How pornography messes with children’s minds – 04/12/2023 – Equilibrium

German police find that most sexual abuse images on the internet are propagated by minors. An “iceberg phenomenon”, as it implies long previous exposure to pornography. Authorities plan action.

According to a statistic released at the end of March by the German police, 41.1% of those who distribute pornographic content involving children and adolescents are themselves minors. In many cases, they are not even aware that sharing such materials on WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat and other online platforms is committing a crime.

The figure triggered the alarm in Germany for the degree of infiltration of pornography in the daily lives of young people and even children. And here it is important to make a crucial distinction: child and youth pornography depicts acts of sexualized violence and border violations involving minors. Experts use the term “child abuse images”, and producing, distributing or providing access to them is a criminal offense. Pornography between adults, on the other hand, is legal, but making it available to minors is also a crime.

Although it put the Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser in an uncomfortable position, the disclosure of the statistic did not surprise psychologist and psychotherapist Tabea Freitag at all: for her, it is an “iceberg phenomenon”.

For those who consume and share child sexual abuse content in general have become desensitized after watching hours and hours of adult pornography – although, according to Article 184 of the German Penal Code, it is also illegal to make such material available to minors under 18 years of age.

“On average, children have their first exposure to pornography at age 11, largely because they have their own smartphones and are often left alone with their internet experiences,” reports the director of the Media Addiction Center in Hanover. .

“We are witnessing a huge abuse crisis in society, although it is taboo: exposing children to pornography is a form of sexual abuse, it has a massive impact on their psychosocial and sexual development.”

Porn transmits a distorted image of sex

Freitag knows families whose children reproduce scenes seen in pornographic videos for their siblings. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she received calls from concerned parents and social workers that, after months of consuming pornography, girls were now offering themselves up as sex objects, sending personal photos and videos to men.

There are also more and more girls and young people who experience violence in their sexual relationships, but at the same time feel under enormous pressure to fulfill expectations imposed by distorted views of sex.

“After all, pornography is primarily made for men. Experience shows that it changes the way boys perceive girls, their classmates are increasingly seen as sexualized objects.”

“Girls, on the other hand, feel obligated to do certain things, even though they think they’re super painful or gross, thinking that’s what’s expected of them, and they’re afraid of being seen as prudish, and maybe even losing their relationship”, explains the psychologist.

Research bears out this assessment: in a survey published in January 2023 by the Children’s Commissioner for England, 47% of male and female respondents aged 18-21 stated that “girls ‘expect’ sex to involve physical aggression”; while for another 42% most of them even “enjoy” a sexual assault.

In another survey carried out in the United States, 13% of sexually active young women between 14 and 17 years old revealed that they had suffered strangulation during sex, and that pornographic content suggested that this was a natural component of social activity.

“My younger colleagues in our Return department, who go to schools to combat pornography consumption, tell me that teens are grateful that someone is finally talking about the issue,” says Freitag. “It’s a huge challenge for them, which they deserve respect for, as they are the first generation to grow up with all this freely accessible content, and they have to deal with it.”

Pushing responsibility onto young people

Faced with such an alarming situation, certain experts are calling for smartphones to be banned for children under 14 years old. Others propose awareness campaigns on social media, radio and television. Some researchers, in turn, are in favor of equipping young people to deal better with online pornography. For Tabea Freitag, however, strengthening “media competence” is not the solution.

“This term is often used when adults do not want to assume their responsibility to protect children from content that violates personal boundaries, is abusive and traumatic. This places the responsibility on the narrow shoulders of children, charging them to learn for themselves , to reflect, protect yourself, and do things that even adults can’t do. It’s like teaching a ten-year-old how a car works, then putting him in the car and letting him drive on the freeway.”

Freitag is pessimistic about the prospects for more protection in the future, as the pandemic has already shown how low child and youth well-being is on the priority list. But the main problem, he stresses, is that pornography remains a taboo subject, with studies showing that adults who consume it are less interested in protecting children. For the expert, a good start would be for educational institutions to pay more attention.

“In schools, the policy is digitization first. In practice, however, this often means: child protection last. It would be possible, and a political decision, to oblige supplying firms to install filters on tablets destined for schools. take Article 184 of the German Penal Code seriously by not introducing any tablets until effective filters are installed and configured.”

“One click age verification is a joke”

A promising figure in this fight is Tobias Schmid, director of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Media Department, based in Düsseldorf. For years, he has applied serious blows to online platforms, in order to prevent them from continuing to confront minors with violent pornographic material.

Now the Superior Court of your state has ruled that these websites do not meet the requirements for child and youth protection, and it will no longer be enough for them to ask users to confirm their age with a click.

“Pornography itself is not prohibited, but there has to be age verification,” says Schmid. “Right now there’s only one button that says, ‘Yes, I’m 18.’ This is not a verification system, it’s a joke, and of course it’s not good enough. it more rigorously.”

Pornography platforms are still playing for time, fearing that age verification mechanisms will scare off their adult users. For Schmid, such a procrastination tactic is nothing but brazenness and unrivaled daring. He is hopeful that the verdict in North Rhine-Westphalia will contribute to more protection, not just in Germany but across Europe.

“Together with regulatory authorities from Luxembourg, Austria, Italy and France, we call on the European Commission to take action against the most reachable platforms, which have very large status, with more than 45 million users”, continues Schmid. “It always takes a little time for a process to pick up speed at first, but now it’s unstoppable.”

For him, the initiative is even late, since young people no longer access the internet through computers and under parental supervision, but through their cell phones – of which, currently in Germany, almost 90% of minors between 10 and 12 years old own one.

Important, according to the media specialist, was the growing awareness that even the internet can be subject to binding rules, because, although it offers so many opportunities, it is also a place of hatred, incitement to violence, crimes and images of child abuse. Tobias Schmid bets especially on two measures.

“Firstly, to instruct credit card operators to stop offering their services to these platforms – as already happens in relation to gambling, for example. And secondly, the possibility of serious sanctions, such as fines or confiscation of profits. Blocking access, as we can already do, is a profound interference in the fundamental right to media freedom – which, really, should be an extreme resource, for absolute emergencies.”