Porn: Teen boys face dangers of addiction, misunderstanding consent

It is widely available, highly addictive and usually misogynist. So why are we not talking about the troubling fallout from young men watching porn?

They are the first generation of young men who have grown up with unrestrained access to porn in their formative years through the internet.

Now some are warning of the dangers — including around addiction and consent.

HOW IT BEGINS

It was the early 2000s. In a Port Macquarie house a group of teenage boys crowded around a computer.

“Check this out,” one said.

For Matt Van Dijk that moment would be life changing.

“I laughed nervously but I liked what I saw,” he admitted.

“I didn’t know it at 16 but the rush I got from porn that day would propel me down a path that nearly led to my marriage breakdown 11 years later.”

Soon he found himself a regular consumer. He believed once he got a girlfriend he would stop. But he couldn’t. His porn habit followed him into his first relationship, when they started living together and later married.

When he was 27 his wife Naomi, in the throes of post-natal depression, confronted him.

“She felt betrayed, cheated on, worthless,” he said.

“It broke her.”

Van Dijk, now 34, cites that moment — with his marriage on the brink of collapse — as the second turning point in his life.

“It took 18 months of talking completely honestly with my wife about my struggle, rebuilding trust and actively weeding myself off pornography,” he said.

Melbourne-based psychologist Nick Lawless.

“I realised early on that the problem with all of this starts much earlier before you actually consume porn.

“If you let your thoughts wander and don’t control them then they start shaping you as a person.”

Van Dijk, like many young men, talks about the addictive quality of internet porn.

Some neuroscientific studies suggest internet porn is the primary source of sexual education for teenagers and neuroscientific studies have found the addictive effects of using it are akin to substance use.

Four out of five young men and one out of five young women watch porn regularly — a by-product of the internet.

Melbourne-based psychologist Nick Lawless, 27, said if one of his clients used pornography frequently, he would get them to run an experiment: Stop using it for a period of time and see what happens.

“Though there have been some exceptions, most of the time they come back the next session and tell me they tried, they might have lasted a few days, but then the urge became too strong and they couldn’t help themselves,” he said.

“I don’t think we realise the hold that pornography has over us until we try to stop, and the reality is that many people growing up with pornography may have never tried to stop because it has just been such a regular part of their life for so long.”

WHAT’S AT STAKE

Rape. Torture. Strangulation. Gagging. Gang bangs.

It’s all there at one click of a button. The world’s largest pornography collection on a child’s phone. It’s no longer the magazine centrefold it once was. Mainstream porn is often violent and usually misogynist.

“Mainstream online porn conveys a whole range of deeply problematic messages about gender, power, aggression, consent and pleasure,” the director of It’s Time We Talked Maree Crabbe said.

One male, in his mid 20s, who didn’t want to be identified, described pornography as a “ticking time bomb” for his generation.

“The ‘men and women are equal’ stuff we get taught is hard to equate with porn,” he said.

Teenage boys are becoming addicted to pornography. Picture: Supplied/Generic image

He was in Year 5 on the family computer watching YouTube when he first encountered porn.

“I hardly knew what sex was,” he said.

“I was too young to know if what I was watching was good or bad.

“It wasn’t even arousing because I was just too young but it felt intoxicating and I was curious.”

The videos became more and more degrading to women.

“At first it was a woman having sex with another woman, then with a man, then a woman with lots of men,” he said.

Like so many young men he said he felt powerless to stop consuming porn.

“You feel really numb, nothing really interested me, in many senses you are essentially consuming a drug and nothing lives up to that,” he said.

“You don’t want to engage with girls, why would you? It would be like having beers and then having a non-alcoholic drink.”

He is adamant the school system needs to do a better job of teaching young people how to navigate the avalanche of pornography directed at them.

“If you are a young man porn finds you,” he said.

“By the time the sex-ed person comes in you have seen all that stuff and you are not even presented with the idea it is wrong.”

HEALTH CONCERNS

Health professionals report seeing first-hand the impact of pornography on the young.

Melbourne GP Billy Stoupas, 32, said doctors needed improved training on how to talk to young people about pornography.

“I’m a relatively young man so I’m across it, but it is a newer problem,” he said.

“Someone comes in feeling anxious, how do you know it is the porn they are watching? We know how to ask the questions about relationship stressors but we are not taught how to explore the issue of pornography in a relationship.”

Stoupas maintains he is not anti-porn.

Melbourne GP Billy Stoupas.

“Porn can teach people about their bodies and what they like and don’t like and have benefits for couples,” he said.

But he maintains the way teenage boys are consuming it is problematic.

“You need an understanding of the showmanship and the theatre in it,” he said.

“A lot of boys can’t process it at that age. The average time of intercourse is a few minutes but the expectations from porn is you are going to be hard for an hour, non-stop.

“I’ve had young adults talk about their first sexual encounter and it is not what they expected, they had these high expectations from porn and they feel led astray.

