How internet porn is destroying our children
The psychological ramifications of pornography are far reaching. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- An equally devastating effect of porn to young minds is that it instils a sense of inadequacy in children about their bodies.
- It is a high time we engaged in a national dialogue and strategise on how to help our children find meaning in life outside porn.
Internet pornography has devastating effect on young minds.
It, among other things, alters how they perceive human sexuality and inhibits the growth of normal relationships.
But more scaring is that it is highly addictive. Thousands of youngsters, who are hardly 22 years old, need help to recover from pornography addiction.
What is even more disturbing is that it destroys gender relations and it mocks the gains made for respect of human dignity.
It makes girls accept, as normal, what is obviously misogynistic activities and behaviour towards them.
A new survey done by Sunday Times entitled "Porn Survey 2019", reveals ramifications of what I have always thought of as effects of porn’s moral and ethical terrorism.
Though not psychologically deep, the report helps us appreciate the extent of the damage that porn brings to young minds.
INSANITY
To young girls today, what is considered standard sexual practice has to come with pain and some degree of violence.
It appears that infliction of pain or humiliation is part of sexual package for the female. Youngsters are growing up with a twisted understanding of human sexuality as an expression of love.
Pornography has pushed the madness that comes with the notion of BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism) to bizarre frontiers.
Porn glorifies all manner of abuse, including choking and slapping the female partner as acceptable standard practice.
It also venerates sodomy and buggery as sources of heavenly pleasure. Simply put, the porn industry has pushed the pleasure principle to the highest level of insanity.
Porn is distorting children’s normal growth and terrifying them with images that shock their fragile minds. Research shows that the age group that is affected most is that below 22.
SEX EDUCATION
Many researches on this subject report that most of our children receive their sex education from porn sites. What might shock parents is that these children consider porn real.
In essence, as a socialising agent, porn brings to our children images that are diametrically opposed to what our values consider normal.
One of the most disgusting of them all is incest porn that makes youngsters believe that it is fun to engage in incest. Our kids are fully challenged, if not confused, with such signals.
To porn creators, being 14 years old, heterosexual and a virgin without experience of anal sex is abnormal!
An equally devastating effect of porn to young minds is that it instils a sense of inadequacy in children about their bodies.
The videos bring to the youngsters the so called “beautiful” models who are always slim, without stretch marks.
FANTASY WORLD
This is perceived as the standard for beauty! So, girls with enough flesh around them have come to hate their bodies.
The psychological ramifications of porn are equally far reaching. Research shows that male youth hardly 35 cannot “get it up” due to porn because reality disappoints them.
They would rather operate within the fantasy world of porn than relate with their partners in heterosexual relationships.
Porn alters sexual tastes and sends youngsters searching for absurd fantasy. It objectifies women and makes them passive acquiescent to violent sexual orgies.
DISEASES
It exalts terrible physical pain, medically damaging sexual stunts, emotionally brutalising and demeaning coitus with multiple partners.
It is interesting that in porn videos that easily come to our children by the click of a button, the danger of contracting diseases, including HIV/AIDS, is never mentioned.
They attempt to tell our children that what we have all along told them is abnormal. The value of delaying sexual gratification until the right age is seen as primitive, while brutal paedophiliac orgies are normal.
It should not surprise us when our children compose porn as their music. It is a high time we engaged in a national dialogue and strategise on how to help our children find meaning in life outside porn.
Prof Kabaji is a specialist in Literary Communication and consultant on strategic management [email protected]
