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Parent24 : Teen 13-18 : development behaviour : Porn to be a teen

Porn to be a teen

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Have cellphones made porn access an everyday thing for teens?

By Sofia Tosolari

Pic: Getty Images

Article originally in Parent24

I was a young, liberal teacher at a local Cape Town high school. When they saw I was 22, new and a little naïve, the kids took it upon themselves to get my attention. Result: they began exposing me to the intricacies of their little worlds: to porn, fist-fights and parental-abuse.

I was soon given access to one favourite Grade 10’s world of secrets, which left me one-day staring at a pornographic image on his cellphone.

My teaching career ended soon after that. Having lost contact with the boy in question I decided to interview another connection, a young man currently in grade 12. The topic: cellphone porn in local Cape Town high schools. Although he did not mind being exposed, we’ll refer to him simply as Ian.

‘They call me the sexpert because I know a lot about sex and stuff, I always found it interesting,’ he says. So, I wondered, where do kids get the porn? ‘You can get it anywhere, and it’s free.’ He names a website. ‘You can download scenes or the whole movie’.

Professional imagery? ‘Nope, most of this is in fact simply homemade. Like with the grade 8s and 9s, there are kids making their own videos and showing them around’, says Ian.

Motives? ‘I dunno, it’s a status thing. It’s the same with your virginity, and if you haven’t lost it by grade 10, there’s something wrong with you’, says Ian. I shouldn’t be surprised, yet sadly I am...

So whilst porn has always been around for teenagers to gawk at, it seems that much easier with the introduction of cellphones, with stories including ‘rainbow parties’ where teens gather for an orgy to be filmed on a cellphone.

Sharon Paulus, a social worker at the Parent Centre in Cape Town confirms this: ‘Technology has simply highlighted the seriousness of the problem and taken it to a new level’, she says. ‘Today teens make their own blue movies, and with more children having access to cellphones and the internet, this problem could be on the increase’.

So there’s clearly a problem, what to do? According to Paulus, ‘parents need to listen, to acknowledge their teen’s feelings without blaming or shaming them.

On a very practical level: ‘parents should have rules guiding the use of cell phones with their child and consequences if these are broken’, she says. Parents need to consider why their child needs a cell phone in the first place and if they do; does it need to have a camera, bluetooth and internet accesses?’

‘Adolescents who are engaging in this kind of activity are really crying out for help,’ Paulus says, ‘letting people know through their behaviour that they lack something in their lives. Love and a sense of belonging are very important for children and are two of their basic human needs. If these are not met in the family the child will go looking for it elsewhere, i.e. gangs, cults, substance abuse, sex, relationships, etc.

‘Adolescents want excitement, seek peer acceptance, and find ways to show that they are superior to others. Teens also want to experiment and in the case of teen cell phone porn, it sounds as if there is a need to experiment in a real way and to have the visual proof .’

Do you think cellphone porn is a real issue? Is it a cry for help or normal teen rebellion?