The XXX Generation

This week the results of study by Plymouth University were published.  Academics found that it was ‘common practice’ for children to become desensitised to sexual images after accessing hard core material at an early age.  They found that some young people are becoming ‘hooked’ on online pornography even before they become sexually active, leading to problems later in life.

The problem would appear to be endemic with some children saying that they first watched pornography ‘aged 11 or 12’.  One 14 year old pupil told researchers that he couldn’t “believe there was anyone in his year who hadn’t seen it.”

Let’s be in no doubt that we are not talking about soft-focus smut and come-hither glances.  The pornography which our children are able to reach with just a few clicks of a mouse is hard-core, dehumanising, debasing and often violent.

For years we have been peddled the lie that pornography is harmless fun.  The results of this research show that this is just not the case.  One third of young adults are experiencing relationship problems because of what they have seen online.  As a Relate spokesperson said, pornography distorts their views of what “a normal sex life could and should be like.”

It is hardly surprising that the National Association of Head Teachers has called for age appropriate sex education guidelines to cover ‘the impact of porn’.  “Children are growing up in an overtly sexualised world”, explained their Policy Advisor, “that includes easy access to porn and they need the skills to deal with it."

As a society, we have failed to face up to the effects of pornography and it is our children who have become the casualties.

Later this year the outcome of the recent consultation into protecting children online will be announced.  It is to be hoped that commercial interests or mis-advised concerns about censorship do not prevent the Government taking a stand to ensure that children are adequately protected from the poisonous effects of pornography.  We can no longer afford to ignore the urgency of this issue and we must act now before a further generation pays the price.   

Protecting children in a digital world

A report published recently found that British children aged between nine and 16 spend over 100 minutes each day on the internet.

The researchers from LSE who carried out the study also found that half of UK children go online using a mobile device which, they noted, put ‘them in the vanguard of new risks associated with personal internet access and, equally, making protective oversight by their parents more difficult.’

This information comes just a week after another survey revealed that parents are increasingly worried about their children accessing potentially harmful material on mobile phones. Although mobile networks do automatically block access to adult content on their own networks modern devices with a wi-fi capability mean that children could still potentially access such material unless further filters are installed.

This is of great concern as by the age of 13 nearly all children in the UK own a mobile phone yet almost a third of parents are unaware of safety tools which can help to protect their children.

We are awaiting the outcome of the Government’s recent consultation into online safety and it is to be hoped that a default block on harmful material unless users specifically opt in to view it, will be recommended. We think this will offer children the most protection but, in the meantime, it is vital that parents engage with online safety issues.

It is not enough to trust websites to have policies in place to protect children. Earlier this year the sexualised content routinely found on the children’s social network Habbo Hotel was exposed. John Carr of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety has said that he believes self-regulation of social networking sites to be ‘a big con’.

He suggests that online brands should be more closely regulated by external organisations such as Ofcom or legislation should be introduced to force companies to adopt online safety guidelines.

This is an important issue; although Facebook and most other social networks require children to be a least 13 years old before they sign up, 28% of nine and 10 years olds have an online profile. We cannot afford to take risks with their future.

• If you need help with protecting your children online please visit our website safeonline.org.uk which has been updated with sources of information that you will find useful.

• You can also find information on online safety at UK Safer Internet Centre.  Next year Safer Internet Day will take place on 5th February with the theme 'Online Rights and Responsibilities' and the organisation is running a Have Your Say survey on children's internet use, the results of which will be handed to the Government on Safer Internet Day.  Please consider sharing details of this initiative with children and those responsible for caring with them.  It will be a great way for them to bring their concerns about online safety to the attention of the Government.

Who is raising our children?

The news over the last few days has been full of discussion about whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney ‘won’ the first of the televised debates of the American presidential election.  With the result of the election still seen as being ‘too close to call’ both candidates were hopeful that their performances, and subsequent media coverage, would win over undecided voters.  The presidential candidates, and their election machinery, are in no doubt as to the power of the media to influence views and behaviour.

