When parents think about protecting their children from pornography, most are thinking about their sons. Little girls aren’t interested in these things, are they? The fact is that boys and girls are equally curious, but as a society we tend to ignore the needs and curiosities of the female sex. We do it to their detriment. In this age of ever-available Internet porn, little girls and little boys have equal access to material that they may not understand and which can cause lasting damage and may even lead to pornography addiction.
Porn: Men vs. Women
Both boys and girls have a healthy and a natural curiosity about sex. It’s something we are born with, and is a part of our biology. With the Internet providing a wealth of material to explore, both boys and girls are likely to find it. Even with parental controls in place, many technology-savvy kids are able to access Internet porn and do it without their parents knowing about it. Stories of addiction that began in childhood are becoming more common. Historically, it is true that boys and men are more likely to seek help for an addiction to porn, but that may simply be attributable to the fact that women don’t report their problems. Women are expected to have less interest in anything sexual and tend to feel more shame and guilt when turning to porn. Men and women both react in the same way to porn. It gives them the same high when using it to orgasm. The main difference is the feeling of guilt afterward and this can mean that using porn is much more damaging for girls and women than it is for men.
When Is Watching Porn an Addiction?
Most experts agree that using porn can be normal and healthy and that it is not always necessary to call a habit of using explicit materials an addiction. Even spending just a few minutes a day with porn, although a regular habit, does not necessarily mean a woman or a girl has an addiction. Porn can become addictive when the user spends a lot of free time thinking about it, or when she needs material that is increasingly hardcore to be satisfied. When porn impacts other areas of a woman’s life, this can also be a sign of an addiction.
Protecting Girls From Porn Addiction
Parents need to be aware of the possibility that any one of their children, male or female, could be accessing and using pornography. All smart parents are monitoring their children’s Internet usage and putting filters in place. Kids are smart about technology, though, and can access material that their parents may not be aware of. Because kids can outsmart their parents, it is important to talk to children about sex and pornography. Many women negatively impacted by porn report having little knowledge of sex or how pornography misrepresents sex. When girls are educated they are better able to understand and process what they are seeing in a healthy way. Otherwise they can be led to believe that porn is normal and to believe in unrealistic expectations about their own bodies and what men want from them. Pornography can either be a healthy outlet for sexual drive and curiosity, or it can be a damaging habit that becomes addictive. It can be either of these things for boys and for girls. If you are the parent of a girl, talk to her about sex and pornography before she discovers it on her own.