When Should We Be Talking To Kids About Porn – And How's Best To Talk About It?

It doesn’t have to be overly complicated.

Parents editor at HuffPost UK

There are measures in place to stop kids coming across, and accessing, porn – all of the UK’s top 10 (and the majority of the top 100) porn sites now have age checks in place to deter children from accessing adult content.

But a July poll by Radio 5 Live and BBC Bitesize, of 2,000 young people aged 13-18, found almost a third (32%) reported seeing pornographic content online.

Some parents I’ve spoken to have noted their kids, as young as eight or nine, are asking about adult content online – and they’re in no way prepared for these conversations or how they’ll play out.

Why (and how) are kids coming across porn?

Children might actively seek out porn because they’re curious about sex and relationships (and are probably embarrassed by the thought of asking their parents about it). The NSPCC notes they might look it up “for a laugh”, for “sexual arousal and pleasure”, or to “break the rules”.

But there are also those children who will come across it quite by accident – either via website pop-ups or misleading links. In this instance, sorting out your parental controls can be useful to prevent this from happening, as can monitoring your child’s device use – for instance, letting them use tablets in shared spaces (ie. the living room) only.

When should we talk to kids about porn?

While porn conversations come later, the groundwork for all of this can begin when children are pretty young.

Cindy Gallop, founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, said that “because of the times we live in, it’s important these days that you begin talking to your kids about sex as early as possible”.

This doesn’t mean talking about intercourse, but rather, when children ask where babies come from (typically from around age four), or become interested in their genitals, her advice is to answer them “calmly, straightforwardly, honestly”, and don’t get visibly flustered or embarrassed.

“The moment you do that you open up a channel of........

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