important role filling in these gaps in a child’s understanding of sex. Given our woefully inadequate sex education programs and their focus on scaring rather than educating children, “kids are still walking away wondering: How does sex actually happen?” says Nicole Daley, a public health educator and former director of Start Strong. Where do they turn to seeking this knowledge? Typically, “they find [the answers] in porn,” she says. “It offers the visual imagery that satisfies that question.” (Suratt, 2018) Of course, here the problem comes full circle: Kids are drawn to porn because it answers those visual curiosities, yet the type of visual imagery they get often leads to a distorted understanding of sex.
What to do if you catch your kid viewing porn
If you catch your child in the act of viewing pornography, here’s what you should do:
1. First of all, try not to freak out. Calmly ask: “What are you watching/looking at?” in an inquisitive and non-judgmental tone. They’re going to be embarrassed and may be reluctant to respond, but try to take the same approach you would take if they were watching any other TV show or movie. Your tone will set the atmosphere. If you talk as though there’s nothing shameful or embarrassing, your kids will feel more comfortable as well, and will therefore be more inclined to open up to you.
2. Try to spark a conversation about what they were viewing. Ask if they understood what they saw. Was it interesting? Confusing? Do they have questions after watching it? Ask them to describe what they saw, as if they were telling you about a football game. Then use this opportunity to talk about how unrealistic porn is, and to answer any other questions they might have.
3. Explain that some things, like drinking alcohol or driving a car, are activities reserved for people who are older. This is one of those things. Pornography is for grown-ups, and it’s not something they should be viewing until they get older. This explanation allows you to prohibit the activity in question without reinforcing sexual shame.
4. Avoid punishing your kids, especially at first. Punishment is often a parent’s reflexive instinct toward anything a child does that they don’t like, but punishing kids for expressing natural curiosity or instinctual desires is never appropriate. If they continue to access it after you’ve told them not to, then you can think about punishment (though even then it’s unlikely to do much good). But don’t punish kids for being kids and exploring like kids do.
5. Ideally, you should also give them other options for exploring this curiosity, such as books that depict human anatomy or bodies in a more artistic fashion. This idea isn’t for every parent, but for those who are serious about raising their child in a sexually healthy environment, this can promote that goal while decreasing the desire to dabble with porn. There’s nothing wrong with children seeing the human body in its natural form. Kids who grow up in nudist colonies have healthier attitudes and far fewer adjustment problems precisely because they have such exposures. (Smith & Sparks, 1986; Story, 1979) Your family may not be nudists, but you can try to incorporate the same stigma-free attitude in your home.