Porn: Whats the Harm

This programme contains some scenes of a sexual nature

Pornography is everywhere, and with smartphones and tablets making it easier than ever to get hold of,

there are fears that each generation is seeing porn earlier than the one before.

How old were you when this happened? Eight.

You were eight?!

So how much porn do kids REALLY see?

I haven't even had to prove my age yet

and some of the most explicit images I have...

EVER seen are on this website.

And what does that mean for a generation

that always has porn at their fingertips?

I've seen some pretty scary stuff on the internet.

To us, it's just normal, because we've seen it that many times.

To discover the truth about kids and porn, we've done an exclusive survey

with over 1,000 teens giving it to us straight about what they've seen.

Who watches porn?

Me. Me. I'm not going to lie, innit?

Yeah. All of us do. Yeah.

And how it makes them feel.

It sort of makes you feel a bit embarrassed, er,

because I don't want to look at stuff like that.

I'll meet the people behind some of what the kids are watching...

I think people need to understand that, that it's not real. It's...

It's not how I would have sex at home at all.

..and find out if they're worried about who's watching.

Aw!

'I definitely wouldn't change it.'

I'd do it again, if I could go back in time to do it.

And as I hear about the effect some say porn has had on them...

For him to just think that... that I was an object

that he could use seemed so similar to the images that I saw.

..I'll discover whether teaching kids about porn is the answer

and, if so, at what age should that start?

When we said we were going to school,

I didn't know it would be primary.

I mean, these are kids who are sort of 10 and under.

My name's Jameela Jamil.

I'm a writer, a presenter and a DJ

and, every week, I host the Radio 1 Official Chart.

Last week, I announced that

Calvin Harris, Alleso and Hurts topped the official chart.

"Feel So Close" by Calvin Harris

I've been working in the music industry since I was 19,

and I'm in touch with thousands of teenagers

through my blog and on Twitter.

So, although I'm now in my twenties,

I still like to think I know what's going on.

But it seems there's one area

where I don't know quite as much as I thought I did.

I think the first time young people see porn,

they're probably around 12, 13,

like going into the first and second years of high school.

I don't really watch it,

but my friends tell me some of it is really disturbing and they might...

Like, say if they wanted to try it out and...

I don't think that'd be good.

My mum can't even access the computer and if she knew how to

and if she went on the sites which young people were looking at,

she'd just be horrified. Cos it is, in my mind, it's disgusting.

When it comes to sex and relationships,

I'm pretty open minded. And although I don't use porn myself,

I know a lot of adults who do and I don't have a problem with that.

But like most people, I've seen all the scare stories

about how much young kids now watch it too.

So I want to know if that's true

and if we really do have a generation growing up watching porn.

I remember I was 15 the first time

I ever came across proper pornography, because it was

at a time really before the internet was as huge as it is.

I was at a friend's house and they were watching it,

and I had a little look and I'm not going to get too graphic,

but the things that I saw done with a cucumber and a woman

genuinely made me not eat a salad for 12 years.

That was in 2002 and, to be honest,

I haven't really seen much porn since.

But today's 15-year-olds have grown up in

an age of smartphones and tablets,

and it's reckoned that a quarter of 9 to 16-year-olds

will have seen porn in the last 12 months.

So what exactly is pornography?

Legally, it's defined as an image that's

"assumed to have been produced solely or principally

"for the purpose of sexual arousal"

I've genuinely never searched for porn before, but I'm now so curious

to see what it is that young people are seeing out there

and, more so, how easy it is to actually access.

So OK, I'm just going to type in the word porn...

I know this seems really basic, but I'm just going to type in

the word porn into a search engine and just see what happens.

OK...porn.

There are 436 million results in 28 seconds,

so just an abundance of free porn sites have come up.

So I'll click on the first one.

OK, I haven't even had to prove my age yet

and some of the most explicit images I have...

EVER seen are on this website.

There's a lot of use of the words "teen slut".

It's just...

It's lot of really... SHE SIGHS

..sort of distressing images of women

looking like they're in quite a lot of pain.