The power of the media to affect behaviour should certainly come as no surprise to us.  From supermarkets selling out of cranberries when Delia Smith used them on television to the drama Mad Men bringing the styles of the 1960s back into fashion, the media helps to create and reinforce our outlook on life. 

And yet, despite this undoubted power of the media, for many years broadcasters have justified their more questionable output, telling us that what they produce is entertainment and has no effect on those who consume it.  Whenever I see such claims I am reminded that it was not that many years ago that cigarette manufacturers were also denying that their products could harm consumers.  

Of course, like many powerful forces, the ability of the media to influence behaviour can be used to both good and ill effect; in the last few days more women have found the courage to report the abuse they suffered during their childhoods since media reports of allegations that Jimmy Savile abused teenagers during the 1970s and 80s. 

But the effects can also be negative, and society ignores this reality at its peril.  Repeated exposure to extreme and negative behaviour, whether violent or sexual, can shape and reinforce attitudes and behaviour.  As children we learn to make sense of the world and develop our response to it by observing the behaviour of those around us.   The current generation of children are the first to be raised who have almost unlimited access to a diet of extreme violence and pornography via both television and the internet.

As a society we are conducting a huge experiment on our children and the long term effects are barely beginning to be understood.  Taking the cigarette analogy one step further we are currently allowing our children to smoke 40 Woodbines a day whilst turning a deaf ear to the chesty coughs.   We want to protect our children’s health and to get society to ‘wake up’ to the powerful influence that the media is having on the way children perceive the world and treat themselves and those around them.

This is why our campaign for a responsible media has never been more important.

Vivienne Pattison

Director

Drugs Live: experiment or advertisement?

This week Channel 4 devoted two hours of prime-time programming to the controversially titled ‘Drugs Live’.  A quick glance at the TV listings for the programme might have given the impression that it would feature a series of volunteers taking drugs live on air; the trailers which Channel 4 ran for the programme did not completely disabuse potential viewers of this notion either.

In fact the braodcast was a documentary and discussion which focussed on a clinical trial, which took place in July, was officially licensed by the Home Office and which will be submitted to a scientific journal.

However, watching subjects in a brain scanner does not make for riveting television which is an issue for a broadcaster covering a scientific trial in a slot more usually reserved for Shameless and the The Inbetweeners. 

When the programme was originally announced last year Channel 4’s Chief Creative Officer, Jay Hunt, described the programme as bringing ‘mischief’ back to the channel.  It has originally been hoped to show the drug-taking live although this was vetoed by the Home Office so the live element of the show was a studio discussion hosted by John Snow and Dr Christian Jenssen.

The subsequent programme had the feel of an election night broadcast complete with temperamental microphones and vox-pops.

Laudable though the aims of the clinical trial may have been it was very difficult for viewers to reach informed opinions on rather sophisticated science from watching such a disjointed programme.  Proper conclusions will only be reached after the results of the trial are published and peer-reviewed.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph Professor Les Iversen of Oxford University, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, questioned the scientific value of the broadcast:

“The dressing up of the Channel 4 project as ‘research’ is flimsy, and there is a danger that such programmes may glamorise drug-taking as a form of entertainment.”

He is quite right: scientific fact and voyeuristic entertainment make uneasy bedfellows.  It is to be hoped that the ultimate outcome of this TV first is a greater understanding for brain scientists rather than the damage of vulnerable viewers.

The sexualisation of our society

This week has seen widespread condemnation of the publication of pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge topless.  Ironically The Sun, one of the first newspapers to condemn the publication of such intrusive photographs, runs a picture of a topless young woman every day and has done so since 1970.

There have been many campaign to have the page removed before; most notably by Claire Short in the 1980s who was branded ‘fat and jealous’ by the paper when her parliamentary bill failed.  However, concerns about press ethics have made this a hot issue once again.

