Coming of age in a world of digital porn

Coming of age in a world of digital porn

Jonah’s gonna be eight soon. He’s learned a few ‘naughty’ words off the kids at school, and sometimes gets over exploratory in the bath with his poor sister, but it’s nothing to worry about.

We have a relaxed approach to nudity in our house, but the time will come when both kids start growing up and that means their casual interest in boobs and bums will get a little bit more involved.

When Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ came on the radio over the weekend, it provided an opportunity to start talking to Jonah in a frank way about the easy access of sexualised content and whether it had had an impact on him yet – although I didn’t put it like this with him, obvs.

He said he liked the song, and my curiosity was piqued as to whether any of his friends had seen the x-rated version of the video. I asked if he had heard about the video, which is stylish and very sexy featuring  beautiful nude models dancing breasts akimbo. It’s a bit much for me, and we all know what I used to do, so for a teenage boy, I imagine it’s brought on more than one unfortunate incident.

Jonah shook his head, so I cheekily said,  “it’s got ladies dancing in it with their boobies out,” and watched as his little eyes nearly pop out of his head. So far, so innocent.

Chatting to our neighbours last night – a group of charming twentysomething lads who pop over from time to time for beers and giggles, they harked back to their first experiences of porn as a normal,  furtive, awkward coming of age activity: of lads mags turned to top shelf Razzles, of discovered stacks of antiquated Playboys, and later, Channel Five’s obsession with gyrating ladies post 11.00pm.

I asked them about their parents’ attitudes to their sexual discoveries, and the lads admitted their parents were pretty relaxed about finding their stashes, even going so far as to bin the well thumbed copies and  replace them with, er, fresh ones – after all, if they were going to do it, and let’s face it, they were, they might as well have a ‘clean’ ‘read’.

It’s a world away from the easy access, anything goes, graphic and sometimes grotesque internet porn that is only a click away for today’s teens. I’ve got a fairly good ideas what’s out there. But when these lads started telling me about the proliferation of cartoon porn that is available on the internet, it really had me concerned.

Jonah’s well into Pokemon. I didn’t realise you could watch versions of the characters shagging. That’s so far out of my myopic world view that I realise how sheltered I am, and I’m about as open minded a parent as I know. As far as the sexualisation of kids goes, this takes the biscuit.

Providing a blanket filter of all sexual content on our home computers will not stop my children’s eventual healthy interest in sex and whatever is available to view can be viewed by them as soon as they leave the safety of my four walls.

Whether or not  internet service providers should ultimately be responsible for protecting our teens from sexualised content in in debate in parliament this week. And it’s a question about which I feel uncomfortable having an opinion. A lot of porn available now is beyond anything most teens should have or are able to cope with in their young adulthood.

But the idea that there should be a soft option,that allows teens to discover without over exposure at a tender age – one that doesn’t feature their favourite cartoon characters.

The truth is, someone should do something, but who, what and how? Let’s hope an answer is found in the next five years for the sake of my own little innocents. Because I don’t want to have to be explaining categories and genres that even I can barely fathom – and that’s the least of my worries.