“Others cannot maintain sexual intimacy with their partner, some experience erectile dysfunction.”

And he said he feared for young women engaging with a generation of young men who had been educated about sex through porn.

“Consent in porn is implied consent. ‘No’ doesn’t mean ‘no’ in porn, ‘no’ usually means ‘yes’ or ‘keep going’,” he said.

“You can teach young women that it is OK to say no, but in a highly pressurised environment where there is alcohol flowing and young men who have learnt their sexual cues from porn, I fear for them.”

CONSENT EDUCATION IS NOT ENOUGH

In February a petition by former Kambala student Chanel Contos, 23, published thousands of former and current Sydney schoolgirls’ claims of sexual assault, sparking a national conversation around consent.

Contos describes porn as a reoccurring theme in the young women’s testimonies but not the central issue.

“Teenage boys need to know that porn does not reflect real life and they need to know they cannot expect teenage girls to do the things they see in porn,” she said.

“But we are not going to stop 13-year-old boys looking at porn rather we need to educate them, porn literacy should be included in a broader subject on consent.”

Chanel Contos says teen boys need to know porn does not reflect real life. Picture: Hollie Adams

But as the heat around the petition has increased, many schools have drawn the link between pornography and consent.

Last month Newington College headmaster Michael Parker spoke directly to Year 9-12 students about it and urged parents to do the same.

Cranbrook headmaster Nicholas Sampson described porn as the most “pernicious and undermining” of all influences on young men.

Gerard Trolove, 28, a presenter with Real Talk, said parents must be prepared to go into “uncomfortable spaces”.

“Deep down children trust their parents,” he said.

“The influence of parents has a lot more weight behind it than people would believe.

“We live in such a hyper-sexual world and there are so many teachable moments. The conversation might make you awkward to your bones but your children will pay the price if you don’t in terms of their relationships, marriages and wellbeing.”

Trolove’s relative youth makes him a relatable figure and importance voice for young men whose voices have been largely absent in a story about their bad behaviour.

His first exposure to pornography happened in the playground. He was 11.

“I still remember exactly how I felt,” he recalled.

“I had never seen a woman look like that.”

Excitement, curiosity and a porn habit followed. By the time his well-meaning parents did the obligatory “sex talk” they had little understanding for the sex-saturated world their son was growing up in.

Real Talk presenter Gerard Trolove.

It was his peers, who by then were well and truly entrenched in it, that filled the gap.

When he was 15 Trolove said he was starting to reflect on his choices.

“I’d met a girl I really liked and I remember thinking, ‘What would it be if the boot was on the other foot, if she spent her whole day thinking about other guys?’ ” he said.

“Porn makes you hyper-sexual. You can be down the street and see an attractive woman and you think straight away about being intimate with her.”

His decision to resist porn didn’t last long. Two weeks to be precise. But gradually he built resilience against it.

Trolove said many teenagers who try to give up porn or reduce their viewing felt “defeated” because of the addictive nature of it.

“When I talk to young men about porn, I suggest to them that resisting porn is a bit like lifting weights,” he said.

“It is not just about the decision, it is the repetition and perseverance that builds your strength.”

And he said young men were receptive to the message. Very often he is the first adult to speak to them about internet porn. Many thank him.

“I think the heart of young men is far different than what many people perceive,” he said.

“Young men do care, we just need the language to communicate with them, to bring to the surface what they intrinsically know.”

THE FUTURE

Associate Professor Michael Salter from the University of NSW said the link between pornography, consent and violence was “complex”.

“If pornography caused sexual violence, we would expect to see a massive increase over the last 20 years because porn is so much more common,” he said.

“That hasn’t been the case.”

But he said porn is exposing young people to sexual behaviours that they don’t fully understand and creating confusion around consent.

“The research suggests young women are being pressured into sexual practices they don’t want to engage in such as anal sex, which is very often not wanted, desired nor is it mutual.”

Former headmaster of The King’s School, Dr Timothy Hawkes.

Salter argued it was “well past time we had a serious conversation about regulation around adult content”.

“We have age-verification for online gambling sites — there’s no reason why this should not be applied to adult content sites as well,” he said.

A parliamentary inquiry looking at the impact of pornography on young people recommended in February 2020 mandatory age-verification for porn sites.

The committee said age-verification was not a “silver bullet” and that “protecting children and young people from online harms requires government, industry and the community to work together across a range of fronts”.

However, the committee also concluded that “age-verification can create a significant barrier to prevent young people — and particularly young children — from exposure to harmful online content”.

Twelve months on the federal government has not commented on the recommendations.

Dr Tim Hawkes, author and former headmaster of The King’s School in Parramatta, said legislators and educators needed to work with parents to build young men able to behave well in a highly sexualised society.

“Educators must do everything in their power to create a culture that helps young men cherish their sexual partners and neutralise the message of conquest so often presented by the porn industry,” he said.