We are now “paying the price” for creating a society where pornography is “normalised”, a commentator has warned.
Sonia Poulton was writing in the wake of a parliamentary report which said children are being damaged because of the easy access to online pornography.
The commentator said: “Teenagers today don’t know what it’s like not to be sexualised” and are faced with constant pressure to act like “reality show ‘stars’, the WAGS and the glamour models”.
Troubling
While saying she is not an “anti-porn campaigner”, she commented that pornography is “not about loving relationships that are built on a foundation of respect and commitment” but instead is a crude approach to “sexual gratification”.
She also said: “The fact that so many of our children are learning about how to relate to each other through the prism of pornography is troubling, no?
“Who can tell what our future society will be like given the disturbing examples our children are being set.”
Distort
She warned: “We, as a society, have created a highly sexualised environment for our children to grow up in and, as a consequence, we have normalised pornography and turned it into a must-see draw for our young. And now we are paying the price.”
Sonia Poulton concluded: “Shame, shame on us. Our children have inherited an altogether new and ugly parallel universe that will taint and distort their relationships in ways unfathomable to us right now.”
The parliamentary report noted studies which suggested four out of five children aged 14-16 regularly access online pornography at home.
Parents
It also said “almost six out of ten children can access the internet without filters in their homes”.
Conservative MP Claire Perry, who chaired the inquiry, said its results were “hugely worrying”.
She commented that while “parents should be responsible for their children’s online safety”, people find it difficult to put filters on the many internet-enabled devices in their homes.
Miss Perry said that it was time internet service providers took on “more of the responsibility to keep children safe”.