One of the things that surprised us most in our interviews and with our clients is just how often porn use starts in childhood or adolescence. Our first exposure may happen in many different ways, but most of us are exposed when we’re much too young.
Thirty-two-year-old Tyler, for example, remembers seeing his first pornographic magazine when he was just five years old and playing at a friend’s house. “The magazine belonged to my friend’s dad and it was just sitting around their living room. The father didn’t seem to care. I remember seeing lots of pictures of women with big breasts and some of naked men and women having intercourse,” says Tyler. “I found it fascinating. Obviously, I didn’t understand anything about the mechanics of sex, but I was drawn to it because it was so new and mysterious. It’s something you don’t see every day when you’re five.”
Gil, a thirty-four-year-old millworker, stumbled across a Penthouse in his father’s desk drawer one day. He was nine years old and home from school with the flu. Gil says, “I wasn’t consciously looking for anything. I just came across it. I thumbed through it. I was curious and it confused me a little. And somehow it got me thinking differently about my dad. I put the magazine back in a different place from where I found it. I think I was trying to let him know I’d seen it. But I never heard from him about it.”
Finding a parent’s porn stash is a common way kids are exposed to porn. To a child, discovering porn can feel like finding buried treasure. After all, the porn stash must be very special and precious, or else the parent wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to hoard and secretly hide it. The value of the stash is further increased by the fact that it is very eye-catching and stirs up strong, visceral feelings for the viewer. Most children intuitively know they can’t share their discovery with their parents, because they will either be punished or, at the very least, no longer have ready access to their newfound treasure. But the mere existence of the stash teaches the child about being secretive and hiding things from others. When it comes to porn use, this pattern is often one that is continued through a lifetime.
Another common way kids have their first exposure to porn is by having it introduced to them by a relative or friend. Being shown porn enthusiastically by someone who is older or perceived as more worldly can make an experience of looking at porn by a child feel particularly exhilarating. In fact, a kind of “contagious excitement” can take place. When we’re young we often take our cues for how to feel about something from those we look up to and want to emulate. We imitate them. We register and adopt their reactions.
Justin’s story is a good example of being exposed to porn by a relative. When he was nine, his uncle showed him porn for the first time while babysitting him. “He sat me and my two younger brothers down on the couch next to him. We thought he was going to read us a story, but instead he pulled out a Playboy magazine and showed us the pictures. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Uncle Fred got very excited flipping through the pages, and so did we. I got a great rush from it, like an alcoholic’s first drink. He showed them to us again, numerous times after that, whenever he babysat.”
In another example, Rob, forty-three years old, was shown his first porn photo at home by his older brother. “I was seven years old and just sitting on my bed,” says Rob. “My brother trumpeted it as a big thing. He held the magazine behind his back and announced: ‘I’m just about ready to show you something amazing. Get ready for this. It is gonna really blow your mind.’ Then he pulled it out and opened it up. It was a picture of a half-naked woman. She was incredibly beautiful. I can still see her clearly in my mind’s eye to this day. Her image got burned on my brain and put in the vault.”
Among those we interviewed, looking at porn with friends, being shown porn by relatives, and finding a parent’s porn stash were the most common types of first encounters with porn. Today, however, more kids are stumbling across porn on the Internet. In fact, one in four kids who have Internet access experience accidental exposure to porn in any given year. Nine out of ten children between the ages of eight and sixteen years old report they have viewed porn online. And according to another study, nearly half of the children who viewed porn by accident say they cannot forget that first image. As a result, premature exposure to sexual material that is meant for adults is a problem that is rapidly becoming a pandemic.