What Is Internet Porn Doing to Kids?
June 26 -- Does looking at explicit images of sex damage a child's ability to have healthy relationships?
To date there has been no broad study of the question, but the psychologists ABCNEWS.com spoke to mostly agreed that their experience dealing with children in their practices indicates that boys who look at violent, raw images often develop a disrespectful attitude towards girls, while girls seem to become accepting of that kind of attitude from boys.
"It gives children a very negative message about sex, that it is connected with lewdness, rather than being attached to the human body and with a loving relationship," child and family therapist and author Meri Wallace said.
Beyond the emotional and psychological damage the images might do to youngsters, there is also the threat of physical harm not just from engaging in unprotected sex, but from coming to believe that the abuse shown on some sites or the images of children engaging in sex with adults is normal, the psychologists said.
"If the only information they're getting is fairly unfiltered, uncensored raw images from Web sites and they're not getting responsible information, they're going to make some pretty poor choices," said St. Louis University School of Medicine professor Dr. Ken Haller, who has been involved in an American Academy of Pediatrics initiative to study the impact of media, including the Internet, on children.
The Bush administration has been using those concerns as part of the basis for its drive to force public libraries and schools to install filters on computers used by the public or students, but the issue was powerfully brought home by the death this spring of a 13-year-old Connecticut girl who reportedly engaged in cybersex in Internet chat rooms and had a sexual relationship with a 24-year-old man who is accused of her murder.
The man said that he killed the girl accidentally, strangling her during consensual rough sex. Police said that the alleged encounter that ended in the girl's death was not her first with the accused man, and also might not have been her first with a man she met through the Internet.
A First Study
Despite the anecdotal evidence of that case and others like it, and of experiences child and family psychologists say they have had in their practices, there has been no study that would provide proof of the potential damaging effect on children of viewing raw images of sexual violence, but the National Institutes of Health has commissioned a 5-year project to examine the issue.
