Young people ‘rampantly’ accessing porn

The explosion in internet use in recent decades has not come without a cost as more and more people access sexually explicit material over the internet.

Dr William Struthers, Associate Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College, said that 12 to 18-year-olds in the US and UK were “rampantly” accessing internet pornography.

“It’s not a question of if my 10-year-old son is exposed. It’s a matter of when,” he said at a talk in the House of Commons yesterday.

Whereas 20 years ago, teenagers might have stumbled across the odd dirty magazine, the internet has made accessing pornography so easy that it is “intrusive”.

It is not uncommon nowadays for teenagers - boys especially - to email sexually explicit material to each other and there are numerous websites offering inappropriate material with few restrictions to keep young people out.

And whereas previously, most girls viewed pornography as disgusting, they are becoming more and more open to it. Read more