Children still are not protected from accessing harmful pornographic content, which poses a serious risk to their mental health, and their understanding of consent and healthy relationships. Many children are stumbling across pornographic content accidentally, including children as young as 7. Barnardo’s frontline workers say that children are participating in acts they have seen in pornographic videos, despite feeling uncomfortable and scared.
The Government’s Equalities Office, found that there was ‘substantial evidence of an association’ between the use of pornography and harmful attitudes and behaviours towards women and girls. Pornographic content which is suggests sexual activity with children is extremely harmful but is rife on mainstream pornography sites. This content promotes an interest in child sexual abuse material and in some cases can lead to abuse online and offline. Such content would be illegal offline, on DVD or Blu Ray, but is prevalent across mainstream pornography sites.
According to the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation (CEASE), online pornography which depicts sexual activity with performers pretending to be children normalises children as objects of sexual desire and drives the demand for ‘real’ child sexual abuse material. Increasingly extreme pornography can legitimise abusive behaviour, meaning that some excessive users of pornography can spiral into viewing child sexual abuse material, and potentially even abusing children.