Gen Z has been lured into consuming porn content without their understanding or consent, writes Debra Soh.show999/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
Debra Soh is a sex neuroscientist and the author of Sextinction: The Decline of Sex and the Future of Intimacy.
The average child today is exposed to pornography by the age of 12. Roughly one in seven kids sees it by the age of 10 or younger.
Although a child’s initial exposure to porn is usually accidental, for many, porn viewing becomes habitual. By the age of 16, more than 70 per cent of boys are watching porn five times a week.
Most of us would agree that exposure to adult content at a young age is not healthy. But what are the consequences, and how harmful are they?
More than half of Canadians were using the internet on a regular basis, by 2001, when the oldest members of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) were only four years old. Before experiencing their first crush or kiss, this cohort of kids would become privy to the darkest recesses of the internet.
As someone who was once a columnist for a well-known men’s magazine that featured nude women, I previously believed porn was harmless entertainment. But after conducting my own research more recently, I’ve realized the hazardous effects of porn are far-reaching, affecting not only young people’s dating and sex lives, but also, their mental health and broader well-being.
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If a child regularly watches porn prior to their first sexual experience, this can shape their sexual preferences and behaviour. At its extreme, this has manifested as an increase in child-on-child sex crimes, with children victimizing their younger family members and peers.
Of seven-to-11-year-olds in treatment for problematic sexual behaviours, 75 per cent of boys and 67 per cent of girls experienced early sexualization through online porn. A report from Britain described how a 12-year-old boy strangled a girl during their first kiss because he saw it in porn and thought it was normal.
Indeed, porn has spawned an epidemic of violent sex, including sexual choking (also known as sexual strangulation), in adults’ sex lives. But while Millennial women have protested this abusive and potentially fatal act, many Gen Z women oblige. In my opinion, porn exposure at a young age convinced Gen Z girls they have no choice but to like it. Adolescents who were raised on porn may believe this is how they must perform during sex to please their partner. For those who don’t want to, they may decide sex isn’t for them.
In addition to corrupting young people’s sexual encounters, porn has the potency to replace them outright. Dating has been steadily on the decline among Gen Z; less than half of high school seniors report ever going on dates in 2024, compared with nearly 90 per cent in the 1980s. Of young adults, less than a third are actively dating.
From a neuroscientific standpoint, porn activates the same brain regions that are involved during sexual activity. The viewer obtains sexual access on demand with an unlimited number of partners, while sidestepping any potential downsides of dating, including rejection, investing money and effort, and needing social skills so that the other person wants to sleep with you.
The problem is that watching porn (and having an accompanying orgasm) sedates men and further disincentivizes them from working up the courage to meet women in real life, especially post-#MeToo. This further perpetuates their belief that sex with an imaginary partner on a screen is equivalent or preferable to the real thing.
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Pornography consumption is associated with negative body image in both sexes, which can lessen their desire to interact with the opposite sex. The glorification of platforms like OnlyFans and the pornification of social media sites has additionally warped girls’ minds with messaging that hypersexualization is not only normative, but aspirational.
It’s a lot to live up to, and Gen Z women are pursuing cosmetic procedures, including breast augmentation and labiaplasty, to emulate the figure of a porn star. And Gen Z men, not spared from this brainwashing, are driving the popularity of interventions like penis filler injections to increase the girth of their manhood so they more closely resemble male porn actors.
In the realm of mental health, it’s well-documented that Gen Z suffers from anxiety and loneliness more than any previous generation. Potential explanations for this have included parental safetyism, digital nativism, social media, and excessive screen time.
I would expect that porn plays a role in perpetuating Gen Z’s poorer mental health, as porn viewing can increase social isolation and, in my research experience, is associated with poor coping skills, depression, and anxiety.
This may seem bleak, but all is not lost. A growing number of Gen Zers are quitting porn with the goal of improving their productivity, self-discipline, and health. Men who have successfully cut porn out have told me doing so helped their self-esteem and renewed their motivation to pursue women they are interested in, in real life. If you are a young man (or woman) who is struggling, know that it may take several attempts to quit, but you can do it.
For parents of young children, it’s crucial to talk to your kids about the dangers of porn before they encounter it. Nowadays, this likely means having conversations about sex and bodies much sooner than you had anticipated.
Once porn sites have hooked a child, they have a customer for life. Gen Z were lured into consuming this content without their understanding or consent, against a cultural backdrop that champions sexual permissiveness. In the coming years, we will continue discovering how this ongoing, worldwide experiment has moulded a generation of unsuspecting children in devastating ways.