UK Commissioner Asks Parents to Talk to Their Nine-Year-Olds About Porn

A UK government commissioner has asked for parents to talk to their nine-year-old children about porn before they find themselves exposed to the material online.

Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, has asked for parents to start talking to their children about online pornography and sexting from when they are as young as eight or nine.

According to a report by the BBC, de Souza, along with a panel of young people, called for parents to have conversations with their children about porn at a much younger age, before they are exposed to the material themselves.

The advice comes after one programme on state-owned broadcaster the BBC asked earlier in the year whether “age-appropriate pornography” should be made for children.

The commissioner told parents that they needed to “talk early, talk often” in order to prepare children for online dangers, and this should be done ideally before their kids ever have a smartphone, or an account on social media.

“You might be surprised how early our young people felt parents need to start the conversation,” The Guardian reports the commissioner as saying. “But kids want an age‑appropriate conversation that evolves over time in line with their growing maturity.”

“My advice to parents and carers is to create the culture before the crisis,” she continued. “Children have told us they want their mums and dads to create a safe, judgment‑free space for them to talk about these issues. It’s better to do that before you hit a problem rather than trying to create that mood while you’re dealing with one.”

The suggestion that parents need to talk to their children about porn when they are at a very young age comes as the UK tries to grapple with how young people are accessing sexual material online.

BBC programme Women’s Hour asked the British public in August whether “age-appropriate pornography” should be made for kids.

The question was likely prompted by the controversy surrounding a call for “porn for children” to be produced by a Sunday Times contributing journalist.

“Someone needs to create porn for children. Hear me out. Young teens are already watching porn but they’re finding hardcore, aggressive videos that give a terrible view of sex,” read a post by the journalist online. “They need entry-level porn! A softcore site where everyone asks for consent and no one gets choked.”

In response to the call for comment by the BBC production, Conservative Home commentator Bella Wallersteiner said that “age-appropriate porn is grooming”.

“It’s becoming clear there aren’t any adults left at the BBC capable of critical thinking,” Wallersteiner continued.

UK pop star Billie Eilish meanwhile recently called porn a “disgrace“, saying that the content did damage to her sex life and her brain.

“As a woman, I think porn is a disgrace,” Eilish said during an interview this week. “I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was like 11.”

“I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn,” she continued, going on to lament the effect the material had on her expectations regarding sex.