'Scary' porn trend exposed to Aussie kids: 'Not healthy'
As the age at which young people view pornography for the first time continues to fall, a psychologist is reporting a concerning increase in violent adult films.
As the age at which children view pornography for the first time continues to fall, and internet content becomes "much more readily available", one of the country's leading psychologists is reporting an alarming rise in violent adult films.
Consensual or not, aggressive pornography is not conducive to healthy connections, Swinburne University psychologist Dr Simone Buzwell told Yahoo News Australia. "There has also been a scary increase in violent pornography," she warns.
Buzwell said as young people are exposed to it more frequently, they might find it difficult to understand "what is truly beneficial in a relationship", particularly when it comes to topics such as pleasure. Her sentiment comes after NSW this week announced a parliamentary inquiry into the impacts of pornography on young people.
Studies have shown children are accessing adult content online at extremely young ages, often during primary school, and sometimes that means being exposed to violence, including scenes that incorporate choking. Buzwell warns not only could this exposure potentially one day be physically harmful to the viewer's sexual partner, it perpetuates damaging attitudes toward sex in general.
Sydney escort Katija Cortez this month told news.com.au about being chocked in bed without her consent and how common it has become.
"When I was younger, a lot of guys had started doing it, which I think definitely came from seeing it in porn. Choking during porn is very, very common and is becoming increasingly more common," she said.
According to the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, of the 15–29-year-olds surveyed, 100 per cent of boys and young men, and 82 per cent of girls and young women reported ever viewing pornography. The median age for first exposure to porn was 13 years for boys and 16 for girls, a recent study revealed.
Buzzwell says this comes as no surprise. She explained that while the data "is rubbery at best", possibly due to people feeling "too shy" to respond truthfully to surveys, it "does appear that young people are accessing porn earlier and earlier because it's just so available".
"At the moment, because porn is so accessible to young people, it's shaping the sexual scripts [guidelines] for appropriate sexual behaviour and sexual encounters about what they think is normal in the sexual domain," she told Yahoo.
Pornography is not conducive to healthy relationships, expert says
"So unfortunately, much of the pornography that's available to young people is not healthy. There seems to be lots of violence involved lately. Choking seems to be very popular at the moment. There's often not much of a discussion about consent as well.
"None of these factors make it a healthy situation for people trying to establish intimate relationships."
Buzzwell said pornography in general is "so male focussed" which is another, major issue for young people because it shows a "very one-sided" perspective.
"Particularly for people that are in heterosexual relationships or relationships with women, because then their pleasure or what's enjoyable to them is not considered," she explained, adding that violent content stands to "normalise" domestic violence against women.
"That's the really problematic thing. They often call it the slippery slope.
"That then can go further into more violent activities, but even consensual — and it doesn't seem to be consensual most of the time — even if it is said to be consensual. I don't think people understand the damage it can cause momentarily. Choking can lead to the increased likelihood of strokes later on in life."
Nation needs 'more funding' into impacts of porn
Buzzwell said Australia must fund more research into sexual trends and behaviours, and in particular when it comes to young people. "Because we just don't know enough — and the research in the areas often could be constructed better than it is, because it's hard to get people to talk about sex — so you don't know how they're responding to the surveys," she said.
"The people that respond, are the ones that are more open about sex. So we need to have funding so we can do larger studies to have a better view of what people are actually really thinking and doing."
When it comes to young people, "they'll come up with all sorts of reasons to access porn" and just think what they see is normal, but "it's unfortunately not".
NSW launches parliamentary inquiry
Meanwhile, NSW is set to analyse the production and distribution of deepfake and AI-generated content, and will cover what NSW Women's Safety Commissioner Dr Hannah Tonkin described as the circulation of extreme forms of violent pornography and how Australian youth access and view it.
The inquiry will be the first at a state level following federal probes into age verification for online pornography and gambling. Restrictions on access will be examined to consider ways of improving them.
The state's Attorney-General Michael Daley said the inquiry would investigate the impact online pornography has on young people. "A generation of young men are growing up with unprecedented access to the online world and this includes early and easy access to pornography, with harmful depictions of the treatment of women," he said.
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