Caution: This story contains descriptions of sexual assault.

For many years, I thought concerns over children’s exposure to pornography didn’t apply to my daughter. She’s only 9 years old and has little access to the internet. She won’t see pornography for years, I thought.

But that thinking is naive and sorely mistaken, says social scientist Michael Flood, who’s at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. He has been studying how pornography impacts children for two decades.

“When we survey parents, we find that they often really underestimate the extent to which their own children are likely to have seen pornography,” Flood says. “Virtually every child will encounter pornography.”

That encounter often occurs at a younger age than many parents realize, Flood adds. In one study from 2023, researchers found that the average age children first view pornography was around age 12. And 15% of children saw it at age 10 or younger.

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And many parents, including myself, make a second mistake about pornography. They don’t actually understand what these videos portray.

Violent, degrading, misogynistic videos

“Parents often think children are looking at softcore pornography, like Playboy centerfolds,” Flood says. But pornography today typically shows something else: “men being cruel to women.”

“Sometimes that’s verbal violence, with hostile and derogatory language. Sometimes that’s violent behaviors, such as strangulation, slapping, or choking,” Flood says. Many times, videos show women enjoying this cruelty, no matter how violent or degrading it is. “That’s not an appropriate form of sexuality education for our 8-year-olds or our 12-year-olds,” he adds.

This sexist and violent content is “routine,” Flood says. In a major study from the U.K., researchers analyzed 50 of the most popular pornographic videos. Around 90% of them showed overt violence or aggression, overwhelmingly directed toward women, the researchers reported in the journal Violence Against Women. In another study, researchers analyzed more than 4,000 scenes from two major pornographic websites. About 40% of them included one or more acts of physical aggression. “Spanking, gagging, slapping, hair pulling, and choking were the five most common forms of physical aggression,” the researchers reported in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Scientists are beginning to understand how early exposure to this content can impact children’s health and development, says social scientist Brian Willoughby at Brigham Young University. For instance, it can interfere with children’s learning about consent and the importance of respect in relationships.

“The gender dynamics shown in these videos sets up really unhealthy expectations when it comes to intimacy and relationships,” Willoughby says.

Studies also find that early exposure increases the risk of developing problematic use of pornography later in life. For young children explicit content can be quite upsetting, shocking, and jarring. “Their understanding of sex, in general, is very limited,” Willoughby says. So they have a hard time understanding what they’re seeing or handling the emotions and physiological responses it triggers in their brains and bodies.

For some children, seeing explicit content can even be traumatic, says Megan Maas at Michigan State University. In one of Maas’s studies, a man described what happened when he Googled the word “blowjob” in the sixth grade. “He ended up seeing a genre of pornography, called facial abuse, which shows women gagging on penises,” Maas explains. “The women are often crying, with mascara running down their faces.”

The videos triggered a visceral reaction inside of him that made him want to throw up. “Then he just shut off sexually,” Maas says, “The whole experience freaked him out and really changed him.”

What parents can do

In the past two years, 21 states have passed laws requiring pornographic sites to verify a user’s age. But every scientist interviewed for this story says it’s imperative for parents to implement protections inside your home.

Here are three measures to take.

Block content with your router.

One of the most powerful tools for protecting children against pornography is already sitting inside your home: your router.

“As a parent, your router is the most important and underappreciated digital device in your home,” says Chris McKenna. He’s the founder and CEO of the company Protect Young Eyes, which, over the past decade, has helped schools and churches create safer digital spaces.

Your router acts as a doorway through which the internet enters your home via WiFi. You can, in a way, place a bouncer at the door to your WiFi. You can block any website you want from going through that door and reaching devices that use WiFi. To do that you can:

Directly login to your router through a browser and program it to block explicit websites. Some routers include parental controls; some don’t.
Buy a device that connects to your router and filters out unwanted content, such as Bark at Home or Aura.

OR

Buy a router that’s designed specifically to block pornographic content, such as Gryphon.

McKenna and his team have tested these options and found that the third one is the easiest and most effective. But it’s expensive. A new router can cost up to $300.

“This router allows you to turn off the internet completely at certain times of day or on certain devices with a phone app,” he explains. “So I could be in Switzerland, and control the whole network in my house.”

Add filters to cellular devices, then monitor, too

Controlling your router clearly won’t stop all explicit content from entering your home. First and foremost, it won’t stop content on devices that use cellular or mobile data, such as smartphones and tablets that receive cellular data.

This ubiquitous access to explicit content on smartphones is a major reason why many psychologists and pediatricians recommend waiting until eighth grade or even later before giving a child a smartphone.

Another big problem is that explicit content isn’t confined to pornographic websites. Repeated investigations show that it often appears on social media platforms and video games aimed directly at teenagers and younger children.

And, as BYU’s Brian Willoughby points out, it won’t prevent children from seeing pornography at a friend’s or relative’s homes, or even at school on other children’s phones. “The vast majority of young kids access pornography for the first time through their friends,” he says.

So Willoughby and other scientists recommend using all filters and parental controls that come with devices and apps. But, he emphasizes, parents need to know that these controls don’t work well. “They’re just very easy to get around,” he says. “I think too many parents turn on these filters and walk away. That’s just simply not good enough.”

