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Normalize sexuality -- talk about it with your kids early and often...

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Normalize sexuality -- talk about it with your kids early and often...

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AmazeJr Parents: How Do You Talk To Young Kids About Sex? - amaze

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You are now leaving AMAZE.org. Content beyond this site might not be appropriate for young adolescents.

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Porn:  Fact or Fiction provides a short and straight-forward background on what porn is and isn't.

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unGlue: End screen time battles. Start better habits.

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Too much screen time. It's a problem all parents face. Now there's a solution that gives kids the power to learn healthier habits - within your boundaries. It's not about parental control. It's about teaching them to manage their own time.

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How to talk your high schooler about porn

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How to talk your high schooler about porn

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The Novus Project offers a short list of discussion strategies and talking points for parents to help children manage explicit material exposure.

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Talking to My Kids About Sex in the Internet Age by Adam Savage (10:59 -- discussion about kids' viewing porn begins around 05:17)

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NYTimes Take on Parenting and Online Pornography

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NYTimes Take on Parenting and Online Pornography

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Disruptions

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Credit Credit Anna Parini

It had been another long day for Eliza, a 41-year-old stay-at-home mother who lives in Los Angeles with her two sons. She had taken the boys, 10 and 13 at the time, to school, taken care of the house, and after putting them to bed, planned to relax in front of her computer.

At least that's what she was hoping to do. Eliza opened her computer and started to search for a document, but based on previous searches, the term "child porn" appeared on the screen.

"I went into a panic," said Eliza, who was given anonymity to protect the identity of her children. Her mind started to race in a million different directions.

Two nights later, as they were going to bed, she asked the older son if he had searched for "child porn" and if so, why. "He said he was looking for porn made for children," she told me. "He explained, embarrassed, that he just wanted to know what his body was supposed to look like at his age."

Welcome to the new teenage years. Not long ago, boys and girls nearing that curious age might sneak a peek at Playboy or scour the underwear section of a J. C. Penney circular.

Today, teenagers have easy access to a seemingly endless supply of pornography, including things that even many adults don't want to see, such as mock sexual violence, misogynistic videos and, in extreme cases, child pornography.

"At first, I told my son the next time he wanted to look at things like this, to talk to me and we'd do it together," Eliza said. "Yet as soon as the words left my mouth I realized, and said, 'No, no, no, that would be a terrible idea.' "

Parents I've spoken with who have young boys acknowledged that trying to stop them from seeing online pornography is all but impossible. One father, for example, said that he installed web filtering software on the home computer, only to learn that his son had watched a gross-out pornography clip at a friend's house.

I spoke with researchers at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, who walked me through a number of long-term studies that the group has been conducting since 2000 on children's exposure to pornography. In one paper, the group found that 42 percent of online users ages 10 to 17 had seen pornography, and that 66 percent of those had seen it unwittingly, often as display ads on file-sharing sites.

Another study by the same university found that 93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls were exposed to online pornography during their adolescence. You don't need to be a scientific researcher to realize that's a lot of exposure for children.

For parents, this leaves two questions. First, is the pervasiveness of online pornography bad for today's youth, potentially creating a society of sexual deviants? And second, what can parents do to help protect their children?

There is no definitive answer to the first question, although it is a running debate in the nation's culture wars. For example, the 2013 movie " Don Jon," which starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a man hooked on pornography, prompted a new round of anti-pornography commentary, including one from a sex therapist arguing that online pornography is severely corrupting today's youth. "I see a sexual and relational train wreck happening," the therapist said.

But other experts who monitor teenagers and sexuality say that there is plenty of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. Teenage pregnancy has dropped sharply in recent years; the number of sexual partners that teenagers have is down; and the number of ninth graders having sexual intercourse has fallen, to cite just three examples.

"If you just look at the indicators of sexual responsibility, you don't see a generation of kids looking like they are off the rails," said David Finkelhor, an author of several books on child abuse and a director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. But Dr. Finkelhor acknowledged that the long-term psychological effects of teenagers' access to online pornography was still being determined.

Which leads to the second question. Dr. Finkelhor and other experts I spoke with said that today's easy access to pornography, especially its violent and illegal forms, makes it imperative for parents to educate their children, not only about sex but specifically about online pornography, in all its flavors. And given how easy it is to find it online, it is important to inculcate them at an early age.

Here's the new reality: Thanks to the Internet, children will see things that children probably shouldn't. Teenagers with active hormones will get together with their friends and, when parents are out of sight, seek out and explore dark and salacious imagery.

