Colman Noctor: Finding the right words to talk to your child about pornography

Ultimately, these conversations are less about sex and more about the trust you have in your child and they have in you, writes Colman Noctor 

Children’s exposure to pornography is inevitable, so parents should soften the shock by beginning a conversation about it from a young age. This should just be the first of many talks tailored to a growing child’s needs. Picture: iStock

LAST week, I wrote about the dangers of young people viewing pornography online, coinciding with news that Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok is being used to nudify images. Since then, parents have asked me for guidance on how to talk to their children and teenagers about exposure to pornography.

Children often encounter pornography long before they are ready to understand it. That’s an uncomfortable truth for parents. Viewing of pornography is no longer confined to late adolescence or adulthood, as it was for previous generations. Many children first encounter sexualised content accidentally, through a friend’s phone, a pop-up ad, or a social-media link. Like it or not, pornography has become part of the landscape in which our children are growing up.