Overview
You might be extremely worried during the growing years of your kid. The worry basically is due to the fact that your kid has internet exposure at home and school. Hence, you might feel that your kid might be attracted towards pornography on the internet. But you remain clueless about the problem and feel shy to discuss it with others and come to a fruitful conclusion. This embarrassment is unnecessary as you are not a rare parent with this trauma. But practically speaking, it is the common story of almost every parent. Let us discuss about internet porn, its effects on children and ways to control it:
Should parents be concerned?
The statistics of ‘The Stats on Internet Pornography’ bring forth the real picture of pornography and teens. The threatening report of this infographic remarks that many of the kids get their exposure to pornograpy at a tender age of eleven years. Thus, they involve into online sexual venture at a very early age. Most of this is due to the negligence of proper parental guidance towards the kids when they access the net. Consequently, the freedom of kids increases manifold but in a negative way, leading to growing numbers of kids exposed to internet pornography every day.
Surprisingly, further reports on internet pornography by teens suggest that due to the influence of peer group, together with slackened parental supervision, children as small as the age of seven search the internet by typing ‘porn’ in the search engine, while those who attain the age of eight to nine type ‘sex’ directly, even though they do not have adequate idea on these words. But other devices are also available to the kids today, like cell phone, which make internet accessibility just some clicks away. This explains that parental supervision is also not enough in the age of technology to segregate kids and teens from the temptations of internet pornography. Hence, this is something of real concern for parents.
What parents can do?
Thus, when the ease of internet accessibility, invention of futuristic, geeky gadgets and modernization of technology is constantly probing a threat to the parents regarding the exposure of their kids to internet pornography, there is definitely something that can be done to keep the situation under control.
1. Sex education is mandatory
Even though there is nothing that can be done to prevent kids from viewing porn sites on the internet or exploring any magazine or books dealing with explicit materials, but you can be rest assured that your kid will never end up doing something detrimental for him or her if you give the child proper sex education. Although this very word, ‘sex education’, might arouse goose bumps in many parents and they might think that it is just another way to spoil their kids much before their age, but in reality it is just the opposite. Sex education that is imparted to a kid as per his or her age will prevent the child from fantasizing about sex and developing unnecessary eagerness to explore the body of people of other sexes.
2. Analyze your own self
It is also very vital to analyze if you are citing a perfect example of role model to your kids. This is more essential for the kid in his or her growing years and in the teenage. So, you should be extremely careful about how you behave in your family. It does not only imply that public displays of your love with your spouse are the sole thing that might arouse your teenage or tender kid’s interest towards pornography. Occasions of aggression and depression in the family, due to regular tensions and quarrels among the parents, disturbed parental relationships can also make the kids frustrated and alienated. Consequently, they might cling to pornography as a means to escape from this trauma and tension.
3. Be easy with your kid
Addiction to pornography has lots of factors that encourage it. There might be the influence of peer group. There might be extreme curiosity on the subject. There might be situations of frustration and depression. There might even be occasions of sexual abuse. All these incidents can jointly or separately force a kid towards pornography. Hence, it is advised that parents must behave as friends with their children rather than being extremely conservative and strict. If you mix freely with your kid, then he or she will open up and you can know what is going on in the kid’s life.
