Home » Children and teenagers increasingly connected to porn. Can it really damage the brain and its development?

Children and teenagers increasingly connected to porn. Can it really damage the brain and its development?

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“Watching porn at age 11 destroyed my brain”, begins the American singer Billie Eilish who has publicly declared that she systematically started seeing pornographic films at an early age and how much this, as a woman, has conditioned her. There is no doubt that this statement has triggered a whole series of reactions, because she is still very young and is followed by millions of children; for them he is an idol, a point of reference, a person to listen to because, especially in adolescence, children live according to their models. What they say or do for them is important and worth listening to because they trust them, they feel close to them, they would like to be like them.

Billie Eilish was needed

by Riccardo Luna


For this reason it is essential that those who have an influence on an audience, especially the younger one, begin to use their communication skills and influence not only for economic purposes related to popularity, but also in a more responsible way to speak. issues like this, crucial in growth, of which too little is still spoken. That boys are attracted to everything that is forbidden, including porn, especially in a phase of growth, of the discovery of one’s body, of one’s sexuality, also driven by an internal curiosity, is a normal condition and is certainly not linked to the web. or the pandemic. It is not online content that pushes young people towards pornography, because there has always been an attraction towards the discovery of physicality and sexuality.

Each era has its means: at first we looked into the keyhole and bought the magazines, obviously in secret, then we moved on to videotapes. Our brain is plastic and we adapt to external changes so, if external stimuli change, so does our way of approaching contents and the way in which they are offered to us. The problem with the network is that everything is within reach, everything immediately and a lot, I would say too much, especially in a phase of development and growth.
When everything was not easy and within reach, the condition itself set limits because even having to search or pay extended the time. You had to hide and you were aware that you were doing something you shouldn’t do. Today they don’t even have this perception anymore. It is as if having everything readily available or knowing that everyone is doing it automatically makes everything lawful and normal. Today it’s all there at your fingertips, all too simple. In addition, we must place this condition in a context in which there is a too early sexualization, there is a use and abuse of the body from many points of view, an exploitation, an objectification understood as a tendency to use the body as an object.

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All this in turn inserted in an evolutionary phase in which children, but also adolescents, are unable to attribute a relevant meaning and are unable to process this type of content, especially in this quantity. They are in a phase in which they have not yet acquired that knowledge on the functioning of their body, even at the level of relationships and affectivity, on physicality and sexuality itself. All of this means that what is seen risks being filtered out in a distorted way. Learning derives from the meaning we attribute to that content and those images and can have effects on our decision-making process, on the emotional, behavioral and even relational spheres. These contents are also inserted within a continuous bombardment of other contents that can promote a risk of normalizing specific ways of relating, of approaching oneself and others, to the point of developing a real addiction. Because the age of development is also the age in which children and adolescents are creating an image of their own body, of their physicality and of the discovery of this sphere. The discovery part is less and less because now everything is ready, everything too fast, so the stages are skipped. The risk is not only linked to an objectification of the woman, but it is also that of a normalization of the sharing of sexual content without there being more private spaces, limits and borders because the environment around the boys is also an environment. which does not reinforce from this point of view, which does not counterbalance these processes and this type of bombing. To become responsible one must also have an experience in a private space of the self in which the meaning of what we are doing can be elaborated. The role of adults cannot be that of controller but of filter to help them learn to think. The no and the boundaries also serve this purpose, but it is necessary to contextualize them, explain them, live together, also addressing these aspects of life, helping them to place them to give them a relevant meaning without blocking or prohibiting them because this would mean living them without elaborating them. Getting around the prohibitions and controls is quite easy and, if they do, they approach them without tools, thus risking to have a distorted filter of reality.
To understand this dynamic we must enter their brain for a moment because the part of reasoning and planning, of discernment, that is the ability to distinguish and to see clearly, of critical thinking, also understood as the ability to evaluate, during the adolescent phases is immature. . It is precisely that part of the brain that should control the most emotional one, which is instead more active during adolescence. This means that they experience both internal and external stimuli in a much more intense way, they are much more reactive and are also influenced more by what they see because for them what they see is real, because our brain responds to images in the same way. in which it responds to real conditions. All this leaves traces in the memory and activates learning.

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The problem of pornography is not an issue of the moment, it has simply been raised now. Fuss are cyclically raised that remain such, like that of 2019 after the release of the film After based on the novel of the same name. Thousands of parents were worried that their minor children, especially under the age of 14, had come into contact with this type of images and contents in which eroticism and sexuality were spoken of in a very explicit way. The concern was related to which strategies to activate to prohibit the vision. In parallel, the Netflix series most viewed by children are precisely those related to sexuality such as Sex Education or Sexify, which deal with these aspects. Kids need to know and to know, they need to look for answers. Let’s be careful because if they don’t find them where they are supposed to, they will search for them online.

If in educational environments they find only a wall of “don’t do it”, “it’s not right”, “you mustn’t do it”, “it’s wrong”, and they still have this urge to want to know, they will automatically look for an alternative. Without a developed critical capacity, however, they perceive what they see as real. In educational contexts too little work is still done on the difference between fantasy and reality, between imagination and reality, so very often the boundary between the two is too blurred or in some cases non-existent.

The solution that solves the problem does not exist, but there are actions that can be taken to stem the problem and work more at the root. Surely we need to work more on education because educating does not mean instigating sex, as many parents and even teachers believe; educating about sexuality does not mean talking about sex explicitly from an early age. Sexuality also involves knowledge of one’s body, of the sexual and reproductive organs, it also involves all those aspects linked to proximity and distance from the other, to the affective, empathic component of respect. They need to have this kind of information. This is demonstrated precisely by the fact that in digital platforms, especially on TikTok, various types of experts such as sexologists, psychologists or educators who answer their questions. If you stop to read the comments and questions they ask the experts, you feel that they expose doubts, perplexities and problems related to everyday life, which make us understand how much ignorance there is from this point of view.

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The responsibility is not theirs but of those who do not train them, because even in adolescence there are many things about their body and about sexual relations that they do not know and that they should know. An adequate education in sexuality promotes individual well-being, helps to live one’s relationships more pertinently, not to send pornographic material, not to use technology by putting oneself in conditions of risk, to live relationships with others in a natural way. . Often, in fact, even the mere desire to have physical closeness with another person generates anxiety and fear. Knowing makes them more serene and calmer and makes them live more appropriately what they want to live. It helps them to love and respect themselves and each other. Many times the lack of active knowledge in children of the insecurities and fears they try to compensate with the answers found online. All this can also create fear of facing the other and many children withdraw into themselves, in virtual shelters and no longer face either themselves or the other. There have also been cases in which girls were lured on the net by fake gynecologists who answered their questions, cases in which, unfortunately, sexual violence also occurred. These people take advantage of the vulnerabilities and shortcomings of children.

Being present in their life also from this point of view also means avoiding risk conditions, it means supporting them in their growth process, accepting that they also grow from a sexual point of view.

You can use technology as an aid, for example by watching these series in streaming with them, using these books or movies as well. Today on the various social channels it is possible to find many videos that can help parents and teachers to talk about these aspects. Talking about it in a balanced way means first of all clearing taboos and entering their minds, understanding how they think, as I write in my latest book “Read me in my thoughts”, and see if they have any distortions regarding sexuality and aspects related to affectivity and to the relational sphere to work together and be able to give them the most pertinent and correct information they need to face themselves and others.

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