Willoughby recommends that parents frequently monitor children’s activities on apps, games and social media. That doesn’t mean being with the child every time they use their phone, but it does mean having access to their accounts and frequently looking at their content. “See who they’re talking to and what they’re sharing,” he says. “That’s just as important, if not more, than controlling your router, I think.”

“Kids will put up a lot of fuss about this monitoring, and talk about how ‘you’re the only parent that does it,’ ” Willoughby says. “What I always tell my kids is, ‘I just love you more than those parents.’ ”

Teach children what to do when they encounter upsetting content

Finally, every child should be aware that they might stumble upon shocking, scary or upsetting photos and videos on the internet, McKenna says.

So, teach children what to do when they encounter this content. “At our organization, we teach children to, ‘put it down and tell someone,’ ” he says. Then give the child a list of people who they can tell, including the parent, a grandparent or older sibling.

Then he recommends practicing that action. “Have your kid sit at the kitchen counter with their device, and say, ‘listen, I want you to pretend you’ve seen something that makes you uncomfortable. I’m going to go to the bedroom. I want you to close the Chromebook, bring it upstairs, and say to me out loud, ‘Mom, I saw something that made me uncomfortable and I want to talk about it.’ ”

That reenactment gives you a chance to practice another critical skill. “Not freaking out,” McKenna says. If you freak out, the child could be reluctant to come to you again in the future, he says.

Instead, reassure the child that they’re not in trouble, they’re safe, and that you love them the same, he says. You could say: “There’s nothing you could click on or look at that would ever change the way I feel about you, honey. You are still my amazing child.“

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Edited by Jane Greenhalgh

Transcript:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Today, kids have access to an unprecedented amount of pornography online. Their exposure to explicit content has risen dramatically, and we are not just talking teenagers. Some younger kids are being exposed, as well, to content that’s often violent and degrading. Michaeleen Doucleff reports. And a caution, this story includes a description of sexual violence.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF: For a long time, I thought concerns over children’s exposure to pornography didn’t apply to me. My child is only 9 years old, and she has had little access to the internet. But Michael Flood says that thinking is naive and mistaken.

MICHAEL FLOOD: We find that parents often really underestimate the extent to which their own children are likely to have seen pornography.

DOUCLEFF: Flood is a social scientist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. He’s an internationally recognized researcher on pornography. He says virtually all children will see porn, either accidentally or intentionally. On average, they first encounter it around age 12, and about 15% see it at age 10 or younger. Flood says, many parents are also mistaken about the content of modern pornography.

FLOOD: Often, we think of kind of softcore pornography, kind of, you know, Playboy centerfolds, that kind of thing.

DOUCLEFF: But pornography today typically shows something else.

FLOOD: Often shows men being cruel or damaging towards women, and sometimes that’s verbal violence, using hostile and derogatory language. Sometimes, that’s violent behaviors, such as strangulation, such as slapping.

DOUCLEFF: One study from the University of Arkansas found that nearly 90% of popular videos show overt violence or aggression primarily toward women.

FLOOD: That’s not an appropriate form of sexuality education for our 8-year-olds or our 12-year-olds and so PM.

DOUCLEFF: Studies have found that exposure to pornography can interfere with children learning about consent. And for younger kids, the videos can be quite upsetting or traumatic, which is why some states are starting to require pornographic sites to check users’ ages. Brian Willoughby is a social scientist at Brigham Young University.

BRIAN WILLOUGHBY: It is very important that we provide some very clear gatekeepers that try to prevent some of that exposure.

DOUCLEFF: And there’s one very important gatekeeper already in your home. That’s your router.

CHRIS MCKENNA: Your router, as a parent, is the most important and underappreciated digital device in your home.

DOUCLEFF: That’s Chris McKenna. He’s the founder of Protect Young Eyes, a company that helps families, schools, and churches create safer digital spaces. He says it starts by gaining control of your router.

MCKENNA: That is the door through which internet traffic comes.

DOUCLEFF: And you can block any website you want from going through that door and reaching devices that use Wi-Fi. It’s like putting a bouncer at the door to your internet. In fact, McKenna says you can buy a special router designed specifically to block pornographic content.

MCKENNA: It’s the No. 1 tool that prevents early childhood exposure to pornography.

DOUCLEFF: Now, this won’t stop content on devices that use cellular data, like smartphones. And that’s how many kids first encounter pornography, whether it’s at a friend’s house or even while at school. There are filters and controls for phones, but they’re easy to get around, which McKenna says is a big reason not to give a child a smartphone too early.

MCKENNA: Delay is the way. That’s our mindset because we’ve rushed into technologies that our children were not ready for.

DOUCLEFF: The most important recommendation, McKenna says, is teach your kids what to do when they stumble upon any content that makes them feel afraid, shocked or simply uncomfortable.

MCKENNA: Put it down and tell someone.

DOUCLEFF: And be sure they know that no matter what they’ve seen, you won’t be angry but glad they came to you for guidance. For NPR News, I’m Michaeleen Doucleff.

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How to Keep Violent Porn Out of Your Home and Away From Your Kids