Online porn and kids: It worries one in three most

Date

November 10, 2013

Cosima Marriner

Sun-Herald senior writer

Almost one in three children say pornography is what bothers them most on the internet, with young children the most likely to be troubled by sexual images online.

The online survey found children were most likely to see unsettling images on video-sharing sites such as YouTube, followed by websites and social media.

Asked, ”What things on the internet bother people your age?” 30 per cent of Australian children cited cyber bullying, 27 per cent said pornography and 19 per cent potentially harmful content such as anorexia and self-harm sites.

Of the 11 per cent of nine to 10-year-olds who had seen sexual images online, nine out of 10 were bothered by what they saw.

By comparison, more than half of 15 to 16-year-olds had seen sexual images, but only 21 per cent were bothered by them

The findings come from the AU Kids Online survey of 400 Australian children, which is part of the larger EU Kids Online study comparing the online experiences of 9636 children in 26 countries.

Study leader Professor Lelia Green, from Edith Cowan University, said young children were more likely to be bothered by online pornography because they didn’t understand sexual attraction yet. ”They’re still talking about boy germs and girl germs when they’re nine and 10,” she said.

University of Sydney clinical psychiatry professor Raj Sitharthan said online pornography became a problem when it warped young people’s views of sex. ”If at a young age, like 13, they start watching these kinds of videos, they view them as normal,” he said.

In a separate study, Professor Sitharthan and his wife, psychology lecturer Gomathi Sitharthan, have surveyed 1300 people to gauge the impact of porn; 43 per cent of the respondents were introduced to porn between the ages of 11 and 13.

The couple also treat teenagers addicted to online porn, many of whom were brought to the clinical practice by their parents concerned they were spending too much time on the internet and not socialising.

Professor Green said that while parents of young children should consider installing filtering software, it was no substitute for parental guidance.

While boys and girls were equally troubled by pornography, the AU Kids Online study found boys were more likely to be bothered by violent content than girls, and girls were more likely to be concerned about unwanted contact such as online predators.