by Pamela Paul
At his new church, Charlie has spoken publicly twice about his struggles with pornography. “I never thought I would have done something like that,” he says. “To get up in front of all these people whose opinion I care about, who I want to respect me.” He pauses. “People’s reactions are strange.” Some try to high-five him after he finishes his talk, congratulating him and telling him how great what he’s done is. It doesn’t sit well with Charlie. “Here I am this recovering pervert and they’re telling me ‘Great job,’” he says, stunned. “I guess it’s better than being ostracized.”
Recently, as part of his 12-step program, Charlie began the process of making amends to those he wronged while he was using pornography. The most difficult encounter was with one of his family members. Back in the late 1990s, while Charlie was deep into child pornography, his fourteen-year-old niece was having trouble at home and needed help. Charlie’s family took her in and she stayed with them for a year. “I came very close to molesting her,” Charlie admits. “All that child porn I was looking at, the kind of images I was seeing—it was in my head. I spent a lot of time lusting after her.” Charlie takes a long breath. “I felt like such a hypocrite because here she was, coming to us in a moment of need, and I came very close to abusing that trust.” The niece, now twenty-one, is still angry at him.
What If Your Child Looked at Pornography?
Despite the prevalence of pornography among minors, parents are still surprised to discover their kids looking at pornography during their preteen and early teen years. In the nationwide study of children ages ten to seventeen, conducted in 1999–2000 by David Finkelhor, only half (48 percent) of kids told their parents they had viewed pornography online; in 44 percent of the incidents, kids didn’t report unwanted exposure to anyone. A recent large-scale study by the London School of Economics found that while 57 percent of British kids between the ages of nine and nineteen had come into contact with pornography, only 16 percent of parents were aware their children had seen it. One-third of the kids said they had received unwanted sexual or nasty comments from people online, but only one in twenty parents were aware of this. Perhaps more alarming, 46 percent of kids said they had given out personal information online; again, only 5 percent of parents knew they did so.57 In the United States, a study by the Justice Department found that one in five children between the ages of ten and seventeen had received unwanted sexual solicitations online.58
Sue Downes, a consultant in Westchester County in New York who specializes in assisting families with their computers, says problems caused by downloaded pornography are rampant and on the rise. Parents frequently ask her to clean up the family computer but often don’t want to know what’s on there, leaving Downes to do the detective work. “I thought I was unshockable but it continues to shock me,” Downes says. Mothers’ most frequent concern is how their sons’ exposure to hardcore pornography will affect their views of women. “One woman said to me, ‘My son knows more about my body than I do. Is he looking at me a certain way now? Is he looking at my relationship with his father a different way?’ They’re worried about how it distorts their children’s view of sexuality and how their children will grow up.” Still, Downes says, most parents have no idea what their kids are up to or why their computers become clogged with spam. “They tend to have a lot of faith in their kids. Many are naive. They also cringe at the idea of censorship. I have to explain to them that this is a far cry from Playboy magazine.”
Stephan, a forty-eight-year-old radio broadcasting executive, is one such parent. He recently learned his eleven-year-old daughter was looking at online pornography when his Internet browser history displayed a number of Web sites that were clearly pornographic, with names like “bigtits.com.” The girl’s mother confronted her and she denied having looked at the sites. Stephan was “blown away” by the incident. “I can’t believe how easy it is for kids to get access to that,” he says. “I was also pissed at myself for not having done anything. I’m ashamed to say I don’t have blocking software on the computer. I’ve been meaning to do it.” Young people might appreciate the guidance and respect. According to the Pornified/Harris poll, eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds are most supportive of measures to regulate pornography with warning labels and restricting use so that harm is minimized. One in five advocate such measures as the best governmental response to pornography In contrast, only 10 percent of their parents’ generation agrees.59
Even people who look at pornography themselves are troubled by the possibility of their own children’s exposure. Harrison, the twenty-five-year-old graphic designer from Chicago, started on pornography at an early age but has mixed feelings about when children should first view it. “I think there’s enough sexuality in our media as it is and kids don’t need to be exposed to any more porn,” he says. “They’ve already gotten basic titillation from the media.” He cites MTV and Britney Spears, then continues, “There’s a very good reason why we protect people under eighteen from buying pornography. I know thirteen-year-olds will be interested in sex. That’s when I remember my own sexual desire beginning—my hormones were raging. But that doesn’t mean I think it’s okay for thirteen-year-olds to be looking at porn.”
The stakes have also changed since he was young; kids now see more pornography online than off. “The Internet is out of control,” Harrison says. “There needs to be some kind of regulation. I mean, I don’t agree that anyone at any age can look at anything with no restriction. It’s disturbing.” Like tobacco and alcohol—and retail pornography—Harrison believes online pornography should be restricted to adults. “The Internet is the entire reason we’ve seen the surge in popularity of porn,” he says. “Now that more people are partaking, it’s edging toward the mainstream. They want to make it more acceptable.” Why, he asks, would porn stars show up on VH-1 if porn weren’t increasingly popular with and accepted by kids? “The media targets kids whether they admit it or not,” he says.
