A disturbing new TVNZ+ documentary, Swipe With Caution, covers how pornography has changed dating culture for young adults. But with at least 25% of Kiwi kids first being exposed to porn from the age of 12, the impact of porn is starting a lot earlier than you might think. Capsule talks to sexual health and gender expert Nikki Denholm about how to talk to kids about porn and how early access to porn can have a long-term influence.
On the list of conversations you might be dreading as a parent, it’s easy to imagine that talking to your kids about porn is really up there. But as sexual health and gender expert Nikki Denholm says, not only are those conversations crucial for helping kids deal with the confusing world of porn, they’re also conversations that need to be happening younger than you think.
“The data in New Zealand – which is four years old now – showed that by the age of 12, 25% of young people had seen porn,” Nikki says. “And this was four years ago, when most 12 year olds didn’t have cellphones. We envisage that that number would be much higher now, in terms of early access.”
How Porn Sites Are Targeting Kids
In extra troubling news, this is partly because a lot of porn sites are actively marketing to children. “Some sites use children’s colours, characters and fonts in order to help young people accidentally access porn,” Nikki says. “The research from four years ago showed that 71% of first porn access was accidental – and 44% of the time it was on a non-porn site.”
“The research showed that 71% of first porn access was accidental – and 44% of the time it was on a non-porn site.”
Some porn sites also now feature porn parodies of popular children’s characters (a cursed sentence if ever there was one), such as The Wiggles, Lego, Disney, Marvel characters, Harry Potter, and fun, brightly coloured cartoon characters. Nikki references a pastel-coloured cartoon video called ‘Magical Sleepover U’ which featured a violent rape, and which got 1.5m hits in its first week.
When kids of a pre-puberty age access porn, before they have any real-life sexual or romantic experience of their own, they often have “an uncomfortable experience”, Nikki says.
“Often they’re really grossed out, but some young people also have a mixed experience, which is the really tricky area,” Nikki says. “On one hand, they’ll feel really grossed out and disgusted, but on the other hand, it’s nude bodies, so it’s totally normal that they may feel a little bit aroused to it. But they can feel very frightened to tell adults, because they’re afraid they’ll get told off or be judged. So if they’re aroused by it, where do they go with that?”
“It’s pretty scary to tell your parents that you’re seeing porn, let alone that you like it. So it’s very confusing for them – there’s a whole range of emotions, and if they can’t unpack that with an adult, then they might go back to porn to make sense of it.”
What’s crucial for parents is not to react in either extreme, as that can shut down any conversation really quickly. “if parents have a really alarmist response, or a really dismissive response, neither of those reactions are helpful for young people,” Nikki says. “And not everyone that sees porn is going to be impacted negatively.”
She points out there are a few factors that can influence this overall impact: the type of porn they’re watching, how frequently they’re watching, their age, if they’ve had real-life sex and if they think porn is real.
“If you’ve got a 10-year-old who’s watching porn every day, who’s never held a boy or girl’s hand and just watches whatever content is on the home page and thinks it’s real, there’s a higher likelihood that they will be impacted, rather than an 18-year-old who watches it once a week, has real-life sex and knows porn isn’t real.”
The Impact Porn Can Have On Young People
Nikki uses the acrostic ‘GRAMS’ to explain how early access to porn can have long-term impacts on young people.
G for Gender Stereotypes: “Porn can affect their gender stereotypes, so they’re more likely to have a sexist or misogynistic attitudes, or a casual attitude towards consent. It can also shape their attitude towards sex, because that’s what they think is real.”
R for Risky Sex: “They are more likely to have risky sex: group sex, casual sex, earlier sex and rough sex.”
A for Aggression: “In the past four years, there has been a significant increase in the amount of violence being shown in porn, and we know that young people who watch a lot of aggression in porn are more likely to accept sexual violence towards women, and there is an association between watching violent porn and an increased likelihood of being sexually aggressive and coercive in real life.”
M is Mental Health: “A lot of people experience significant shame around porn use: some feel pressure to watch it, pressure to re-enact it, body image issues.”
S for Sexuality: “Even with monthly usage, young people are likely to have lower real-life sexual satisfaction, and some can start to need porn to get aroused and stay aroused.”
The TVNZ documentary Swipe With Caution that came out this week, and which features Nikki, looks at the impact of pornography and the rise of dating apps on dating and sex culture in New Zealand.
How Porn Is Impacting Dating & Sex Culture in NZ
“In the last five years, we have seen a trajectory in porn to the normalisation of what we call ‘diverse sexual behaviour’: rough sex, biting, choking,” Nikki says. “Rough sex is common in porn but it has been normalised in mainstream media that young people engage with.”
She uses choking as an example – it’s not actually that common in porn, the research puts it in between 1-5% of porn scenes – but has become a huge part of dating culture. A recent survey by Project Gender – looking at the dating habits and experiences of NZ young people – found that 43% of people under 30 who had had consensual sex in the past 12 months had been choked by their sexual partner, but of that percentage, only 53% actually consented to being choked all the time. So when, as Nikki says, you see that nearly half of nearly half of people under 30 had been choked without their consent by someone they met on a dating app… it’s happening a lot.
The issue with risky sex happening with someone you’ve just met on a dating app is that there is no context or past experience as to what is okay and what isn’t, Nikki says. “What the research says is that rough sex is risky sex but the risk is mitigated in a relationship where there is respect, communication, consent, care and trust. There’s an understanding that consent is a dynamic thing, where you can withdraw it at any time. With hook-ups on dating apps, you don’t always have that safety net.”
It’s one of the reasons it’s important not to avoid having the porn conversation earlier on with your kids, before either the expectation or the acceptance of violence in sex due to porn exposure has taken hold. So how can parents create a judgement-free zone in order to start this dialogue with their kids when they’re still learning about sex?
How To Talk To Kids About Porn
– Reflect on your own relationship with porn and sex.
“Think about any awkwardness you have, any shame that you were brought up with, and then go into that conversation with a young person with a really open mind – using kind language, avoiding words like ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, because the minute you say ‘porn is bad’ to a young person who watches it and likes it, then they may feel ‘I’m bad.’ So use gentle questions like: ‘I’ve heard lots of young people are learning about sex from porn – what do you think about that? Do your friends watch porn, how is it for you?’”
– Normalising arousal. “This can be tricky for parents, but it’s so helpful for young people,” Nikki says. “If they know that it’s really normal to be turned on by nude bodies, they’re far more likely to feel less shame about telling their parents that they’re watching porn or like porn.”
– Be aware of what is in porn these days. “Know that if a young person accesses porn these days, it is highly likely they will see violence and it is most common that they won’t have even searched for that, it’s just what’s being dished up to young people.”
– Adults have a responsibility to discuss this. “We talk about porn being a young person’s issue but porn is an adult issue – we created the industry and we gave young people the devices to use it… and now we’re not talking to them about it. We have to counter message the consistent messages such as normalising violence and misogyny that we see in porn.”
For more advice on how to have these conversations, including specific questions to ask, visit IntheKnow. To watch the documentary Swipe With Caution, click here.
