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With more than 370 million porn sites that generate more web traffic than Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest, and LinkedIn combined, odds are a child will sooner or later find one, she said. “I mean, using Disney characters? Using often misspelled URLs of sites that kids go to?” “There’s no specific study that can tie them to that, but it seems like the porn world is after kids,” she said. “Otherwise, their first curiosity will be to watch longer – to watch more, to share it with a friend – because it’s such a stimulus and their body is responding, but they don’t understand what it is or why it might be potentially harmful.”Įven if a child does not deliberately search the internet specifically for sex, chances remain very high that otherwise innocent search terms might inadvertently pull up links to adult webpages, she said, adding many porn sites feature Disney characters, which in her estimation seems as though some manufacturers of pornographic content are deliberately targeting children. “They have to be warned before they see it, what to do when they see a naked body,” she said. “If kids don’t learn about sex and healthy intimate relationship from their parents, they’ll learn from the internet.”Īnd regardless of whether a youth is a toddler or a teen, their brains are not yet fully developed and will respond to that kind of visual stimulation through a potentially addiction-inducing dopamine release that rivals drug use, she said, adding the key is to prepare them for that inevitable first encounter. “But they’re not being set up for success, and they’re not being given at least the warning signals.”Īnd in an information vacuum where children do not learn from their parents or guardians what a healthy intimate relationship built upon self-respect and consent looks like, they’ll inevitably turn to the internet where the proliferation of adult content runs the risk of distorting their impression of sex as material becomes more extreme, she said. “Kids are curious, which is not their fault – that is how they’re designed,” she said. “Even worse, it’s going right into those brothels, into the darkest rooms in the back.”ĭespite however much parents and guardians already have on their plates, Holland encourages them to find and make some time to play a more active role in educating their children about the importance of respecting themselves in online interactions. “Yet we give little children access to the worst red light district in the world through their devices,” she said. That stands in rather stark contrast to all of the existing campaigns that seek to educate youth about the negative health impacts of consuming drugs, vaping, smoking, or driving impaired, she said. 30 during an in-person interview that unfettered access to the internet opens the flood gates to an all-but-infinite digital red light district that children are ill-equipped to understand or process from a lack of adequate awareness. Speaking “as a mom with kids who are drawn to the internet,” Holland told the Albertan on Tuesday, Aug. So, parents and guardians must be prepared to have difficult conversations with their kids not only to prepare them for the inevitable encounter that could prove shocking considering a trend toward increasingly-extreme content, but also to empower them to make responsible decisions they won’t later come to regret, said Holland, who previously worked for about 18 years with an organization that helped victims of human trafficking. “The chances of kids finding porn is highly probable,” she said, later adding that depending on the statistical analysis, youths on average discover adult content between the ages of nine and 11.
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The internet might among many other benefits offer access to the sum of all human knowledge, but there’s also a profoundly troubling aspect to the web that a concerned Bergen-area parent worries society has to a large extent turned a blind eye to.Įquipped with a keenly active curiosity that barely sleeps coupled with unsupervised access to an internet connection, it’s not a matter of if a child discovers pornographic material, but rather when, says Naomi Holland.