Cosmopolitan has introduced a new X-rated Snapchat channel that essentially provides porn that is easily accessible to young people.
The sex-focused publication for young women advertises the new channel as “your guide to good sex all weekend long.”
“Can we turn your phone into the best sex toy ever?” Cosmopolitan.com teases on a webpage no longer available to readers. “Enter Cosmo After Dark, our new Snapchat channel … It’s an X-rated weekly edition that goes live every Friday at 6 p.m. and is exclusively dedicated to all things hot and horny,” it continues.
The sexy site is on Snapchat’s new “Discover” section. Though Cosmopolitan’s “target audience” is women between the ages of 18 and 34, some children in middle school and high school visit Cosmo online, and the covers of the print magazine are still open in some stores for children to view at the checkout counter.
Snapchat, however, is a whole different ballgame.
“Remember, there are almost no parental controls in Snapchat,” writes Chris McKenna at Protect Young Eyes – a site devoted to “defending kids from online danger. “There never have been. The Discover section has been a content mess from the beginning, which we’ve told parents about often. Have we forgotten how Snapchat started? As a social platform created by two college students who wanted to sext.”
McKenna has alerted parents to the new Snapchat channel:
“Cosmo After Dark seems to include a new, more pornographic level of sexualized content, even by Snapchat’s standards,” McKenna wrote, adding:
It’s for this reason that Protect Young Eyes is so concerned. Snapchat seems desperate. As a publicly traded company, making money is important. In the bloody waters of social media competition, it’s a feeding frenzy, and there are signs that Snapchat might not survive. Therefore, everything seems ok. They won’t say no to anyone.
McKenna said that while speaking at a public school in Michigan, he discovered 80 percent of 240 eighth-graders use Snapchat. He continued:
“But, Chris, not all kids who use Snapchat browse the Discover section.” I’ll concede – this might be true. But, in analog terms, would anyone in the 1990’s have thought it was a good idea to hand their 8th grade son or daughter a 3-page magazine where pictures of their close friends were on page one, pictures of people they kind of know are on page two, and porn is on page three? As soon as we translate a digital situation to an analog example, it clearly doesn’t make any sense.
McKenna says he is experimenting with how parents might have some control over Snapchat.
“The birthday that’s established by the Snapchat user has some bearing on the types of channels that are available, including some of the articles within certain channels,” he explains. “We’re going to continue testing this theory over the next few days by creating test accounts with different birthdays, but for now, it’s very important for parents who have teens using the app to have the correct birthday set.”
At Cosmo After Dark, young people have access to articles such as “The Steamiest Most X-Rated Sex Party Confessions,” “5 Mind Blowing Positions That Will Give You Multiple Orgasms, and “The 19 Best Sites to Binge-Watch Porn On.”
In addition to the tips on new positions to achieve multiple orgasms, Cosmopolitan.com says instead of horoscopes, Cosmo After Dark provides “sexoscopes,” which predict “what you can expect in the sack.”
“Here’s to having good sex all weekend, every damn weekend, forever and ever amen,” the publication touts.
According to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE), pornography is “a public health crisis”:
Children and young people are being exposed to violent and degrading content, which by default has served as their sex education. Once a social or health issue involves problems that affect individuals or groups beyond their capacity to correct – responsibility shifts from individual accountability to holding the forces and influences that cause it accountable. While educating individual parents to guide and protect their children is always part of any prevention plan, the problem is well beyond what individual parents and children can do to protect themselves.
NCSE observes, as well, that pornography is “linked to increased sexual violence” and teaches that “women enjoy sexual violence.”
Studies also show that pornography is addictive, has detrimental effects on brain functioning, and is linked to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).