Unclear if many children affected by sex images

SEEING pornography online may be harmful to children, but it may not.

It depends on many things, including the nature of the images and the personal circumstances of the child.

Vulnerable children may be more at risk of harm from online pornography, but they may not be. It is possible that more children may be at risk of harm from pornography when it is particularly violent, abusive, or degrading.

The reality is we will never have conclusive evidence since we cannot ethically expose a random selection of children to pornography and monitor the outcomes for scientific purposes. What we can say is that Ireland is relatively low, compared to many EU countries, both in terms of overall exposure to online pornography and the degree to which children are bothered or upset by what they saw when they were exposed to online sexual images.

The EU Kids Online research in 2011 found nearly one in four (23%) 9- to 16-year-olds in Ireland say that they have seen obviously sexual images in the past 12 months, whether online or offline, broadly in line with the European average. Around half have seen these images at least once or twice a month. Nearly half of 15- to 16-year-olds (45%) have seen such images compared with just 8% of 9- to 10-year-olds; these teenagers also see such images more often than younger children do.

Most children come across sexual images online accidentally through pop ups, though 13% of older teenagers have seen them on an adult/X-rated websites. 9% of 15- to 16-year-olds report coming across such images on a social networking site. A small number of 9- to 10-year-olds come across them through images that pop up.

Among those children who have seen sexual images online, over one in three (36%) of their parents knew this had occurred. Half (49%) were unaware and denied their child has seen sexual images on the internet. Just 15% of parents say that they didn’t know. Parents in Ireland are less aware than the European average of when their children have seen sexual images online (49% vs 40%). This is at the upper end of an awareness gap between children and parents topped by Portugal, Italy, Hungary and Spain. In 53%-54% of cases, parents were unaware that their children had seen sexual images online.

In Ireland, one in three of those that had seen sexual images (4% of all children) were bothered by this experience. Older teenagers are also more likely to be bothered by what they saw (10% of 15- to 16-year-olds who had seen such images).

Boys are a little more likely to see sexual images online than girls (13% vs 10%), but girls are rather more likely to be bothered if they do see such images. These findings are very similar to those for Europe overall.

To keep this in perspective, it means that overall, 3% of 9- to 10-year-olds, rising to 6% of 15- to 16-year-olds have been bothered by seeing sexual images online. Children from higher socioeconomic (SES) homes are more likely to be exposed to sexual images online (18%, vs. 10% for low SES children). High SES children are also more likely to be bothered by what they saw.

For many children, some exposure to some risk is necessary to build resilience. We cannot wrap our children in bubble-wrap and protect them from the world forever. Teenagers will seek out ways to explore their sexuality away from our gaze. But for some children, the same exposure may be harmful — depending on lots of factors, and this contingency — where much depends on the child, the online content, and the circumstances — cannot be avoided.

* Simon Grehan is webwise project co-ordinator at the Safer InternetIreland Awareness Centre at Dublin City University