Pornography being used for teens' sex education

This is an issue that’s never discussed in the public square as to the damage pornography does to how children view sex. 

 Stuff Con reports pornography has become the most common form of "sex education" for teenagers - to the point where it is now dictating the way they behave in relationships, new research has found. 

Acceptance of violence and extreme sex acts are also on the rise among youth, as more aggression seeps into the increasingly competitive porn market.

Figures from the research, based on academic papers and interviews with young people in Australia, showed that by age 16, 90 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls interviewed had encountered porn. 

A content analysis showed nearly 90 per cent of scenes included acts of physical aggression - such as hitting, choking or gagging - and that in 94 per cent of cases, the aggression was directed towards women who were often shown enjoying it. 

"The young people we spoke to continually described the way porn's signature sex acts are finding their way into their own sexual activity," said researcher Maree Crabbe.

"The young women mentioned again and again about feeling pressure from their partners . . . and feeling used and dirty and degraded." 

A documentary based on the research, which experts say would probably be mirrored if a similar study was done in New Zealand, will be screened this week as part of an $800,000 government-funded project into porn by Auckland University. Called Love and Sex in an age of Pornography, it features interviews with more than 70 young people, as well as actors, agents and directors in the porn industry, talking about the increasing aggression in sex movies and the effect it has on our view of "normal" sexual behavior.

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