Anup Joshi
Exposure
and Addiction to Pornography at an Early Age: A Serious Problem
I
was enjoying a nap as a part of my regular beauty-sleep during the late
afternoon when something broke the spell of my daydream. My eyes flung open and
struck with my nemesis. Reluctantly, I pulled the blanket, which had wandered
away in course of my sleep, covered my body and stretched my legs as an act of
relaxation. “Uncle, my laptop is wrecked and I gotta submit my social-work
report to my teacher tomorrow. Could you please lend me your laptop?”, standing
before me was twelve-year-old daughter of my landlord. The nervousness in her
aptitude exhibited by her trembling voice ended up with a Mona-Lisa smiley face
as soon as she uttered her pre-rehearsed dialogue. The only child of my
landlord, I had tutored Nisha for a year when she was at grade four, so she
always had ‘sir’ kind of formal attitude towards me. This was the first time
she had ever asked for anything by descending into my room in five years stay
at her house. Without a thought, my hands automatically went for the drawer of
my lowbed, where I used to safekeep my laptop and I handed it to her. She walked
out of my room without next word. My expectation that I’ll get my laptop by
evening shattered when she did not return it. It was perturbing for me as my
regular routine of watching movies got disturbed. I had just finished first two
seasons of Da Vinci Demons TV Series and two more seasons were to go. I
suffered as hell that night not being able to continue it.
When
Nisha returned the laptop next morning, I switched it on and saw a new document
file on my desktop entitled “social-work-project”. She had conducted a research
on five different native ethnic communities of Nepal, Raute, Sunar, Thami,
Dhimal, Rajbanshi and wrote a brief historical, geographical, demographic and
contemporary account of them along with relevant pictures. I was amazed by the
endeavor of a seventh-grade kid. My experience tutoring her was satisfactory as
she was among top students of her class and I had heard that she was successful
perpetuating her grades during recent years too. As I opened the web browser to
surf my facebook, a curiosity hit my mind and I opened the browser history to
pry what she has done with internet. I was totally baffled to see the search
history. In the later part of yesterday’s history, there was google search on
the ethnic communities she prepared her report on, but the most recent searches
aroused goosebumps on my heart. She had googled keywords like ‘girls sex’, ‘sex
photo’ and ‘nude video’ and had followed the porn sites that were displayed on
the search list. Nisha shared her room with her veteran grandmother and slept on
a single bed. The time of her obscene search was after 9 pm to 10:30. So I
guess after she finished her project and her grandmother went to sleep, she
started googling pornographic materials. I wondered if she hurries to search
porn on other’s device, how wisely was she using her personal iPad that her parents
gifted.
Last Saturday, my eldest sister visited my place with her
14-year-old son. It was his day off at school and Suchit had insisted that they
go somewhere for outing. As a way-out, she brought him to me as she could
simultaneously check out how was I doing. I live by myself in a single rental
room with kitchen and bedding on the same. The room is not so big and there is
a kitchen rack holding gas stove above it. A water jar, a lowbed and a cloth-hanger
are the only few things that could fit in. Kids these days cannot fathom a
second without a mobile, TV or laptop. Soon after we had lunch, the boy got
restless. As there was no TV at my place and my mobile was no fancy device
alike his mum’s, laptop was the only thing that could hold him for few more
hours. The boy is so determined that he objects to visit those relatives who
have no Wi-Fi, no laptop or no fancy mobile that he could enjoy during his
stay. With earphone plugged in, Suchit got engaged with laptop and lay on one
side of the bed, on the remaining side were we. He probably was watching WWE
wrestling videos or Cricket highlights on youtube. In the meantime, my sister
and I were busy talking about all the domestic and family affairs that could
possibly be imagined on earth. After I served them fried-noodles, they left my
place in the evening. Later when I was browsing my web browser, I found that
the boy has forgotten to log out his facebook account. Soon a chat box popped
up and there appeared a link from pornhub.com entitled ‘Helping stepmom’. It
was sent by one of his friend, visiting whose profile I concluded that he was
my nephew’s classmate. Scrolling the chat box, I saw there were lots of
exchange of pornographic weblinks between the two. I was shocked to see all
those. Similar was the conversation with few other boys too and with
girlfriends, he was clearly trying to woo them. He had made pretty much friends
on facebook and most of them were strangers, specially girls with whom he mostly
flirted. The message archives confirmed that Suchit spends a big deal of time
chatting and the thing he does on chatting was no good. His mother always
expressed her dissatisfaction over him for playing smartphone too much and not
giving enough time for his studies. As a result, his grades were very poor and
his parents were worried about him.
I accept that it was unwise of me to trespass the privacy
of kids in both the cases. But for god’s sake they both are children and are
not supposed to indulge their creative time on watching porn. With the advent
of mobile technology alongside amplification of internet service, children’s
access to huge world of web is stimulating. Children are learning lots of good
stuffs from internet and developing their familiarity with technology, this is
the good part. But in the same time, due to the easy access to huge resource of
internet pornography children are being addicted to them even before puberty.
