Any parent of a child 11 or older needs to understand an uncomfortable truth: If your child isn’t already watching porn, it’s only a matter of time until he or she starts.
After all, children are greatly influenced by their peers. If your friends are vaping, they will want to try it too. And if they’re openly talking about the porn they watched last night, your child will want to know what all the fuss is about.
I am a psychosexual therapist who spends one day a week providing one-on-one counseling to students at a private all-boys school, as well as in private practice.
The confidential nature of these sessions allows guys to talk to me about their porn habits and the impact viewing has on their mental health and well-being.
This can be profound. It’s not just that pornography distorts adolescents’ sexual understanding and expectations. It can also damage your sense of identity, both physically and psychologically, as it creates insecurities about body image.
Of course, it’s completely normal for teens to experiment with their sexuality. But porn is addictive because of the way it triggers the release of the feel-good hormone dopamine, and casual viewing can quickly become a harmful compulsion.
As with any addiction, help is available through the NHS or private counselling. Many schools also recognize that this is a growing problem and hire experts like me to work with their students.
But in order to get your child the right professional help, you must first spot the signs that he or she might have a problem with pornography. Here are a few to keep in mind…
It’s not just that pornography distorts adolescents’ sexual understanding and expectations. It can also damage your sense of identity, both physically and psychologically, as it creates insecurities about body image.
mood swings
Watching pornography becomes an emotional crutch for some children, because it can help them dissociate from things that bother them by distracting them from them.
Say they’ve had a tough day at school or someone they like rejects them; watching porn can help them tune out that.
It can also improve your mood. Pornography stimulates the pleasure centers in the brain, providing a powerful dose of dopamine.
But the more someone relies on porn to feel better, the more those dopamine levels will rise and fall, and their moods will follow the exact same pattern.
Mood swings are, of course, a normal part of adolescence. But they tend to be much more extreme if they are related to addiction.
Additional privacy
Let’s be frank; If your child is watching pornography, he or she is almost certainly masturbating to it. Naturally, you’ll want privacy to do so.
You might notice that he spends a lot of time in the bathroom at odd times, or you might ask to have a lock put on his bedroom door. You might even resort to pushing furniture against it. Mature children, of course, have a right to privacy.
But there’s a difference between that and someone who isolates themselves from their family for long periods because they’ve become obsessed with pornography, especially if they resort to extreme measures to avoid being molested.
Samantha Marcham is a psychotherapeutic counselor and co-author of Porn Bomb: What Every Young Man Needs to Know About Pornography (pornbomb.co.uk)
He gives up his hobbies and goes out with friends.
Watching porn tends to be a solitary pastime. If you notice that, in addition to withdrawing from the family, your child is spending much less time with his friends, then he could be trapped in a cycle of dangerous behavior.
Pornography can be a vicious and isolating cycle. The more isolated a child becomes, the lonelier he feels and the more appealing it becomes to watch pornography as a way to numb himself to his unhappiness.
Where before you might have cheered yourself up by spending time with friends or participating in team sports, porn becomes your solution to everything, and something that will only send you into a downward spiral.
Sudden interest in exercise
Young boys will naturally compare their own developing physiques to the athletic bodies of the adult men they see on camera, which is bad news for their body image.
All the guys who have shared concerns with me about the amount of porn they watch have also confessed to me how worried they are about their body not being masculine enough and about the size of their penis.
If your son suddenly starts exploring ways to gain muscle mass through diet and exercise, he may be trying to be more like the muscular men he sees having sex online.
Loss of trust
Children who watch a lot of pornography become desensitized to what they see. They may then find it harder to become aroused and start watching more extreme pornography, which will become increasingly unpleasant and violent and the people involved will be horribly degraded and abused.
Getting sexually aroused by this can conflict with their morals and values: they probably know that what they are seeing is wrong, and yet it turns them on.
This creates strong feelings of shame, which will manifest in a very calm and miserable appearance.
If you’ve noticed that your previously outgoing guy has lost his confidence, then the cause could be that he’s worried about what kind of person he’s become thanks to his enjoyment of porn.
Using derogatory and sexualized language
The porn industry generally doesn’t make movies that show women being treated with respect. So if your previously polite and pleasant son starts being rude to his friends and family, or hears you using derogatory language against women, this could be a red flag.
If you notice a sudden increase in swearing, this could also have been normalized through what you see online.
Tiredness and general discomfort.
In addition to being in a bad mood, children who are addicted to watching pornography often become fatigued from lack of sleep because they stay up into the wee hours of the morning on their phones.
They will also lack motivation, because they will wake up feeling confused and depressed from staying up late chasing the dopamine fix that porn provides them.
Your teachers might comment on a sudden lack of concentration in class; You could also sense that they always seemed a little down, but without having any clearly identifiable illness. Many of the kids who talk to me describe a general malaise, the cause of which is usually their increasing dependence on pornography.
Samantha Marcham is a psychotherapeutic counselor and co-author of Porn Bomb: What Every Young Man Needs to Know About Pornography (pornbomb.co.uk)
As told to Rachel Halliwell