What percentage of teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17 do you think have viewed pornography on the internet? Twenty percent? Forty percent? Is that too high?
According to Salvo Magazine and a study by Enough.org, the answer is a shocking 80 percent. And? They did not view the porn one time. They confessed to viewing it multiple times.
Here’s another. Guess what the average age of first exposure to online pornography is. It’s ten.
A friend of mine sent me the video below and said, “From one parent of boys to another, watch this.” It wasn’t an overprotective “mom” friend of mine. It was a dad. A hip, forward thinking, embrace technology kind of guy who watched this video about the effects of porn on young men’s brains and was frightened. After watching it I was too. Especially knowing how exposed our kids are daily to porn. You need look no further than searching out the hashtag #Teens on Twitter. Here’s what you will find:
Those are the first four tweets. They go on for days. One. After. Another.
If you have boys you MUST watch the video. In it’s entirety.
Here are some of my takeaways:
- Symptoms of “arousal addiction” mimic: ADHD, Social Anxiety, Depression, Performance Anxiety and OCD (Maybe that inability to focus is more than just teenage hormones.)
- Of all the activities on the internet, porn has the most potential to become addictive.
Watching porn causes the brain to produce Dopamine which kicks in DeltaFosB which starts to alter the brain and promotes a cycle of binging and craving. This causes brain changes including, numbed pleasure response, hyper-reactivity to porn and willpower erosion.- Porn is as addictive as drugs and alcohol. Both addictions produce the same chemical in the brain.
- Internet porn numbs your teens brain so that “normal” sex will not satisfy them.
- Internet porn addiction leads to erectile dysfunction.
If you feel uncomfortable discussing this with your boys, you know because discussing sex and porn with your sons is something most people are TOTALLY excited to do but maybe something you would like to work around, I have created a little PDF for your son. I will be giving it to my boys. Obviously you can just take what you want and create your own letter, give them my PDF or you can sit down and discuss this with them. Either way, please make sure you address it. The stakes are high. And please, don’t think for a second your son hasn’t seen porn. The numbers say different.
About Stefanie
Again.
Thank you.
You give me the tools I need to be the mom my boy needs me to be.
I am so happy to hear that. It validates why I am here.
thanks for the timely info.Can you make this emailable? tahnsk !
Thanks for reading Katy. You can email both the post and the pdf by copying the link into an email. If I am missing what you are asking, please follow up in the comments.
I don’t even know what to say…this is terrifying.
Will be sharing with all my mom friends. Thank you SO much for the info.
Thank you. The information is useful although I think sensationalized. Yep, boys like to look at porn. Most will move past it, and be just fine. Not all, of-course. We lived without media (television, computers, gaming) for the first 13 years of my son’s life and I think that kept him innocent longer. But he became interested in browsing naked yoga ladies at one point. His father and I ignored it. And I gave up the “it is my job to snoop” parenting prerogative. I am sure porn is still a part of his life at some level…I just include it as part of what I do overall in parenting my teen: watch for signs of trouble, find mutually acceptable ways to spend time with my teen, stay in contact with teachers, make my house open with plenty of snacks for teenagers to hang out at, and encourage involvement in community activities.
So far so good-…but I’m not smug YET.
Mom to almost 17 year old.