Author and actor, Lucy-Anne Holmes, was enraged during the Olympics, when British women such as Jessica Ennis and Victoria Pendleton were successfully representing their country, that the biggest image of a female in the paper was the daily topless offering.

She wrote to the editor of The Sun and asked him to stop running topless pictures on page 3.  Predictably she didn’t receive a reply and so, on 5^th September, she decided to set up a petition called ‘No More Page 3’ asking the paper’s editor to stop showing topless women in his paper. 

She promoted her petition through her social media accounts and it soon caught the public imagination and went viral.  At the time of writing, over 28,000 people have signed it and it has been mentioned in almost all the broadsheet newspapers although, predictably, not in The Sun. 

So much attention has this petition received that one of the UK’s leading bookmakers is now taking bets on when it will reach 100,000 signatures.  A spokesman for Paddy Power said: "The smart money says it will happen sometime in the next couple of months."

The Sun introduced a topless girl on page 3 in November 1970; it was the first time a British newspaper had run a nude photograph and, although controversial, it boosted circulation so from 1975 it became a daily feature. 

From our perspective in 2012, with hard-core pornography available to all at the click of a mouse, it can seem so innocent.  However ‘page 3’ lead the way and has contributed to the objectification and commodification of women and their bodies in our society.  It paved the way for much stronger images becoming mainstream in newspapers, magazines and on screen. 

As such it has impacted all of us whether or not we buy or read the paper.  Parents report that their children are being prematurely sexualised and forced to grow up too fast, cosmetic surgery rates have increased by nearly 20% in the last four years and an unrealistic body ideal is damaging our society by wreaking havoc with self esteem and affecting health and relationships.

We are delighted that this issue is once again in the news and we hope the petition continues to grow and shows that the picture of women presented by The Sun is unacceptable.  But let’s not just tinker around the edges; there is an even greater menace freely available to all.

It is to be hoped that all those who sign this petition also consider the effect that online pornography is having.  It’s effect on our society - not just those who use it but all of us – is potentially even more devastating. 

Ofcom failing in its duty to protect children

Viewers of The X Factor, broadcast at 8pm on Saturday 8^th September, were confronted with what was effectively a lap dance, during which a contestant straddled one of the judges dressed in just a bikini and a fishnet body stocking.

In our society stripping and other forms of sexual dancing are confined to the adult domain and children are not allowed to enter such establishments.  It is totally unacceptable to have similar material show on pre-watershed television, particularly in a programme which is promoted as family viewing.

Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident.  In the region of 3,000 people complained to Ofcom about semi-clothed dancers performing highly sexualised routines on the same programme back on 2010 and earlier this year Britain’s Got Talent featured a burlesque stripper.

In both cases Ofcom found neither broadcast breached their code which requires that children must be protected from material that is unsuitable for them.

Following this latest broadcast we have written to Ofcom in the strongest terms pointing out that their failure to regulate adequately in the past had led to what they describe as being ‘at the very margin of acceptability’ to become mainstream.

Parents surveyed at the time of the Bailey Review into the Sexualistion of Childhood felt that their children were being forced to grow up too quickly, with nearly half of them unhappy with pre-watershed TV.  Is it any wonder they feel let down when Ofcom is failing to protect their interests so spectacularly?

Thank you for having your say

The government’s consultation into how best to protect children online closed on 6th September.  We don’t yet have accurate figures on how many people responded but we understand it to be in excess of two thousand.  If this is correct than it would appear that approximately one third of these responses came via our website safeonline.org.uk site.

Thank you so much for using it to make your views known.  We are hopeful that the government will be left in no doubt as to the strength of public opinion on this issue.  We will, of course, keep you up to date with further news as we receive it.

If you or anyone you know is caring for children and would like help with online safety issues please do visit Safeonline.org.uk again.  The site remains active and we have updated it with sources of information which we hope will assist you in keeping your children protected.