Did you know that children are watching pornography as young as age 10. Well,
I'm Dr. Rena Malik, urologist and pelvic surgeon, and today we're going to talk about
is pornography good or bad for children and how should you talk to them about it if you're new
here make sure you subscribe to the channel if you like what you see and share it with your friends
children will sometimes watch pornography to really satisfy their curiosities or to learn
about their bodies because let's face it sexual education around the world is limited in the
first part of this video i'm going to talk about how pornography affects young brains and if it
really is a problem and lastly how you should discuss pornography with your children is this
really a problem well let's start off on how pornography can affect the developing brain
particularly in adolescents there's five major components to this which can affect how brains
process pornography in young children number one is the prefrontal cortex this is the part of the
brain that's responsible for making decisions setting goals making plans and other sorts of
very important things and in adolescence this part of the brain is still very immature and so they
may have a hard time deciding that watching this is actually not good for them or maybe causing
other types of harm to the rest of their life number two is that children have something called
neuroplasticity and it's basically how our brains change in response to certain things and behaviors
that we do and it's really important for things like normal brain development and regulating
yourself for example knowing that you have to be quiet in certain areas like the library and so if
they're affected by watching pornography they may then develop circuits in their brain which favor
the outcome of watching pornography which leads us to part three which is dopamine so if you watched
my first video on pornography pros and cons you'll see that watching pornography actually often leads
to a release of dopamine in the brain and that can lead to developing neural pathways that favor that
dopamine release meaning that your brain will want more and more of that dopamine so it will
continue to repeat that behavior in adolescence that dopamine system that produces dopamine is
overactive or it's an overdrive meaning that they are more susceptible to things that give
them dopamine hence why kids are always playing video games or at least my kids are watching
pornography can also activate another part of the brain called the hypothalamic pituitary axis and
when this is activated it produces hormones like testosterone and cortisol and when young children
particularly boys are undergoing adolescents their testosterone is already at a higher level
but higher levels of testosterone and cortisol can create a fight or flight sort of response
and cause more emotionality and less ability to control their emotions and their behaviors and
lastly this chronic exposure to cortisol makes your brain feel like it's in a chronic stressed
state and particularly in adolescence this can affect again that neuroplasticity we spoke about
and can cause children to have difficulty dealing with stress even into adulthood
and lastly pornography can also impact the way children perceive their own bodies as i talked
about in my last video you're seeing people who are professional actors who have you know penile
lengths that are larger or breasts that are larger than the average person and it may make you have
some insecurities and there's not a lot of data on children and their exposure to pornography
and how that affects them because you can't put children in a study where they are either exposed
to pornography or not so the closest studies that we have are in young men and the largest
of these studies is one that was done in belgium and denmark where they surveyed 3 500 young men
between the ages of 18 and 35 who were recruited via social media or posters they then asked them
about their frequency of pornography use and then tested them with certain validated questionnaires
to test their erectile function and they used a specific questionnaire about cyber porn addiction
and they found that a lot of these men watched quite a bit of pornography up to 70 minutes a week
and it was really variable some people watched it on average for about five to 15 minutes at a time
however the average length of a porn session was about 5 minutes and 30 seconds and only 11
of the sample watched more than 30 minutes at a time and what they found was that viewing more
pornography was associated with finding less satisfaction with sex with their own partner
in fact only 65 percent of people found sex with a partner more stimulating than pornography that
means 35 percent are feeling that sex with a partner is not as satisfying as watching porn
interestingly the length of time that one watches pornography was not indicative of their addiction
score but they did find that those who had a higher addiction score about 21 of them had issues
with erectile function in the last four weeks 21 of young men having issues with erections is not
normal but again watching more pornography was not necessarily indicative of addiction so i
think ultimately it's really important to realize if pornography is becoming a problem and i talk a
little bit about this in the video looking at the pros and cons of pornography so make sure
you check that out but if you're noticing that your children may have problems with pornography
it's important to get them to talk to them about it so how do we talk to children about pornography
i mean should you be trying to limit them well quite honestly pornography is everywhere and
whether they let you know they're seeing it or not they're probably gonna get exposed to it so
the most important thing you can do as a parent is have an open honest discussion with your child
start off by choosing a time which is really not a stressful moment so maybe driving in a car
or a place where they're not rushing off to do something or you don't have anywhere to
be you want to start with open-ended questions like hey what do you think about pornography
not do you watch pornography because that's a yes or no question and that may shut them down
make sure they're aware that this is a no judgment zone make sure they feel that you're not going to
judge them for their response and let them know that you're not asking because you want
to shame them for what they do you just want to know start by normalizing their feelings
of arousal when watching pornography for some people some children this can be very distressing
when they don't really understand what's going on or they don't have the context of what's happening
very important to stress the difference between real sex and pornography meaning that pornography
is a highly produced product these are actors that are enhanced with special effects there
are a special lighting and these are again hired professionals there is no sense of privacy in
pornography when in a real relationship obviously privacy is very important also there's very little
discussion of consent in pornography so you also need to let them know that discussing consent
with their partner before going ahead with having intercourse is an important part of a relationship
it's also important to let them know that the responses of these actors and actresses are not
normally what's seen during a sexual encounter people are not necessarily having intercourse
that lasts for a very very long time and they're certainly not having orgasms as quickly as it's
shown on pornography also within discussion you want to talk about bodily autonomy that you should
never touch anyone without their consent or no one should touch them without their consent and
it's also important to let them know not to send nude photographs of themselves to their friends
and lastly you want to talk about safe sex the discussion they're having in school is usually
not adequate enough for them to really understand everything they need to know about safe sex
and lastly realize that this conversation is going to take some time it's not going to be a one and
done conversation you're probably gonna need to have a conversation over several days weeks
months to really get in all of this discussion in a way that's not overwhelming to them okay i hope
you guys found this helpful as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it