An early fixation with pornography can damage teenagers’ lives for years to come, experts say
Teenagers were ogling breasts long before the internet was created. But there are now so many images to be gawped at – many of them much more accessible than ever before – that graphic pornography is becoming a normal part of life for children as young as 11.
A study for the Institute of Public Policy Research think-tank found that watching pornography was “common” by the time teenagers reach their mid-teens and that the internet was ranked higher than parents as a source of information about sex and relationships. As school pupils across the country are introduced to sex through explicit videos online, few realise how their time spent watching pornography will affect their brains, relationships and studies later in life.
Obsessed with sex but no real experience
Psychotherapist Paula Hall, who specialises in sex addiction, says she has worked with a “significant” number of young people who are virgins in their twenties because all their sexual experiences happen online. “They’ve never had a physical relationship. They don’t know how to do real sex so they avoid it,” she explains.
Hall says that the focus on readily-accessible online pornography begins as a teenager but can damage relationships much later in life, creating erection problems and making it more difficult for young people to have sexual relationships.
Adolescent brains are particularly malleable and so an early fixation with pornography means that young people develop “sexual templates” that are fixed to 2D pornographic images.
“When you’re with a three dimensional mere mortal, the body doesn’t know how to respond because you’re fixed on very high, constant stimulation – porn video after porn video. They call porn a ‘super normal stimuli’ as it it raises the orgasmic threshold,” adds Hall.
Watching porn in secret: how the fixation can cause depression
But while the pattern develops as a teenager, most young people only realise they have a problem and begin to seek help once they’re at university, by which stage their obsession with porn has started to affect their daily life.
“I was talking to a young lad who said he avoids any relationship with a girl because he’s frightened of how he could relate to them,” Hall says. “He’s worried he couldn’t sexually function and he said he’s become socially-phobic but he’s finding it really difficult to stop – the longest he’s ever managed to not look at pornography was six days.”
These problems are not uncommon, and Hall works with both universities and students to help tackle the issue, but she says young people are embarrassed to talk about their problems and so become increasingly isolated.
In one case, she worked with a young man who repeated his first year at university twice before dropping out. “As far as his family were concerned he was suffering from depression and anxiety, which indeed he was, but that was because of his escalating porn use that he just didn’t have the courage to tell anybody about,” she explains.
Watching too much porn forces young people into secrecy, which can lead to depression, anxiety and difficulty relating to others. It also creates a cycle, where students watch more and more porn to cope with their unhappiness. “Porn starts as a curiosity but becomes a coping strategy,” says Hall.
Impossible to escape
Pornography is now so pervasive and easy to access online that teenagers often stumble across the most graphic images by mistake, and avoiding pornography altogether is increasingly difficult.
le suʻesuʻega lata mai of teenagers found that eight out of 10 18-year-olds think that pornography is too easy to access, including by accident, and six in 10 say its pervasiveness made growing up more difficult.
Emma Citron, a consultant clinical psychologist, says that even those who don’t intend to seek out pornography can end up watching the images alone in secret.
“I’ve seen children in my clinic as young as nine who have accidentally fallen across graphic pornographic videos and have not told their parents. It’s pushed their mood down and caused them to become quite depressed,” she adds.
Children and young teenagers are often emotionally confused by the sexual videos they find online, and can struggle to cope with the emotions that come with sexual feeling. “They treat it like candy, seeking a quick thrill, but it can be detrimental to their relationships,” says Citron.
And although many young people want to develop a sexual relationship slowly and safely, the prevalence of porn means that many feel pressured to have sex early – and this can change the nature of sex.
Citron says that graphic pornographic images often present derogatory views of women, and can cause sexual relationships where women are subservient.
“Online porn includes videos that are quite shocking and you may not even realise at the time but will infiltrate your psyche. You may get flashbacks to it, and it may over-sexualise you through very graphic and inappropriate sexual images that you may not have even intended to fall across,” she says.
Young minds, it seems, are being exposed to graphic and violent sexual images more and more – and this, for many, forms the basis of their sex education. Without limits on how much they watch, this deluge of porn could shape teenagers’ attitudes to sex for the rest of their lives.
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