'Ordinary' porn is now a gateway to child sex abuse material

An unintended consequence of pornography and the attention economy — the natural pathway from pornography to child sex abuse material

The consistent amplification of youth-coded sexual themes and other ambiguously aged depictions, while distinct and separate from child sex abuse material, frames youth as the sexual selling point. It cannot then be a surprise that this blurring of boundaries undermines the seriousness of exploitation for some viewers.

Pornography is defined as “material — such as writing, images, or films — that depicts sexual activity or sexual subjects with the primary aim of provoking sexual arousal”. 

This definition seems dated now, when the reality is that pornography is no longer merely content or material but has grown into a commercialised and algorithmically driven product of the attention economy. It is with this structural shift that we see changes in viewer consumption, which causes the real risks and harms to emerge.

An uncomfortable and unavoidable truth of the “eyeballs on screens” profit model the internet has become is the pathway from adult pornography to child sexual abuse material (formally referred to as 'Child Pornography' in the Irish legal system).

Child sex abuse material is a record of child sexual abuse, and its making, possession or distribution is rightly a serious criminal offence that places a heavy burden on already threadbare law enforcement and court resources. Medical and therapy providers are equally inundated.

The question that this poses then, is how otherwise law-abiding consumers arrive at illegal content. For some, it is that they have a sexual interest in children, a paedophilic nature that is much studied and not the subject of this article. 

For others, there is increasing evidence they are being led there by the nose, where digital autonomy is lost because of the design and hidden dark patterns of commercial pornography sites. 

In effect, their arousal is hijacked, exploited for profit, and while the courts rightly will not recognise this as an excuse, it must be seen for what it is — a pathway into child sex abuse material offending which increases the demand for more and more material which results in more abuse of children.

Understanding how individuals arrive at child sex abuse material from innocuous porn websites requires a look at how modern pornography is structured. This pathway does not develop in a vacuum but for many instead arises in part from contemporary porn platforms’ recommendation algorithms. 

This system then interacts with already existing societal preferences, most commonly the demand for novelty or taboo content.

Perennially popular search terms and genres of porn include “teen” or “barely legal”, “incest” or family-themed storylines, demonstrating quite clearly that one of the common threads of modern pornography is its boundary-testing scenarios. 

Youth a sexual selling point

The consistent amplification of youth-coded sexual themes and other ambiguously aged depictions, while distinct and separate from child sex abuse material, frames youth as the sexual selling point. It cannot then be a surprise that this blurring of boundaries undermines the seriousness of exploitation for some viewers. 

This corrosion of boundaries then becomes part of the environment in which child sex abuse material (and other sexual offences) can thrive, where the escalation in consumption is not driven by intent alone. 

In the 2022 Central Statistics Office (CSO) Sexual Violence Survey, 73% of those aged 18-24 who experienced contact sexual violence as a child reported another child (person under 18) was the perpetrator. Do these algorithms and recommender engines drive our kids into real-life offending too?

This sustained interest in "taboo” genres demonstrates the significant role of novelty in pornography consumption. As the novelty wears off for some consumers, there is a tendency to seek new material as a form of reward-driven behaviour. 

Mick Moran: 'There is no excuse for viewing child sex abuse material. No pathway, intended or otherwise, can be justified.' Picture: Marc O'Sullivan

For a minority of people, this pursuit will lead them into darker online spaces in pursuit of new material and by the time they cross the line of illegality they are conditioned to see it as “normal”.

While commercial porn sites have some safeguards in place to prevent extremely blatant child sex abuse material on their platforms, they also rely on self-generated or amateur user uploaded content, meaning there is absolutely no guarantee of the age or circumstances of the participants. 

While we all would like to imagine all pornography depicts consensual safe sex, the reality can be very different. As SERP (The Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute) research shows, the material on offer on commercial sites normalises violent sex, involving slapping, strangulation, teen humiliation, and rape fantasies. 

By the time some consumers see child sex abuse material, they have become desensitised to what they would have once considered taboo or abuse. It is just more porn, more fuel for their fantasies. 

This desensitisation is a driver in them failing to see the child in the image, failing to understand that they are looking at the child's trauma and instead see the object of titillation and arousal.

While a search of a commercial pornography site for very blatant terms like “child porn” will trigger its guardrails and return no videos or images, the point remains that people do in fact search big sites for child sex abuse material. It’s where they go for their start! 

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the Lucy Faithful foundation in the UK, in a much-criticised partnership with Aylo, the internet’s biggest purveyor of commercial pornography sites, developed a chatbot designed to intervene and divert people looking from child sex abuse material on PornHub. 

Between March 2022 and August 2023, the chatbot was triggered 2.8 million times. That’s 2.8 million searches for child sex abuse material in 18 months on the largest commercial pornography website on the planet, posing the daunting question of just how many searches are taking place elsewhere on the internet.

While there may be explanations for how a person can inadvertently end up on this pathway, it is critical to be absolutely clear: there is no excuse for viewing child sex abuse material. No pathway, intended or otherwise, can be justified. 

Knowingly viewing child sex abuse material is ultimately a manifestation of a sexual interest in children, a demonstration and indication of intent regardless of how one comes to consume it and the “sexualisation” of childhood is a line no society should cross. 

Interest in and the consumption of child sex abuse material leads to child abuse, which until the arrival of AI was the only way to produce it in any quantity.

Ultimate victims are children

The ultimate victims in child sex abuse material are the children abused in its production. Often forgotten though, is how the unimaginable damage extends beyond the child victims themselves. When the family home of an offender is searched by gardaí, they are not acting on a whim. 

They have information through investigation, through other international law enforcement partners or from the INHOPE hotlines around the world that allows them to get a warrant under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 for the creation, distribution or possession of child sex abuse material. 

When this warrant is executed, the lives of the spouses and children of the abuser, the community in which they live, and the extended family and friends are all changed forever. Being arrested in possession of child sex abuse material is a grave offence under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act (1998). 

Sharing child sex abuse material normalises child abuse and goes against every legal, social and moral value in Ireland. On conviction, people arrested for these offences are placed on the sex offenders register for life.

As part of recognising the damage caused by child sex abuse material, we must also recognise intervention is not only possible but is of vital importance at all points in the prevention chain. 

The commercial pornography industry should be encouraged, through legislation or regulation, to stop peddling pornography that sexualises children and to close off the evidenced pathway to child sex abuse material through algorithmic recommendations that drive people to seek younger and more novel material which inevitably leads to child sex abuse material offending and child abuse.

if you are concerned about your own behaviour or that of someone close to you relating to children, there is help available online through stopitnow.org.uk/
or through One in Four at oneinfour.ie/ . Don't wait for the gardaí to come to your door.

• Mick Moran is chief executive of the Irish Internet Hotline

- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.