‘Increasingly young age of exposure’: Role of violent pornography on teens under microscope

NSW will be the first state to hold a parliamentary inquiry into violent pornography after the Minns government ordered an investigation into the damaging impact that extreme online content can have on teenagers.

The state’s Attorney-General Michael Daley has asked the parliament’s standing committee on social issues to hold an urgent inquiry into harmful pornography – including violent and misogynistic content – and the role it has on young people’s mental, emotional and physical health.

Daley said the decision to order an inquiry followed growing concern about children’s exposure to such material amid worsening rates of violence against women.

Forty-eight per cent of Australian boys have seen pornography by the age of 13, and nearly 48 per cent of girls by 15.Credit: Illustration

The attorney-general pointed to a 2023 eSafety Commission report, extensively covered by the Herald, which found 75 per cent of 16- to 18-year-olds surveyed in Australia had seen online pornography, and almost one-third of those had encountered it before the age of 13.

The report also highlighted the risks of readily accessible “mainstream” pornography, which often contains depictions of sexual violence and degrading comments about women.

It found that 60 per cent of young people were exposed to pornography on social media, often unintentionally on popular sites including TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.

Daley has also asked that the inquiry report on the production and dissemination of deepfake or AI-generated pornography, the impacts on minority groups and the effectiveness of current restrictions on access to pornography – and consider if measures need to be tightened.

The attorney-general said “the normalisation of misogynistic and violent acts online” being easily available to young people in their formative years needed to be under the microscope.

“A generation of young men are growing up with unprecedented access … to pornography, with harmful depictions of the treatment of women,” Daley said.

“This inquiry will, for the first time in our state, provide insight into the full impacts”.

The NSW Women’s Safety Commissioner, Hannah Tonkin, said children were often inadvertently exposed to graphic sexual content.

“The increasingly young age of exposure is concerning because pornography often contains harmful messages and representations that normalise violence against women,” Tonkin said.

“This exposure comes at a crucial time in children’s lives when they are developing attitudes about gender roles, sex and relationships. There is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the impacts this is having on attitudes and behaviour, particularly those of boys and young men.”

The terms of reference for the inquiry include the age of first exposure to pornography, impacts on body image, and the relationship between pornography and consent education.

It will also look at the effects on minority groups, including First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, the LGBTQ community, and people living with disabilities.

Last month, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant gave tech platforms six months to come up with an industry code that protects children from graphic content.

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