Harrison thinks Internet pornography has a particularly pernicious effect on children. “I remember as a kid thinking what’s the big deal about porn?” he says. “Well, okay, if you occasionally sneak a magazine from someone else’s house, that’s one thing. But with unlimited access online, kids don’t realize how detrimental pornography can be, especially for someone who isn’t fully developed, physically or emotionally. Porn distorts people’s understanding of sex and distorts their sexuality as they’re developing.” He grows silent with thought. “Earlier, I said I thought porno could be beneficial in that it can create an understanding of sexuality. But in a kid’s formative years, when they’re establishing their understanding of sex and of their sexual identity, it can be damaging. Just like drugs can be damaging during physical development.” Harrison, who would like to get married and have children of his own one day, worries about pornography’s impact. “I don’t want to classify porn and masturbation in the same category as drugs,” he hedges. “But with both, you may as well be honest with your kids.” He pauses before he adds, “Though by the time I’m married and have kids, I won’t be looking at porn.” Nor will he leave pornographic magazines under his bed as his own father did. “I’m not that dumb to think they won’t find it.” If his son asks whether he looks at porn, “I hope I will be able to say to him honestly, ‘No, I don’t look at it anymore.’”
Today’s users have a hard time reconciling their own use of pornography with what they would like for their own children. “Teens today have so much porn at their fingertips,” says Trey, the thirty-one-year-old recently married film editor. “It must be amazing. I wish I had had that much access when I was a kid.” Trey attributes his own sexual awakening and comfort level to pornography. Before pornography, he didn’t like women to perform oral sex because he felt it was intrinsically demeaning. “Maybe I got that from my mother, who was big into the women’s lib movement when I was a kid,” he suggests. “Those ideas were definitely reinforced in college. Not until I started looking at a lot of porn was I able
to realize what really turned me on.”
Trey would like to have at least two children. Yet he had not given any thought to the possibility that his kids might be exposed to pornography. After a moment’s deliberation he says emphatically, “I would feel very uncomfortable about my kids looking at pornography before high school. I would definitely want to talk to them about sex before they started looking.” He goes on to explain, “I would want to give them a heads up so they understand that that’s not what sex is like. In fact, sex isn’t like pornography at all. Pornography is cold. There’s no feeling or emotion. There aren’t people taking care of each other and looking after each other’s interests.” Trey thinks kids today might have a hard time developing sexually. “Kids have sex so young, especially oral sex,” he says. “I guess girls are getting taken advantage of much more often. I wonder what it means for relationships.” Trey recalls his own high school relationships as having “real emotion and tenderness.” He questions whether today’s young romances carry the same impact. “It’s certainly disturbing that kids are growing up so quickly,” he says. “There was something exciting about not knowing everything about sex.”
When they think about it, some men lament their own early exposure to pornography. Kyle, a thirty-seven-year-old from Michigan who hopes to have at least three kids of his own, started looking at pornography at age eleven. “In hindsight, I don’t think it was appropriate,” he says. “I didn’t have a clue what was going on and I had no business seeing that at that age.” Kyle gets nervous about Internet pornography when he thinks about having his own family. “It’s getting to kids younger and younger, and it’s starting to freak me out. The earlier you are exposed, the more likely you are to engage in the activity depicted. Kids should be left to be kids.”
Porn Prevention
But how can parents protect children in a pornified world? Internet entrepreneur Daniel Parisi made a tidy sum through his Internet business, pulling in $1 million a year off a single Web site, but after seven years of leasing the site to a European company that handled operations, he wanted out. Parisi decided that what he had originally begun as a “free speech and political site”—which lured very few customers—needed to be sold. The site, Whitehouse.org, was actually a profitable pornographic enterprise, luring many people, often students under eighteen in their mistaken search for the official White House Web site. Thus far, it had attracted more than 85 million visitors. So why the change of mind? Parisi’s young son was headed off to kindergarten and his father didn’t want him teased or embarrassed by his father’s moneymaking ventures. The site is still up and running for children other than Parisi’s son to happen upon; of course, one never knows where the Parisi boy will wander online. Who has, and is willing to take, responsibility?
