The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has revealed that 60 per cent of children aged 11 to 13 have seen pornography. The American Psychological Association (APA) states that boys are “more likely to view porn” (and “use increases with age”).
It has been proven that visual porn is damaging to young people (and children’s) perception of what sex is – on Pornhub, 88 per cent of the most popular porn videos contained content classed as violent (with actions such as spanking and gagging being used), almost 49 per cent also contained verbal abuse- and typically, these acts were being done by a man. It can’t be argued that this depiction of sex being normalised is damaging- no child’s first exposure to sex should also be littered with the condoning of violence, typically perpetrated against women.
But visual pornography is not the only type of porn that (because of the internet) has become readily available to children. Wattpad- a self-publishing website infamous for hosting horribly written fanfiction, self-insert ‘imagines’ and fantasy novels (these fantasy novels became so popular, the website now has an entire section dedicated to “werewolf”). Now. Full transparency, I remember using Wattpad as a thirteen year old, and devouring the young adult section (personal favourites were “The Bad Boy Stole My Bra” a teen romance about a girl getting into a prank war with her new “bad boy” neighbour, and “After” a now famous One Direction fanfiction that has since become a worldwide bestseller, and multimillion dollar movie franchise). And look, by all accounts, these books were relatively harmless- many of the young adult novels were innocent with “fade to black” sex scenes and the focus was mainly on the ever-important first kiss.
However, Wattpad doesn’t only host fanfiction written by thirteen year olds and fade to black style coming of age stories. All it takes is one search and you can find millions of self-published pornographic short stories (it’s somewhat reassuring to see print media lives on in the modern age), with content ranging from the taboo ‘older man, younger woman’ to truly niche kink style scenes (that have thousands of readers).
To make a Wattpad account, you ‘need’ to be thirteen years old- but this feels the same as Pornhub saying you are supposed to be eighteen to watch their content: there are no real security measures to keep these rules being followed. And to only be thirteen to access a website that has endless depictions of very abusive sexual relationships, feels wrong.
Once again, I am embarrassing myself by admitting that my introduction to sex and sexual relationships was through stories on Wattpad, through these so called ‘teen romances’. If anyone has (sadly) seen or read the After franchise, you will know that the relationship between ‘Tessa’ and ‘Hardin’ (I still do laugh that author Anna Todd had to change all the male characters’ names from Harry, Louis, Liam, Niall and Zayn, and her best alternative for Harry was ‘Hardin’), is extremely toxic and there is a definite argument for it being abusive.
Now, I know that anyone reading this who is a die hard fan of the After series (to which I do have to ask…how?), could argue that mainstream novels like those published by Colleen Hoover also depict abusive relationships (where the abuse typically is hurled at the women). But to that I do also argue that at least print novels aren’t accessible to thirteen year olds completely unmonitored by parents, or teachers, or any other responsible adult.
Any website that has pornographic material easily accessible to children shouldn’t be allowed to stay online without serious change (not even getting into Pornhub’s other issues with regards to the treatment of the sex workers used for the website), but it still feels a bit dramatic to compare Wattpad to literal Pornhub- but maybe this is just me clinging onto my childhood, where I did think The Bad Boy Stole My Bra was the peak of literature, the likes of which I could never reach the summit of.
“Wattpad” by ArinAlex is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Is Wattpad as bad as Pornhub?
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has revealed that 60 per cent of children aged 11 to 13 have seen pornography. The American Psychological Association (APA) states that boys are “more likely to view porn” (and “use increases with age”).
It has been proven that visual porn is damaging to young people (and children’s) perception of what sex is – on Pornhub, 88 per cent of the most popular porn videos contained content classed as violent (with actions such as spanking and gagging being used), almost 49 per cent also contained verbal abuse- and typically, these acts were being done by a man. It can’t be argued that this depiction of sex being normalised is damaging- no child’s first exposure to sex should also be littered with the condoning of violence, typically perpetrated against women.
But visual pornography is not the only type of porn that (because of the internet) has become readily available to children. Wattpad- a self-publishing website infamous for hosting horribly written fanfiction, self-insert ‘imagines’ and fantasy novels (these fantasy novels became so popular, the website now has an entire section dedicated to “werewolf”). Now. Full transparency, I remember using Wattpad as a thirteen year old, and devouring the young adult section (personal favourites were “The Bad Boy Stole My Bra” a teen romance about a girl getting into a prank war with her new “bad boy” neighbour, and “After” a now famous One Direction fanfiction that has since become a worldwide bestseller, and multimillion dollar movie franchise). And look, by all accounts, these books were relatively harmless- many of the young adult novels were innocent with “fade to black” sex scenes and the focus was mainly on the ever-important first kiss.
However, Wattpad doesn’t only host fanfiction written by thirteen year olds and fade to black style coming of age stories. All it takes is one search and you can find millions of self-published pornographic short stories (it’s somewhat reassuring to see print media lives on in the modern age), with content ranging from the taboo ‘older man, younger woman’ to truly niche kink style scenes (that have thousands of readers).
To make a Wattpad account, you ‘need’ to be thirteen years old- but this feels the same as Pornhub saying you are supposed to be eighteen to watch their content: there are no real security measures to keep these rules being followed. And to only be thirteen to access a website that has endless depictions of very abusive sexual relationships, feels wrong.
Once again, I am embarrassing myself by admitting that my introduction to sex and sexual relationships was through stories on Wattpad, through these so called ‘teen romances’. If anyone has (sadly) seen or read the After franchise, you will know that the relationship between ‘Tessa’ and ‘Hardin’ (I still do laugh that author Anna Todd had to change all the male characters’ names from Harry, Louis, Liam, Niall and Zayn, and her best alternative for Harry was ‘Hardin’), is extremely toxic and there is a definite argument for it being abusive.
Now, I know that anyone reading this who is a die hard fan of the After series (to which I do have to ask…how?), could argue that mainstream novels like those published by Colleen Hoover also depict abusive relationships (where the abuse typically is hurled at the women). But to that I do also argue that at least print novels aren’t accessible to thirteen year olds completely unmonitored by parents, or teachers, or any other responsible adult.
Any website that has pornographic material easily accessible to children shouldn’t be allowed to stay online without serious change (not even getting into Pornhub’s other issues with regards to the treatment of the sex workers used for the website), but it still feels a bit dramatic to compare Wattpad to literal Pornhub- but maybe this is just me clinging onto my childhood, where I did think The Bad Boy Stole My Bra was the peak of literature, the likes of which I could never reach the summit of.
“Wattpad” by ArinAlex is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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