More than 50% of teens admit to being exposed to pornographic material by age 12, and 15% of people confess to seeing this content as young as 10 years old.
Some might say this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. They say it’s just a part of growing up and being online. But what they don’t see is how hurtful porn can be. It negatively impacts relationships, and normalizes violence. It is crucial to understand the immense damage porn can cause in children and adults.
One of the cruelest impacts of watching porn is how it can damage trust and take away security in relationships. I know this from experience. When I was younger, I found out my boyfriend of the time watched porn daily. It broke my heart and destroyed my trust in him. Watching porn skews your perception of how people should look and how a relationship should be. That same boyfriend once told me, “I don’t need you, the girl on here looks way better.” That made me feel unloved and insecure.
Unfortunately, I’m not alone in feeling this way. For many partners, discovering hidden porn use can bring up feelings of rejection, jealousy or insecurity. Trust is one of the hardest things to rebuild. Porn affects you outside of just personal relationships. It normalizes violence and misbehavior. A lot of the content that is easy to find online includes aggression or lack of consent.
“A 2010 study that analyzed 304 scenes from best-selling pornography videos, almost 90% of scenes contained physical aggression, while nearly 50% contained verbal aggression, primarily in the form of name-calling,” on study found.
Over time, this harmful behavior can start to seem normal. In my own life, I frequently hear my peers talk about this type of content, and I’ve witnessed them showing it to each other. When violence and intimacy are constantly shown side by side, it can blur the lines of love and control. Some people argue that this type of content is simply entertainment, and it can’t truly change how people act. This ignores how often the media shapes culture and behaviors. If repeated content didn’t influence people, advertising companies wouldn’t spend millions a year trying to convince viewers to buy their products. The reality is that what we watch changes how we think, and porn is no exception.
Porn may seem harmless, but its effects on relationships, and the way it normalizes violence prove otherwise. We can’t ignore the consequences any longer. As a society, we need to normalize having healthy conversations about these risks and educate younger kids to think heavily about what they watch online.
By doing this, we can protect ourselves and others from the damage of pornography.
Sam Meade
Centralia
Editor’s note: Sam Meade is a junior at Centralia High School in Washington state. She wants to teach elementary school and enjoys spending time with her friends instead of locking in on school work. This letter was written as part of a school assignment.
