Our Kids Online: The Porn Epidemic

Moving The Education Expectations

On June 26, 2019, various media outlets ran articles on the blocking of 300,000 online searches for pornography in New Zealand schools in a four-week period.

To me, it came as no surprise that kids were searching at such high levels. I’m halfway through making a documentary on this very subject: Kids accessing online pornography.

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Roughly eight months ago, my husband Rob and I, stumbled upon some shocking information while researching the pros and cons of giving our kids handheld devices, such a smartphones and tablets.

In particular in relation to exposure to today’s mainstream genres of free Internet pornography. In today’s world, the availability of this is instant, at the touch of a button. All you need is a pair of eyes, a finger that can swipe and your own handheld device or that in the hands of another person. And so, exposure is starting at extremely young ages.

What we discovered were a plethora of issues our kids are facing as a result of this exposure. Issues including confusion over biological arousal at the same time as feelings of shame, confusion over sexual orientation, porn addiction, erectile dysfunction, possible qualification for distribution of child pornography as a result of shared naked selfies, blurred sexual boundaries, an unawareness of the meaning of consent, using violent and degrading porn as sex education, increases in physical damage of genitalia, decreases in emotional wellbeing and at the worst, a rise in child-on-child violent sexual assault, due to curiosity and modelling behaviours.

The ‘NZ Youth on Porn’ study carried out by the Office of Film & Literature Classification in December 2018, showed that 73% of over 2,000 14-17 year olds are using pornography as sex education.

This is happening to our children because children are wired to be naturally curious. As they try to work out how to become adults, they are taking their cues, including their sexual cues, from the world around them. Handheld devices and gaming consoles are bringing sexual cues to them in a way that we have never experienced in the history of mankind.

In addition to our research, we decided to start to meeting with and interviewing experts and professionals already involved in this field here in New Zealand, as well as in the USA and Australia.

We also started talking to communities: School teachers and counsellors, high school students and parents. We realised some fundamental things:

We realised there is a huge gap between what a lot of parents think they know in relation to Internet porn access and the fall- out from exposure. We heard a lot of , “Not my kid,” and, “I saw porn when I was a kid and didn’t do me any harm.”

But Internet porn exposure does not care for age, gender or your background circumstances and family values. The magnitude of

24/7 access to over 70 years-worth of pornographic images and videos online affects the brain in a way seeing an old school ‘Playboy’ never could.

Along with our knowledge came a massive burden. We learned that this is a burden we are carrying along different people in different sectors, and in particular, the education sector. We learned that kids are asking adults to do something to restrict their ability to online porn because it’s harming them.

It is an unfair expectation to land the education for this topic solely outside of the family home. It is unfair for that expectation to be heavily geared toward schools, which was another thing we heard from parents. We want to help shift the expectation of responsibility to include parents in the first instance. We want to do this by making them feel empowered.

As a result of all this research, we are making a documentary to show parents and caregivers our journey and share what we have learned. From the change in the genres of porn, the rewiring of the brain caused by online accessing, the plethora of issues our kids face to the many things that can easily be put in place to protect kids.

Our documentary will provide access to information that will help educate on this epidemic. It will show the ways in which we can talk to our children about sex and porn, first and foremost at home (because if we don’t teach them about sex in a way that we think is healthy and aligned with our values, the Internet and today’s genres of porn will). The documentary will also highlight courses, books, software and apps that help keep children safe and know what to do when they are exposed.

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Zareen Sheikh-Cope


Zareen is a mum, wife, step-mum, psychology enthusiast, motivational speaker & writer with extensive experience in the field of emotional resilience. She and her husband created a documentary on an issue she describes as, “The biggest un-had conversation of our time.” ‘Our Kids Online: The Porn Epidemic,’ is the story of uncovering how easily kids are accessing online pornography and the devastating impacts it causes.