Just performing these unbelievably explicit sex acts.

They all look really young.

I'm not even a parent yet and I'm already terrified

of the idea of having children knowing what's out there.

I completely get why people would be concerned

about their children going on the internet. This is unbelievable!

'But easy access to porn is

'something that ordinary families have to deal with every day.'

Hi. Hi. I'm Jameela. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Do come in.

Alison and her husband James have two sons -

Cameron, aged 10, and 18-year-old Brandon.

It's only an eight-year age gap, but in terms of access to porn,

these boys might as well come from different worlds.

When Brandon was ten,

he'd have been playing on a little games console. No wi-fi,

no internet. I don't even think we had a computer when Brandon was 10.

Certainly no smartphones.

So there wasn't... We were still doing the thing of

"Don't walk backwards up the slide, cos you'll bump yourself."

How young do you think it is

that young people can start watching pornography or do start

coming across at least pornography, even if it's accidental?

I would've said about 8, 10.

We actually had an incident here where Cameron was upstairs

and we only found out by chance, because of the phone bill.

And one of his friends had gone upstairs

and put the porn channel on.

'I'm intrigued by this revelation,

'so I decide to have a little chat with ten-year-old Cameron.'

My friend came over to my house one time, we put on my TV,

and he said, "Put this porn channel on."

And he rang the porn channel up and it cost money.

How old were you when this happened? Er, eight.

You were eight?! And your friend knew about the porn channel,

what it was and how to get onto it? Yeah.

So after your friend had shown you the pornography,

how did it come about, like how where you able

to talk about it? What happened next? Um...

I went downstairs feeling confused.

I didn't tell my mum, but... How come? Um...

I didn't feel safe about it, I didn't know what it was,

so I didn't feel right to tell her about it.

But then, a phone bill came in

and my mum started questioning me about it.

So what did your mum do? How did she react? She was furious.

18-year-old Brandon is concerned

about what else his little brother might be exposed to.

I do worry about him. I do worry about the stuff out there

that he hasn't seen, because of the explicit material out there.

So it's just a worry of if he's going to see it,

when he's going to see it, cos, one day, he most likely will

and how it's going to affect him.

I just hope that it doesn't affect him too much.

So is it inevitable that online porn

will become part of every teenager's life?

To find out, I need to hear from kids themselves.

And first, I've come to one of the very few schools

where pornography is openly discussed.

This workshop is run by Rape Crisis South London.

Who watches porn? Me. Me.

I'm not going to lie, innit? Yeah. All of us do.

We'd be lying if we told you we didn't.

Every single teenage guy watches porn.

You think every single guy watches porn? Yeah, definitely. True story.

There's not a guy out there who doesn't watch porn?

I'd be surprised. You'd be surprised? OK.

'I'm sitting in on sessions with boys and girls and, like me,

'they're shocked to learn that the porn industry is worth billions!'

4 billion by the end of 2012

was spent on pornography via mobile phones.

When young people watch pornography,

do you think young people feel pressured?

Well, the girls watching it might think, like,

they need to act like that, and the same for the boys.

How do girls act in porn? Like they're liking it.

Yeah, they put it on a little bit, I think.

A little bit?! Quite a lot, I think.

Do you think it means that young people sometimes

have different expectations of what sex will be like?

Yeah, because I think young people will see it

and think they can treat a woman in that way

and it's not right to treat a woman in that way.

Like, with porn videos, they last bear long, innit, yeah?

But if you're having sex for the first time,

you're not going to last, like, 25 minutes, are you?

No. More like 10... Maybe. Seconds.

LAUGHTER

And do you, young ladies, feel like there is a pressure among girls

to maybe behave like the porn starlets?

If we started, like, behaving like a porn star,

we'd get called slut.

But if the boys do it...

GIGGLING

It's true! Yeah, it is true.

When girls go around having sex with boys,

they're called a slag, but when boys do it...

It's like an achievement, yeah. An achievement. They'll be like...

It's just boys! It's like, "Good on you, mate,"

but with a girl, it's not good.