As a result, they are losing interest in study and becoming deviated. As
Johnston puts it, “Children who frequently view pornography develops compulsive
use and take more sexual risks. Mainstream pornography’s violent themes and
heterosexual inequality may explain some of the negative effects it has on
children” (1). When they get some privacy from family members and access to an
internet device, they start to watch porn time and again. It is mandatory for
them to know about sex education and their physical and psychological changes
since from their early ages, for which school curriculum has also included a
paper on one. They should be given proper education to realize their sexual
potentiality. But pornography, which presents the highly graphic and unreal
images of sexual intercourse can cause serious psychological effect on them. “It depicts activities that don’t take
place during the actual sexual event. Unfortunately, this highly graphic
content has the potential to stick with kids long after they see it. That means
that it may continue to impact their sexual development long after they think
they’ve moved on from the event” (netsanity. par 3). As there are wild
ranges of pornographic material available on internet in just a distance of two
clicks, exposure to some of the categories of porn like incest, beastality,
homosexuality et cetera can be more injurious than others. They will make
children anti-social and may motivate them into sexual abuse and crimes.
Furthermore, children try to compare the physical features of the porn-stars
with them. They develop inferiority complex for not having the size of sexual
organs like that in porn videos, which are highly manipulated with the use of
graphics. The most dreadful part of the pornography is that they are addictive
and once children start to like them, it becomes their habitual routine to
watch porn materials.
The number of children visiting pornography is
extensively increasing even in the underdeveloped country like ours. The
parents may be unaware of it but research shows that most of the children are
addicted to it. This has become a global phenomenon. As MacLaughin claims:
the average age of a child's first
exposure to pornography is 11 years old. New research from the security
technology company Bitdefender, has reported children under the age of 10 now
account for 22% of online porn consumption under 18 -years old. Particularly
alarming is that the site most visited by children under 10 include porn mega
sites like Pornhub. The under 10 age group is now accounting for one in 10
visitors to porn video sites (par 2).
My
nephew and landlord’s daughter, whom nobody will believe that they could watch
porn are among few of many. Not only boys but girls are also equally exposed to
porn. Their first exposure is likely to be accidental, when they are using
internet, through redirecting advertisements or other means. But once they
stick with their curiosity, the situation gets worse. They develop the habit of
watching porn as teenage is very vulnerable age period. Though kids look normal
and social at present, the addiction of sex can accumulate bizarre violence in
their mind over time. “Users of…porn
are more likely to use verbal coercion, drugs, and alcohol to push women into
sex…exposure to both violent and nonviolent porn increases aggressive behavior,
including both having violent fantasies and actually committing violent
assaults.” (Sarah, par 6). So, the effect of addiction to porn can be very
lethal to the children over period of time. What will they turn out to be in
the future remains very uncertain.
We are fighting with so many things to make our
society better, but I think among them, children’s exposure to pornography
comes topmost. If the future of our nation waste their time on such deceiving
act, what can we expect of them? Parental guidance is very necessary to sort
this problem out. We should be more open to our children about sex and
introduce sexual health education to them in a very organized way. If I had
scolded my landlord’s daughter and my nephew for watching porn, they situation
would have gone more pathetic. They would have felt ashamed and be full of
gilt. It would have further perturbed their psychology. As Segal suggests, “a parent-teenager conversation about sexuality
and pornography is a good idea, as unnerving to both sides as that may sound.
The alternative is worse…Putting a computer in a kid’s room without any limits
on what can be viewed…is a bit like tossing a teenager the keys to a car and
saying: “Go learn how to drive. Have fun.” (par 26). We need to talk
sensitively regarding sexuality and pornography to them in a very friendly
manner. The school curriculum should inform them all the facets of natural
sexuality and aware them how much misleading porn materials can be. If we keep
the topic a taboo, they will never overcome it and be more and more dragged
into watching porn.
To conclude, exposure to pornography at an early age is a
serious social problem, not only of our country but of the whole world. Due to
the reach of internet and mobile technology at everyone’s palm, children have
become much more susceptible to porn than ever. Instead of playing, studying
and spending time for creative works, they are wasting their time watching porn
material and becoming sexually active at underage. This addiction is a
catastrophe to children’s psychology. First thing is ISPs, should block access
to most of the known porn sites in internet. And secondly, parental guidance
for cybersafety is inevitable. Parents should give more time to children,
encourage them for creative works and check out what their children are doing.
Today, parental control softwares are widely available for all the android,
windows and IOS platform. So, parents should install them on their device
before giving it to their children and mediate what is good and what is bad for
their sons and daughters. A child-friendly environment should be created at
home and at school. The problem of children’s exposure to pornography is very
real and we should all be alarmed to solve it.
Works
Cited
Johnston, Jennifer B.
“Early Exposure to Pornography: Indirect and Direct Effects on Sexual
Satisfaction
in Adulthood”. New York: UMI Dissertation Publication, 2013. Pdf.
MacLaughin, Cristin. “The Detrimental Effects of Pornography
on Small Children”.
Netnanny. 2 July 2017. Web.
<https://www.netnanny.com/blog/the-detrimental-effects-of-pornography-on-small-children/>
"Porn Effect On Brain - Kids Stumble Across
Porn And It's Brain Changing". Netsanity.
2 July 2017. Web.
<https://netsanity.net/porn-effect-on-brain/>
Sarah, Purple. “How
Watching Porn Can Lead To Violence”. Fight The New Drug.
2
July 2017.Web.
<http://fightthenewdrug.org/how-watching-porn-can-lead-to-violence/>
Segal, David. “Does Porn
Hurt Children?”. The New York Times. 2 July 2017. Web.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/sunday-review/does-porn-hurt-children.html>
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