Garbage In, Garbage Out: Dealing With A Teen Who Looks At Porn

When it comes to dealing with your teen and porn, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  There are numerous products available both on and off line that will block offensive sites from your computer.  Buy one and use it.

That said, you should also be aware that your teen will probably be exposed to pornography even if you do take these measures.  It may come in several forms, ranging from something considered soft, like an old fashioned Playboy magazine, to something more graphic in the form of dirty movies or website's he sees at a friend's house. 

In general, looking at porn is like a lot of things a teen does:  wrong, but not catastrophic.  It is tempting to blow things out of proportion with moral outrage based on either religious standards or feminist outrage.  This is probably not necessary, since looking at porn is, sadly, something of a rite of passage in our society.  This is sad, but real.

So, what do you do when you find your teen with porn?  First, insist that you do not want material like that in your home and he needs to respect your wishes.  Emphasize to him that it cheapens both the opposite sex and love.  Remind him that the person he is looking at is a human being just as valuable as he is, not some object to be ogled and humiliated.  Then impose whatever consequences you deem appropriate for the offense. If this tactic fails to work, I do have one more piece of somewhat radical advice.  Sit down and make him show you what he's looking at.  With the picture in front of both of you, ask him what he likes about it.  Hopefully, he will get such a sense of your disgust that he will think twice before looking at it again.

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