Children Should Be More Resilient to Pornography

Today the mainstream media highlighted a study that called for urgent action by ministers in regards to children having access to pornography online. 

However, that study did not call for stronger security measures, or practical solutions to prevent children from viewing pornography, instead the study, according to the Daily Mail, called for ministers, schools and parents to 'Develop children's resilience to pornography'.

What exactly does this mean? That Children should learn to recover quickly from viewing pornography?

It is not the intention of this article to call for an out right ban of pornography, viewers discretion is simply that. None-the-less, the matter of children being exposed to such explicit material at such an early age is a very serious one, since the aggressive nature of modern day porn only serves to send a confusing message to our children, which as the study suggests distorts our opinions of the opposite sex.

This matter could quite easily be solved by having all content of an explicit nature running on a server that can be easily blocked by the parent with the simple application of a password and checking box that does not allow access to those without clearance. Simple.

So why are Politicians and campaigners not calling for such action? In a world that is saturated by pornography, be it the soft kind in movies, or the extremely aggressive kind that we find randomly roaming the world wide web, it would only make sense that young children, whose opinions on sex are only just forming and are impressionable to say the least, be shielded by such material that is obviously of an adult nature.

An unnamed spokesman for the Department for Education said “We are strengthening the curriculum... from the age of five, children will be taught how to stay safe online”. That is all well and good, but couple the ability of young children to operate computers --- far more advanced than the average parent in many cases --- with an inquisitive mind, highlighting the fact that pornography exists online, in its currently uninhibited state, will only serve to stoke their inquisitive minds and increase the chances of them searching for it.

Sue Berelowitz, the deputy children's commissioner, went one step further stating that compulsory education was the only way to ensure children were guarded “against the possible impact of pornography on them and their relationships," according to the Guardian

Again, no ideas of how we can protect them from viewing such adult content, but more towards reducing the impact of what they are viewing.

Whether it be the likes of Harriet Harman, calling for the de-criminalisation of indecent pictures of children, or be it the likes of Sue Berelowitz teling us that the only way to educate our children about pornography is through state run programmes, what we are seeing is an agenda being pushed to sexualise young children and allow for the loosening of legislation on ages of consent and child pornography.