So as uncomfortable and embarrassing as it may be for both parents and teenagers, part of raising a child today means explaining that, like Hollywood movies, pornography is often a fantasy that can take things to extremes.

Also, children should be warned about the dark and dangerous material they may stumble across online. If parents don't, that uncomfortable and embarrassing feeling could be replaced with something much worse.

Take it from Eliza. The last thing you want to find on the home computer is a previous search for the term "child porn."

A version of this article appears in print on , Section E, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Parenting and Online Pornography. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Parenting in the Age of Online Pornography

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Disruptions It had been another long day for Eliza, a 41-year-old stay-at-home mother who lives in Los Angeles with her two sons. She had taken the boys, 10 and 13 at the time, to school, taken care of the house, and after putting them to bed, planned to relax in front of her computer.

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Comprehensive Sex Education, the remedy for accidental porn exposure

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Comprehensive Sex Education, the remedy for accidental porn exposure

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In many sex education classes, LGBTQ topics aren't included or, if they are mentioned at all, it's brief. For instance, in my sex ed class, we spent one lesson learning what the L, G, B and T stand for and [...]

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Sex, Etc. has provided teens honest and inclusive sexual health information since it started in 1994. Our readers represent all sorts of backgrounds and identities, and for some, it might be the only place they can see themselves reflected and [...]

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I felt like I didn't belong. It was like I was listening in on a conversation about everyone else but me. My teacher clicked on a PowerPoint, the guys in the back of the class giggled on cue, and I [...]

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How Sex Ed Can Help When We Stumble Upon Porn

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In many sex education classes, LGBTQ topics aren't included or, if they are mentioned at all, it's brief. For instance, in my sex ed class, we spent one lesson learning what the L, G, B and T stand for and [...] Read Story " > Sex, Etc.

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Porn - What you should know (for students 13+) Warning:  contains drawn image of male genitalia

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Porn - What you should know (for students 13+) Warning:  contains drawn image of male genitalia

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The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society offers a great animation about how seeing sexual images and porn affects our thoughts of ourselves, others and sex.

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Porn - what you should know. For Yrs 8 and up from The Practical Guide to Love, Sex & Relationships.

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The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society brings you a world first - a video for 13 to 14 year olds to help them become critical thinkers about pornography and other sexual imagery (which may not be classified as porn). We want young people to have the chance to hear an alternative set of standards – that sex should be a mutually enjoyable and consensual experience (when the time is right). If this is an issue you feel you need to discuss with your students, keep in mind not everyone has seen, or wants to see porn. Check out the accompanying lesson plan which is part of the FREE teaching resource, The Practical Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships for Years 7 to 10 at www.lovesexrelationships.edu.au.

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Most appropriate for high school students

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The Sexy Lie: Caroline Heldman at TEDxYouth@SanDiego

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Talking to Kids (of all ages) about Difficult Topics

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Talking to Kids (of all ages) about Difficult Topics

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How to Talk to Kids About Difficult Subjects

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In a world where even little kids learn about horrific subjects, it’s important for parents to put things in perspective, field questions, and search for answers together. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Reasons to start talking to young children about sexuality

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Reasons to start talking to young children about sexuality

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Risks of stumbling upon pornography as a child

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Risks of stumbling upon pornography as a child

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"They grow up so fast," parents often lament. Today, children are being sexualized earlier and earlier, in part because they are exposed to sexual material in movies, television, music and other media earlier than ever. With widespread access to the Internet, curious teens may accidentally or intentionally be exposed to millions of pages of material that is uncensored, sexually explicit, often inaccurate and potentially harmful.

So what? If kids don't understand it, how can they be affected by it? Even if young children can't understand sex or its role in relationships, the images they see can leave a lasting impression. It's a basic premise of marketing that what we watch, read and direct our attention toward influences our behavior. And, as any marketer knows, sex sells. That's why we see products and services that have nothing to do with sex being marketed in increasingly sexualized ways.

Children as young as 8 and 9 are coming across sexually explicit material on the Internet and in other media. Although research is just beginning to assess the potential damage, there is reason to believe that early exposure to sexual content may have the following undesirable effects:

Early Sex. Research has long established that teens who watch movies or listen to music that glamorizes drinking, drug use or violence tend to engage in those behaviors themselves. A 2012 study shows that movies influence teens' sexual attitudes and behaviors as well. The study, published in Psychological Science, found that the more teens were exposed to sexual content in movies, the earlier they started having sex and the likelier they were to have casual, unprotected sex.

