(LifeSiteNews) — “This report is among the most sobering my office has ever published,” Dame Rachel De Souza, the U.K.’s Children’s Commissioner, wrote in the opening paragraph of a recent government study. “It paints a stark picture of what childhood looks like in 2025 with an online world that is, in many ways, completely unfit for children.”
The report is titled “‘Sex is kind of broken now’: children and pornography,” and it is yet another devastating indictment of a society profoundly shaped by the porn industry and permitted by adults who value sexual libertarianism over the health, innocence, and safety of children.
“Shockingly, as this report highlights, pornography is no longer something that children might seek out in adolescence,” Dame de Souza writes. “Today it has become something many children stumble upon accidentally while they are still in primary school. It is something that is shown to them without even looking for it on the same social media sites that were designed to help them connect with other people and be entertained.”
“And it’s not just any pornography. It is violent, extreme, and degrading often portraying acts that are illegal – or soon will be.” De Souza is clearly upset, and viscerally so – she states that this report “should be the last of its kind” and a “line in the sand.” Now, she writes, is the time for society to refuse to tolerate the weapons-grade poison being pumped into our cultural groundwater by the porn industry. “This report should be read as a snapshot of what rock bottom looks like.”
The report found that 70 percent of respondents had seen pornography online, with 73 percent of boys and 65 percent of girls reporting having seen digital porn. The average age of first exposure is 13. Over a quarter of respondents, 27 percent, had already viewed porn by the age of 11, with many saying they had seen porn by the age of “six or younger.” Most children who find pornography aren’t looking for it; a staggering 59 percent say they found saw it by accident. Eight out of the ten main sources children saw pornography on was not porn sites, but social media or networking sites.
As I have been writing for years, this near-constant exposure to pornography is creating a rape culture in real time. Here are the report’s findings:
- The majority of respondents who had seen pornography reported seeing depictions of acts that are illegal under existing pornography laws, or will soon be illegal under the Crime and Policing Bill when it becomes law.
- 58% of respondents had seen porn depicting strangulation, before they turned 18.
- 44% reported seeing a depiction of rape (specifically, receiving sex whilst asleep).
- 44% of respondents agreed with the statement “Girls may say no at first but then can be persuaded to have sex”. Children who had seen pornography were more likely to agree with this statement than those who had not.
- Girls were more likely to agree with this statement than boys were.
- Children were more likely to report seeing pornography depicting women receiving sexually violent acts than they were seeing men receiving sexually violent acts
READ: Canada’s Supreme Court goes soft on child pornography
In short, pornography is grooming girls to become victims, and boys to become predators. It is obliterating – I use that word deliberately – not only our desire, but our cognitive ability to understand sex, sexuality, and intimacy in a healthy way.
Even when kids are not looking for porn, porn is looking for them. “Other social media companies are also showing up in the survey responses with concerning frequency,” the report noted. “Social media sites that are popular among children had high rates of pornography exposure: Snapchat (29%), Instagram (23%), TikTok (22%) and YouTube (15%). The concern that social media sites are gateways to pornography was confirmed by a participant in the focus group carried out for this report.”
And what are they seeing? 69 percent of children see hair-pulling; 67 percent see choking; 64 percent see vile and degrading name-calling; 65 percent see anal sex; 57 percent see incest; a majority see some form of sexual coercion.
The result? “Children also think pornography changes their expectations around sex,” the report stated. “82% of respondents agreed that viewing online pornography affects young people’s expectations around sex. A larger proportion of girls (85%) than boys (78%) agreed with the statement that ‘viewing online pornography affects young people’s expectations around sex.’”
Girls who spoke to researchers affirmed that pornography bleeds into their lives. “I definitely think that pornography changes people’s outlook on sex, and I think that it can lead to sex being more violent,” said one 16-year-old. “I think if anything, my biggest worry is that it also affects people’s behaviour in general.” A 17-year-old girl concurred: “[Porn] makes boys act vile towards girls.” A boy the same age agreed: “I have seen it at school that boys expect girls to look a certain way, or they are worthless, it’s horrible.”
De Souza is right: this report should be rock bottom. We have decided to accept this society by prioritizing the increasingly twisted sexual desires of adults. If we are going to protect children, that will have to change.
