And many parents, including myself, make a second Fogke about pornography. They don’t really understand what these videos portray.
Violent, descent and misogynistic videos
“Think Children’s parents are looking for softcore porn, such as Playboy Centerfolds,” says Flood. But pornography today generally shows something else: “men are cruel to women.”
“Sometimes that is verbal violence, with a hostile and derogatory language. Sometimes that is a violent behavior, such as strangulation, slapped or suffocation,” says Flood. Many times, the videos show women who enjoy this cruelty, no matter how violent or degrading. “That is not an appropriate way of sex education for our 8 -year -old or our 12 -year -old vensilizos,” he adds.
This The sexist and violent content is “routine” Flood says. In Important Study of the United KingdomThe researchers analyzed 50 of the most popular pornographic videos. About 90% of them showed manifest violence or aggression, directed too much towards women, researchers reported in the magazine Violence against women. In another study, The researchers analyzed more than 4,000 scenes from two main pornographic websites. About 40% of them included one or more acts of physical aggression. “The buttocks, the nausea, the slap, the pull of hair and suffocation were the five most common forms of physical aggression,” researchers reported in the Sexual behavior archives.
Scientists are beginning to understand how early exposure to this content can affect the health and development of children, says the social scientist Brian Willoughby At Brigham Young University. For example, you can interfere with children’s learning about consent and the importance of respect for relationships.
“The gender dynamics shown in these videos establishes really unhealthy expectations when it comes to intimacy and relationships,” says Willoughby.
Studies also find that early exposure increases the risk of developing problematic use or pornography later in life. For young children, explicit content can be quite high, shocking and discordant. “His understanding of sex, in general, is very limited,” says Willoughby. Therefore, they have difficulty understanding what they are or handling the emotions and the physiological response that triggers in their brains and bodies.
For some children, see explicit content can be traumatic, he says Megan Maas at Michigan State University. In one of Maas’s studies, a man described what happened when he looked for the word “blowjob” in the sixth grade. “He ended up seeing a genre or pornography, called facial abuse, which shows women to love penises,” Maas explains. “Women are often crying, with a rímel running for their faces.”
The videos caused a visceral reaction within him that made him want to vomit. “Then he just closed sex,” says Maas, “all the experience scared him and he really changed it.”
What parents can do
In the last two years, 21 states have approved laws Require pornographic sites to verify the age of a user. But all scientists interviewed for this story say it is imperative that parents implement protections within their home.
There are three measures to take here.
Block content with your router.
One of the most powerful tools to protect children against pornography is already sitting inside their home: their router.
“As a father, his router is the most important and underestimated digital device in his home,” says Chris McKenna. Is the founder and CEO of the company Protect young eyes, That, during the last decade, has helped schools and churches to create Safer digital spaces.
Its router acts as a door through which the Internet enters your home through Wifi. You can, in a way, place a gorilla on the wifi. You can block any website you want when going through that and reach devices that use wifi. To do that you can:
- Log in directly to your router through a browser and schedule it To block Explicit websites. Some routers include parental controls; Some do not.
- Buy a device that connects to its router and filter unwanted content, such as Bark at home ORPIN Aura.
ORPÍN
- Buy a router designed specifically to block pornographic content, such as Griffon.
McKenna and his team have He tried these options And discovered that the third is the easiest and most effective. But it is an expense. A new router can cost up to $ 300.
“This router allows you to turn off the Internet completely at certain times of the day or in certain devices with a phone application,” he explains. “So I could be in Switzerland and control the entire network in my house.”
Add filters to cellular devices, then monitor
Control your router clearly gained stop all Explicit content of entering your home. First, he won the stop content on devices that use cell or mobile data, such as smartphones and tablets that collect cellular data.
This ubiquitous access to explicit content on smartphones is an important reason why many psychologists and pediatricians recommend Waiting until eighth grade or a little later Before giving a child a smartphone.
Another big problem is that explicit content is not limited to pornographic websites. Repeated research shows that it often appears in Social Network Platforms and video games Directed directly to adolescents and younger children.
And, as Brian Willoughby points out by byu, he won that children saw pornography in the homes of a friend or relative, or simply the school on the phones of other children. “The vast majority of young children access pornography for the first time through their friends, “he says.
Then, Willoughby and other scientists recommend using all parental filters and controls that come with devices and applications. But, emphasizes, parents should know that these controls do not work well. “They are very easy to handle,” he says. “I think so many parents light these filters and leave. That is simply not good enough.”
Willoughby recommends that parents often supervise children’s activities in applications, games and social networks. That does not mean being with the child every time they are his phone, but it does mean having access to his accounts and often look at his content. “Look who they are talking with and what they are sharing,” he says. “That is equally important, if not more, than to control your router, I think.”
“Children will worry a lot about this monitoring and talk about” You are the only father who does it, “says Willoughby.” What I always tell my children is: “I love you more than those parents.”
Teach children what to do when they meet disturbing content
Finally, each child must be aware that they could run into shocking photos and videos and videos on the Internet, says McKenna.
So, teach children what to do when they find this content. “In our organization, we teach children to,” we leave it and tell someone, “he says. Then give the child a list of people who can say, including parents, a grandfather or older brother.
Then recommend practicing that action. “Have your child feels at the kitchen counter with your device and say: ‘Listen, I want you to do that you have something that bothers you. I’m going to the bedroom. I want the Chromebook to close, bring it the stairs and tell me out loud: “Mom, I saw something that bothered me and I want to talk about that.” “
That recreation gives you the opportunity to practice another critical ability. “Don’t go crazy,” says McKenna. If you scare yourself, the child could be reluctant to return to you in the future, he says.
Instead, reedsure the child who is not in trouble, they are safe and that you love them, he says. You could say: “There is nothing in which you can click or look at what would ever change the way I feel about you, love. You are still my amazing son.“