In another study, boys who were exposed to sexually explicit media were three times more likely to engage in oral sex and intercourse two years after exposure than non-exposed boys. Young girls exposed to sexual content in the media were twice as likely to engage in oral sex and one and a half times more likely to have intercourse. Research also shows that teens who listened to music with degrading sexual references were more likely to have sex than those who had less exposure.

Why are teens more likely to have sex after being exposed to sexual content in the media? Just as we read specific books and show educational movies to our children in hopes that they learn lessons from the characters, the media provides a type of sex education to young people. Media messages normalize early sexual experimentation and portray sex as casual, unprotected and consequence-free, encouraging sexual activity long before children are emotionally, socially or intellectually ready.

High-Risk Sex. The earlier a child is exposed to sexual content and begins having sex, the likelier they are to engage in high-risk sex. Research shows that children who have sex by age 13 are more likely to have multiple sexual partners, engage in frequent intercourse, have unprotected sex and use drugs or alcohol before sex. In a study by researcher Dr. Jennings Bryant, more than 66 percent of boys and 40 percent of girls reported wanting to try some of the sexual behaviors they saw in the media (and by high school, many had done so), which increases the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

Sex, Love and Relationship Addictions. Not every child who is exposed to sexual content will struggle with a mental health disorder, but research shows that early exposure to pornography is a risk factor for sex addictions and other intimacy disorders. In one study of 932 sex addicts, 90 percent of men and 77 percent of women reported that pornography was a factor in their addiction. With the widespread availability of explicit material on the Internet, these problems are becoming more prevalent and are surfacing at younger ages.

Sexual Violence. According to some studies, early exposure (by age 14) to pornography and other explicit material may increase the risk of a child becoming a victim of sexual violence or acting out sexually against another child. For some people, habitual use of pornography may prompt a desire for more violent or deviant material, including depictions of rape, torture or humiliation. If people seek to act out what they see, they may be more likely to commit sexual assault, rape or child molestation.

Preserving Our Children's Youth

Early exposure to sexual content in the media may have a profound impact on children's values, attitudes and behaviors toward sex and relationships. Unfortunately, media portrayals do not always reflect the message parents want to send. Here are a few ways that you as a parent can ensure your message is heard:

* Know what your children are watching, playing and listening to and take advantage of teachable moments to discuss any inappropriate content or behaviors with them.

* Set and enforce limits around screen time.

* Make use of Internet filters and parental controls.

* Share your family's values and expectations regarding sex and relationships.

* Talk to your child about media representations of sex, relationships and gender roles and teach them to question the accuracy and intent of the messages they receive.

* Model healthy, respectful relationships and self-worth.

For most families, banning media from the home isn't a realistic option. After all, most 8- to 18-year-olds devote an average of seven and a half hours to media in a typical day, according to a 2009 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and more than half of that content contains sexual images or references. The goal isn't to avoid the issue, but to approach it head-on so that your children learn about sex and relationships from their most trusted source: you.

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Overexposed and Under-Prepared: The Effects of Early Exposure to Sexual Content

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"They grow up so fast," parents often lament. Today, children are being sexualized earlier and earlier, in part because they are exposed to sexual material in movies, television, music and other media earlier than ever. With widespread access to the Internet, curious teens may accidentally or intentionally be exposed to millions of pages of material that is uncensored, sexually explicit, often inaccurate and potentially harmful.

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While Screenwise doesn't dedicate a whole chapter to responding to sexting or pornography, the author does explore cultural pressures on kids to fit into stereotyped gender roles, which has implications when it comes to how they view their sexuality.

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Interview between family therapist and school technology educator at Minnetonka Public Schools, MN

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Interview between family therapist and school technology educator at Minnetonka Public Schools, MN

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39:41--Begins discussion about online pornography and sexting

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Parenting in the Digital Age: Finding a Healthy Balance, Part 2

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If your child receives "unsolicited obscene materials," experiences misleading domain names or misleading words/digital images on the internet, you can report it via the CyberTipline.

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NCMEC's CyberTipline is the nation's centralized reporting system for the online exploitation of children. The public and electronic service providers can make reports of suspected online enticement of children for sexual acts, extra-familial child sexual molestation, child pornography, child sex tourism, child sex trafficking, unsolicited obscene materials sent to a child, misleading domain names, and misleading words or digital images on the internet.