Parents’ efforts to quell their children’s exposure to pornography may be futile. Porn pops up in the most unlikely places. In Sewell, New Jersey, a couple rented Home Alone 3 at their local Blockbuster. When they played the tape at home for their four-year-old daughter, scenes from a hardcore pornography video were displayed instead—for ten straight minutes just after the film’s opening credits.60 The Internet is especially difficult to patrol. In the summer of 2004, parents in Grand Ledge, Michigan, were shocked to log on to the Web site for the town’s youth football league, a site used primarily by fourth- to eighth-grade athletes and cheerleaders, only to discover a porn Web site in its place. Having forgotten to renew its URL, Network Solutions had sold the site to a Moscow-based man who posted free pornography.61 Most pornographers, alas, are worse than indifferent when it comes to children or young teenagers consuming their products; after all, they know that product affiliation and brand loyalty begin young. When Hugh Hefner was asked by the Washington Post about kids wearing Playboy-logo clothing and accessories, he replied, “I don’t care if a baby holds up a Playboy bunny rattle.”62
Major impediments to controlling children’s access stymie parents’ efforts. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Communications Decency Act, the first federal attempt to control indecent material online. Because the Internet is ubiquitous, the Court ruled that, unlike television or radio, it cannot be regulated without violating the First Amendment. Congress went back to reworking the legislation. Then in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1998 Children Online Protection Act (COPA) unnecessarily put the burden of regulating children’s access to pornography on the producer or distributor, rather than on the user and the user’s parents. The ACLU, which fought the bill, argued that requiring adults to punch in the digits of a credit card was a violation of the Bill of Rights. According to the 5–4 majority, COPA’s requirement that a credit card be used as a form of adult identification when accessing pay pornography sites online constituted an undue burden on adults who choose to access such material. However, the Supreme Court did not go so far as to rule COPA unconstitutional. At this point, the case has been sent back to a lower court in Philadelphia. Given the history of challenges, many consider the law to be dead. On the Internet, pornography fans gloated on the day of the ruling. In one pro-pornography chat room, users wrote, “Yay! Another victory for porn!” “LOL,* who even tried to get this law passed?” “This basically helps keep ‘free’ porn on the Internet!”
With court cases nearly impossible to win, efforts have shifted to a proposal to create a kids’ area of the Internet that would be pornography-free or to develop a dot-XXX zone where pornography can be contained, with access by minors limited via filters. Computers would come equipped with filtering hardware so that parents could more readily install available programs. Unlike the television V-chip, which has proven difficult to use and has been poorly promoted, such a system could be user-friendly and actively encouraged. Another group lobbies the cable industry to allow a la carte subscriptions, where a family can pay for the Disney Channel but opt out of Cinemax, Playboy, or other cable stations currently bundled together for subscribers, regardless of their preferences.
In the absence of such laws and programs, the current focus is on improving existing Internet filters. Over the past ten years, filters have become more sophisticated as they attempt not only to limit access to Web sites but to screen content in e-mail, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer networks. More advanced filters are set according to categories, so that in addition to pornography, hate speech and gun and explosives Web sites, for example, are blocked. Some programs allow users to filter out degrees of sexual content, from hardcore pornography to nudity to lingerie. The market for such programs is expected to grow from $360 million today to $890 million by 2008.63
Unfortunately, most adults are more adept at punching in credit card numbers than they are at setting up filters. Tech-savvy teens are almost always able to circumvent efforts to block access. Free software downloaded from the Web allows anyone to disable a computer’s filtering program. Even if one child’s parents set up an effective block or remove Internet access from the home, the next child’s parents may not, and children will play wherever they can. “For parents just to install software on their home computers and think the problem will be taken care of itself is denial,” said Al Cooper, the late director of the San Jose Marital and Sexuality Center and an expert on Internet pornography. “Not only can all children see pornography online, they will see it. All kids today will see sexually explicit stuff and they will see it constantly.”
Cooper believed the solution is to inoculate kids against the effects of pornography by educating them about sexuality. “When a parent finds a pornographic picture on their six-year-old’s computer they need to have a talk with the kid,” he explains. “Unfortunately, most parents have the opposite reaction. They get so upset they want to shut the whole thing down. When they do talk to their kids, they often give too little or too much information, without keeping in mind what’s age appropriate.”
“It’s Really Scary to Be a Parent These Days”
Married now for eighteen years, Charlie and his wife have three childre
n—two boys, fifteen and thirteen years old, and a nine-year-old girl. “They say kids pretty much always know what a parent is up to, but at the time I didn’t think they knew anything about my pornography,” Charlie says. He now knows his kids knew something was wrong—all those hours at the computer, all those hours spent away from the family—but they didn’t realize it was sexual. Not at first.
Only in recent months has Charlie talked to his kids—just his two sons, for now—about pornography. He wanted them to understand where he’s coming from and to make them aware of the problems pornography poses. His older son says he has never looked at pornography, though Charlie thinks he watches too much WWF wrestling, which he sees as coming close to pornography on occasion. When his younger son asked for an open Internet connection so he could chat with friends on AOL, Charlie was hesitant. “I told him I was concerned because a person doesn’t need to look for pornography, it just pops up.” His son got upset and asked, “Why do I have to suffer because of your addiction?”
Then, one evening in the spring of 2004, Charlie was coming home from work when his younger son called him on his cell phone. His son was clearly upset. He admitted he had sought out pornography online and had been looking at it. He told his father he had mostly looked at naked women, but he was worried nonetheless. It had been about two weeks since Charlie consented to his son’s having unlimited Internet access. To the boy’s shock, Charlie didn’t get angry. Charlie knew it would be wrong to lash out, and in any case, he was upset more than anything. Charlie explained to his son that it’s not that he doesn’t trust him, but that he knows how easily a guy can get sucked in. “You may think pornography is harmless now,” he cautioned. “But you never know where it can take you.” Charlie told his son he was concerned that he might be passing something along.