New measures needed to help protect
children, and to understand their experiences of pornography* online
Many children
in the UK are seeing explicit sexual images using internet or mobile devices and
filtering services are limited, says a new report commissioned by the
Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport. In the report, a panel of
experts**, including Professor Joanna R Adler and Dr Miranda A H Horvath from
Forensic Psychological Services at Middlesex University, sets out the scale of
the problem and possible measures to mitigate risks. Published alongside a new government consultation setting out potential strategies to
reduce such exposure, the panel’s report sets out the many ways in which
children and young people can encounter online pornography. It also points out
that technical fixes, such as filtering, will always be imperfect and that
there is an obvious mismatch between the regulation currently governing
distribution of pornography in the offline context and its equivalent for
online material.
The panel was
led by Dr Victoria Nash of the Oxford Internet Institute and they reviewed available
UK and international data, highlighting the limitations in estimating numbers
of children who are accessing porn, given the ethical and practical challenges
of studying children’s experiences on this issue. The most common means for
under-18s to access explicit sexual content have been via TV, films, magazines
and books which may now be viewed digitally as well as via traditional routes. Likely
online routes include video and photo-sharing sites or pop-up ads and social networks.
The report
considers evidence of children sharing sexual images via mobile phones or the
internet. The images children share may be found or ‘self-generated’ with ‘sexting’
studies showing that children appear to create their own images although why
they share them, is a matter of some dispute. The authors suggest social and
educational interventions are needed, and point out that enhanced technical constraints
will be more effective when young people have come across pornography accidentally
rather than when they deliberately seek it out.
The various
routes of access to pornography all provide their own challenges. One UK study in
the report identifies pop-up adverts as the most common source of sexual images
among the 13-14 year age group. The report says one approach could be a greater
use of ad–blocking tools in households, but this is problematic for
content-producers who rely on advertising revenue. Apps like WhatsApp or
Snapchat, both used by large numbers of children, especially those in their
early teens, are also difficult to regulate. Such apps allow users to discuss anything,
and share photos or videos without leaving a digital trail but the minimum age requirements
are not enforced. The report notes that this direct messaging may be a way that
children, particularly older groups, share sexual images, possibly believing
that such images will not be permanent, even though they are relatively easy
for the recipient to keep. The mass of real time content downloaded onto
popular entertainment sources such as YouTube is also highlighted as an area of
concern, due to the sheer amount of new content uploaded every minute which is ‘virtually
impossible to moderate’, according to the report.
To date, most
interventions in the UK aimed at stopping minors accessing potentially harmful
content (that is legally produced for the adult market) have been voluntary. However,
there are obvious gaps where government might intervene, such as in bringing
the responsibilities of commercial online pornographers into line with those in
the offline world. It also discusses whether schools should have a bigger role in
educating children about pornography, asking whether the topic should be
included in the curriculum in order to build children’s resilience, and make a
clear distinction between real-life relationships and the ‘fiction’ of porn. It
is also vital to take into account the wider sexualisation of popular culture
whereby children encounter explicit sexual images in films, television, music
videos and games.
Professor
Adler commented: ‘Pornography that is legal for adults to view is always going
to be accessed by some young people. We should encourage responsible behaviour
by the industry to try to set up reliable routes to age verification and we
need to have meaningful education to help young people properly discuss sex and
relationships. However, we need also to respect young people’s choices and
development and should be wary of over- blocking.’
* The report
covers the viewing of pornography (rather than illegal, extreme pornography).
In the report, pornography is defined as sexually explicit media that are
primarily intended to sexually arouse the audience. The definition of
‘children’ covers under-18s although much of the research covers just a portion
of this age group. The research looks at materials using the internet and, or
mobile technologies (rather than just ‘online’) as it covers materials
transmitted from one children to another using a phone or other mobile device
without requiring an internet connection.
**The authors
are Dr Victoria Nash (Oxford Internet Institute); Professor Joanna R. Adler
(Forensic Psychological Services, Middlesex University); Dr Miranda A. H.
Horvath (Forensic Psychological Services, Middlesex University); Professor
Sonia Livingstone (LSE and EU Kids Online); Dr Cicely Marston (London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine); Dr Gareth Owen (University of Portsmouth); and
Dr Joss Wright (Oxford Internet Institute).
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