Type in any common female name, or word for sweet (such as lollipop) or flower (such a blue orchid), and a few more clicks can bring up sites that open onto a world of eye-searing pornography, including images of child rape and other acts of sexual torture. These are not sites restricted to private systems that require credit card payments or age verification; these are easily accessible by children. It is estimated that 12 % of 5 to 7 year olds and 16% o 8 to 17 year olds have unintentionally stumbled onto any of the estimated 250 million pages of pornography on the internet, while 38% of older teens admit to seeking out such sites. This is a far cry from the pile of magazines their parents would have stashed under their childhood mattresses.
In chat rooms frequented by children, it takes only minimal personal details for someone anywhere in the world to be alerted when a targeted child goes online and then instigate a conversation to explore and exploit the child's interests and insecurities. Research across several countries shows that 31% of young people aged 9 to 19 years who go online at least once a week have received uninvited sexual comments.
Accordingly to the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries, Ofcom, 66% of parents say they are concerned about what a child might access on the internet, and uppermost on their lists of concerns is exposure to sexually explicit material. Awareness that graphic, violent pornography is available on the internet, combined with uncertainty as to what impact that material may have on their children's - particularly their sons' - emotional and intellectual development, raises anxiety about internet discipline and control and protection.
Helen has three sons, Sam, aged 13, Jake, aged 15, and Gary, aged 16. All three boys display the internet nous characteristic of the young people who form part of what is commonly referred to as "the internet generation". Jake helps his mother download music onto her ipod and access that episode of Desperate Housewives she missed. Sam uses his skill with graphics software to format Jake's history coursework. Gary, who is dyslexic, has had his schoolwork transformed with the use of a special software programme that works with him to improve his spelling and grammar. Computers with web access are part of young people's lives, yet for Helen they also pose undefined dangers.
"There is so much out there on the internet and it's hard for a parent to monitor what children are exposed to. It's easy for kids to come across porn, whether they're looking for it or not. When their friends recommend a pornographic website, it's tempting for them to take a look. But, what then? I don't want to be a control freak. I want to show my boys that I trust them. It's just that the porn out there is truly awful, and it's upsetting to think about my boys coming into contact with it, even though it's an inevitable rite of passage."
While Helen puzzles over the balance between the benefits of free use of the internet on the one hand and overseeing her sons' activities on the other, Ann, mother of 13-year-old Tom, gives primary weight to her role as protector. "As a mum I want to keep him safe. It's scary to think that his innocence could be stolen away in the safety of his own room. I keep the filters locked and I track of the sites he visits. Those sites are toxic. You can see boys whose heads are filled with that stuff. I want to keep my own boy away from that corruption."
There is every reason to condemn pornography as an industry when it coerces, drugs or enslaves its workers, but over a period of years, in many different regions, links between pornography and sex crimes and negative attitudes towards women have been investigated, and at no time, in no region, have links between pornography, sex crimes and negative attitudes towards women been found. [see Milton Diamond's piece in The Scientist, 10 March 2010] Ann blanches with surprise when I tell her that research shows no causal link in adults between pornography - even violent pornography - and sexual criminality; her face reddens with angry disbelief when I explain that in some regions increased access to pornography has been shown to be correlated with reduce the incidence of sex crime.
Such findings are counter-intuitive, and few parents accept their validity. Ann concludes that there is something wrong with the research, perhaps "sex crimes" are too narrowly defined, and besides, she argues, everyone knows such crimes are under-reported. Phil, who also makes use of increasingly sophisticated internet filters, and who wants to protect both his son 13-year-old son and his 11-year old daughter, whose "sociability and curiosity, combined with her very trusting nature, make her vulnerable," demands whether studies have also been done on children, whose sexuality remain diffuse, inchoate and easily exploited.
Most children explore some pornography at some time of their life, and there is no statistical evidence that it causes specific harm. Of course what matters is how a child engages with this material. A passing curiosity may be easily satisfied and the interest abandoned; but sexual images have a special vividness and power, and may become addictive, as can many other internet activities, such as chatting or shopping or gaming. Personal accounts by young people and parents of obsession with pornography are disturbing: "It almost lodges itself into your mind, like a parasite sucking away the rest of your life," explains 16-year-old Malcolm, who participated in a 2007 study and reported spending between three and four hours each day visiting pornographic sites.
In addition to the prospect unwholesome distraction is concern about distorted attitudes towards sex and towards women. "My boys are so sweet and loving towards me and their girl cousins," Helen reflects. "The notion that girls or women are somehow lesser beings or mere objects of desire doesn't occur to them. I want to preserve that. We are trying to bring our children up to respect themselves and other people and to see that sex has consequences for people you care about, and who care about you. Allowing teenage boys to watch people flaunting sexual activity and displaying themselves and trying to titillate others with their antics is not the way to instil respect for others."
This concern about teaching respect is key to anxiety about the prevalence of internet pornography. And here research as to the importance of respect is strongly on the side of parental intuition. In the UK, the pregnancy rate among teenagers aged 15 to 19 years is 27 per 1000. In the Netherlands, the pregnancy rate of teenagers the same age is 5 per 1000. This difference appears to hinge on the very different reasons teenage boys in the UK and the Netherlands give for having sex. In the Netherlands, 56% of teenage boys say that their reason for having sex is love and commitment to a relationship, whereas the UK, love and commitment are seen by only 14% of boys in the UK as a reason for having sex. Young people in Holland become sexually active at the same age teens do in the UK - a lot younger than parents would like - but while 85% of teens in Holland use contraception the first time they have intercourse, only 50% in the UK do so. Associating sex with love and commitment results in more considerate and careful sexual behaviour.
Surely pornography interferes with such respect for others, particularly for sexual partners? Pornography ticks all the boxes for objectifying other people. In pornography, a sex partner is treated as a tool for one's own purposes; the partner is interchangeable, valued only for the provision of pleasure; the partner's subjectivity is obliterated as she or he becomes a husk of sexual receptiveness, presumed to be useable for anything one desires. Nevertheless, internet pornography cannot be the cause of the significant difference between teens in the UK and the Netherlands, since the number of Dutch pornography sites is higher than in the UK.
