”I grew up in a household where The Sun newspaper was a daily addition to our coffee table.
As a young girl, I remember feeling uncomfortable being confronted with a pair of naked breasts staring up at me from the family ‘news’ paper. It just felt wrong seeing a girl, sometimes as young as 16, dressed in a school uniform, baring her breasts for the male reader’s titillation, and it made me question society’s expectations of me as a female.
Unlike when I first encountered ‘page three’, we now live in an internet-led society where children and young people’s exposure and access to pornography occurs both online and offline. Curiosity after that glimpse of ‘page three’ is easy to understand but so many harmful images lay only a few clicks away.
As long ago as 2005, the UK Children Go Online (UKCGO) research project found that 57 per cent of nine to 19-year-olds had come into contact with online pornography, whether intentionally or accidentally. In 2014 this figure is likely to be much higher due to increasing ownership of internet enabled devices by young people.
A research report commissioned by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England in 2013 found that a significant number of children access pornography and that it influences their attitudes towards relationships and sex. The report, entitled ‘Basically…porn is everywhere’, also highlighted access to pornography as being linked to risky behaviour such as having sex at a younger age; and a correlation between holding violent attitudes and accessing more violent media.
As I remember those uncomfortable feelings I experienced as a young girl seeing ‘Lucy, 17, from Bolton’ scantily-dressed on page three of The Sun, and the comments and sniggers about my body from the boys at school as I walked down the school corridor, I can’t imagine the immense pressure young girls today must feel to look and perform a certain way. It’s a sad and concerning realisation that we live with such a powerful and difficult to control influence as the internet.
As parents we have a duty to do what we can to protect our children, at least until they reach an age where they are better able to make an educated and informed choice. Internet filters and controlling what our children have access to, conversations about healthy relationships and positive role models are all so important in educating our children about how to have respect for themselves and each other.
