Kids and online porn. Accidental or Intentional?

The media is hyping a story about the percentage of children (very widely interpreted) who see erotica online. “Forty-two percent of Internet users aged 10 to 17 surveyed said they had seen online pornography in a recent 12-month span.”

There is a vast difference between a 10 year old and a 17 year old. I’m not sure that lumping them into the same category is very useful. The press reports: “Of those, 66 percent said they did not want to view the images and had not sought them out.” So one third said they looked for the images and two-thirds said they had not looked for them but had them thrust upon them. This would be 28% of all internet users in this age group (two thirds of 42% is 28%).

So 72% of all “children” in this rather wide age group have not be exposed to images against their will. But that isn’t how the press is reporting the story. You won’t get many readers or viewers with a report headlined “Three quarters of all teen internet users NOT exposed to unwanted porn.”

There is also reason to believe that the number is actually higher, that is a good number of these exposures which are counted in the accidental category are actually intentional.

It is reported that “most kids who reported unwanted exposure were aged 13 to 17”. So the exposure rate for the 10 year olds was much lower. In fact older teens were twice as likely to be “accidentally” exposed to pornography.

Exactly how does the Internet know the age of users? Why is it that as adolescence hits the “accidental” exposure more than doubles? As hormones turn teens in very curious sex freaks (so to speak) the Internet somehow detects the surge in hormones and exposes the unwilling teens to far more porn than their younger counterparts. Right! I don’t believe it.

There is some accidental exposure ot porn. And there can be misdirection and advertising, etc that takes place. I’ve documented how that can happen to people. But I can’t think of a reason why the accidental rate should more than double with the surge of hormones. I can see why the intentional exposure rate would dramatically increase however. And I can see why lots of teens would lie about it.

According to reports I read the survey was done by telephone and with the knowledge and permission of the parents. So the academics doing this “study” call the house and inform the parents that they will be asking their children about what sexual images they viewed on the Internet and whether they sought out the images or accidentally saw them. Do you want me to think that the parents all left the room while their “innocent” teen answered these questions?

I would suspect that many parents sat in the room during the questioning. Some no doubt listened in on extensions or put the call on the speaker phone. And the kids being surveyed knew that their parents knew about the survey. All of this tells me that kids who viewed porn have strong incentives to lie. They would lie about the extent of what they viewed and they would most particularly lie about whether it was accidental or intentional.

The fact remains that very few teens are going to tell their mother that they regularly watch pornography to help them along in the masturbatory habits. A survey like this has to be done with the knowledge of the parents but that the parents know about it changes the answers the children will give. I’m actually surprised that one-third of the kids admitted they went looking for the stuff.

There is another aspect to this that needs some clarity. The internet is a great tool but often a very blunt one. If you search for information on a topic you will be inundated with information that is often very much off topic. You may need to refine your searches over and over to narrow it down to anything useful.

I would think the same is true with sexual images. If a teen is looking for some specific kinds of images but in the process of searching for those images is exposed to other images which he is not seeking does this qualify as intentional searching of porn or accidental? He intentionally sought out images in one category but was unintentionally exposed to images in another category.

Surely a survey like this is of limited value. And even if it were accurate I’m not sure what it is telling us. Do we actually have evidence that the intentional or accidental viewing of erotic material is actually harmful? I know of none. Most surveys of true sex offenders showed that they viewed less pornography than their peers and viewed it later in life. In fact many offenders are very, very conservative when it comes to their attitudes about sex. Rape rates are higher in states where fewer men subscribe to sex magazines.

The press did report that “many survey participants said they were not disturbed by what they saw”. Now I can expect that seeing intercourse can be a bit disturbing to a child who had no idea that the process existed. But once they know about sex how disturbing would it be?

Ask the average adult you know if they have ever seen pornography. A good number will say they have and some will lie about it and say they haven’t when they have. Some no doubt have never seen any. Then ask them: “Did this experience warp you in some way?” Most would say it had no impact on them whatsoever.

I can’t imagine that a 16-year-old viewing sexual images is any more likely to be warped by it than a 21 year old. Perhaps there are reasons that this may be the case but I haven’t seen anyone presenting those reasons. The closest these articles come to it is that they say maybe viewers of porn will start having sex earlier. But pornography is usually used for a masturbatory substitute for intercourse. There are probably an equal number of reasons to think it inhibits the onset of intercourse. But no one really knows since such studies aren’t being done.

The strangest views on the topic can from some woman at the University of Chicago, Sharon Hirsch, who asserted that pornography might put kids at risk of being attacked by sexual predators “if they visit sites that prey on children”. This woman sounds a bit wacko to me. Or maybe the media did a bad job reporting what she was talking about. I am not sure how seeing sexual images increases the likelihood of being attacked by a predator. And the articles don’t explain how either. And quite honestly I’ve never heard of sites “that prey on children”. What she meant by that is not clear in the context of the article.

It is possible she is speaking about sites that feature child porn but my understanding is that very little material of that nature is distributed from websites -- moe likely through file sharing and emails. It is illegal and any site being hosted someplace is more at risk of being detected. I don’t know of any sites which encourage children to visit them to meet predators -- in fact the evidence is that individuals inclined to do that sort of thing go to the sites where kids chat not that they set up their own sites to lure in children. I can’t make any sense out of Hirsch’s statement.

She says that seeing sexual images “can cause trauma” to teens and children. Again if the child knows nothing about sex whatsoever it might be a bit surprising but how many kids are in that state of total ignorance? Considering that the vast majority of “kids” in the study are themselves pubescent I sincerely doubt they are in total ignorance. I don’t think you’ll find many people who can recite to you how they were traumatized by seeing naked people or sexual images. If very few adults who saw pornography as children were traumatized then why are we assuming this generation is any different? From press accounts I can only conclude this study gives off more heat than light.