Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697635743031.pdf (Australia)
A submission by APACS to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee Inquiry into the harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the Internet March 2016 Contact person Professor Marilyn Campbell Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 2 Introduction This report has been compiled by searching academic databases, Google Scholar, the internet and submissions by members.
The submission does not necessarily reflect the professional experiences of each and every member of APACS or the views of the state/territory chapters and affiliations.
It addresses the questions of harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the Internet, with particular reference to: (a) trends of online consumption of pornography by children and their impact on the development of healthy and respectful relationships; (b) current methods taken towards harm minimisation in other jurisdictions, and the effectiveness of those methods; (c) the identification of any measures with the potential for implementation in Australia; and (d) any other related matters.
Executive Summary and Recommendations There is a dearth of recent Australian or international studies which give us accurate figures on the trend of online consumption of pornography by Australian children.

Only one study was found where16 or 17-year-olds were interviewed.

Thirty-eight percent of boys had searched the internet for sex sites and 2% of girls.

In contrast 84% of boys and 60% of girls said they had been accidentally exposed to sex sites on the internet (Flood, 2007).
Similar to the studies of the prevalence or trends of children’s access to online pornography, studies of the impact of pornography consumption among children is extremely small and very dated.

It has been shown that consumption of pornography often results in sexually aggressive behaviour and liberal sexual attitudes.

Most current measures seem to be preventative measures to stop children’s access to pornography online.
Technical solutions are usually the first avenue, with parental monitoring or legal and ISP measures.

Parental communication and school education aim for both preventive and intervention strategies.
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 3 Recommendations 1.To the Federal Government Schools and parents should be encouraged to install filters and blocking devices on computers and phones, realising that they only work sometimes and only for preventing some accidental access to pornography online.
With the Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical education, safe use of the internet needs to be included, made mandatory for all states and be taught developmentally by teachers.

Also relationship education needs to address access and exposure to pornography.

2.
2.

To the office of the e-safety commissioner The office should commission an Australian longitudinal study to investigate the trends of online consumption of pornography by children and its impact on the development of healthy and respectful relationships, together with a literature review on the effectiveness of prevention and harm minimisation to apply specifically within the Australian context.

This should involve a cross-disciplinary team of psychological, educational and legal researchers.

3.
3.

To State Education Departments Parental open communication with children is an evidence-based strategy to reduce online pornography viewing.

However, support needs to be provided as many parents find it difficult to talk to their children about sexual health and pornography.
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 4 About APACS The national Australian Psychologists and Counsellors in Schools (APACS) is the professional association in Australia for school psychologists, guidance officers and counsellors.

APACS represents the interests of members and endeavours to meet their professional needs.

APACS has over a thousand members across Australia who work in school settings assisting students, teachers and parents.
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 5 1.1 Definitions Pornography in this submission is considered to be sexually explicit material, usually images.

The purpose of pornography is to sexually arouse the audience (Malamuth, 2001) and therefore, would not, in this submission, include nudity in art or young people sexting by sending nude pictures of themselves to others.
The term young people will refer to children (usually aged 0-12-years) and adolescents (13-17-years-old).

1.2 Internet access While pornography has been accessible to young people before the internet by way of magazines such as Playboy and Penthouse and X-rated movies, the internet has made pornography more easily accessible at any time, affordable or free, anonymous and not as easily controlled as other media.
The internet not only enables youngsters to deliberately find pornographic material at a time when they are becoming sexually curious but also allows them to come across this material accidentally.

1.3 Prevalence There seems to be scant research on the prevalence of online consumption of pornography by Australian children either deliberately or unintentionally.
Only one study was found which reported on an individual telephone survey in September, 2002 of 100 males and 100 females in Sydney and Melbourne (Flood, 2007).

The Australian Institute commissioned this study from market research company Newspoll.

Only 16 or 17-year- olds were interviewed.

It was found that 38% of boys had searched the internet for sex sites and 2% of girls.
In contrast 84% of boys and 60% of girls said they had been accidentally exposed to sex sites on the internet.1 Internationally, studies have found differences in online pornographic seeking by boys and girls.

In the Netherlands in an online survey in 2005 it was found that 71% of males between 13 and 18-years-old sought pornography on the internet with 40% of girls doing so (Peter & Valkenburg, 2006).
This higher percentage could be because the study was conducted three years later than the Australian survey.

Exposure to unwanted sexual material on the internet rose from 25% of children in 2001 to 34% in 2006 in the US (Wolak, 2006).

In the UK the accidental exposure was 50% in 2006 (Livingstone & Haddon, 2009).

Methodologically, differences in definition, time frame, prevalence or frequency also muddy these results.

In addition, there are variations in access by country (Horvath et al., 2013).
In summary there is a dearth of recent Australian or international studies which give us accurate figures on the trend of online consumption of pornography by Australian children.

1 Although a study by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (Aisbett) published in 2001 found 47% of young people aged 11-17-years-old had unintentionally accessed “offensive or disgusting” material this included rude stuff and jokes as well as pornography.
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 6 1.4 Harmful effects Most of the research of the harmful effects of pornography on children are from offline studies as well as online pornography.

1.4.1 It has been shown that exposure to pornography by children leads to beliefs that women are sex objects (Peter & Valkenburg, 2009), as women are devalued and degraded by pornography (Harris & Bartlett, 2009).
There is also more likelihood that pornography consumers engage in sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra, Mitchell, Hamburger, Diener-West, & Leaf, 2011) as pornography is staged entertainment which if seen often enough becomes usual.

This desensitisation process leads to more male aggression (Flood & Hamilton, 2003) and violence against women and sexual abuse (Wellard, 2001).
Anecdotal evidence from submissions from members of our association also shows that children as young as 10 years-old show sexually aggressive behaviour “I had a student in year 5 who has very little supervision at home.

Because he is an only child and often was allowed to watch tv, play computer and other games, it has come to our attention that there was no restrictions on what he was watching and/or playing.
After a few incidents with him and some of the girls on the playground, it had become evident to investigate the matter.

He confirmed our suspicions of the games and programs he was watching at home without his parents knowing.

This was addressed with the parents, but we have found little has changed due to the parents being too busy.
The grave concerns was that he was making sexual comments, suggestions and requests to girls in the playground which was extremely inappropriate and caused more isolation for him.

He comes from a domestic violent background and we were starting to se some sexual aggressive behaviours from him, like grabbing at students and the comments started to be more aggressive and threatening.” “I am aware of a couple of children who had access to their father's pornography.
One year 7 boy's behaviour was highly sexualised.

He was suspended a number of times due to the inappropriate comments he would make in the classroom and the way he related to one female student in particular.” “I worked with a boy that had repeated in primary and was quite physically mature.

He started watching pornography because it was so accessible and easy to access on the internet and particularly on portable devices.
This led to further problems at school with some inappropriate sexualised language.” 1.4.2 Females who seek pornography generally show more liberal sexual attitudes (American Psychological Association, 2007) and believe that it is fine to have sex without love (Johansson & Hammare, 2007).

It has been shown they often accept rape myths and sexual violence (Krafka, Linz, Donnerstein, & Penrod, 1997) and are more accepting of premarital and extramarital sex (Malamuth & Impett, 2001).
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 An anecdote from one of our members “I am also aware of a year 9 girl whose exposure to her father's pornography, along with other factors, such as his long hours of shift work and lack of supervision of his daughter, gave wide scope for the daughter to become sexually active at this young age.
She became quite promiscuous.” 7 1.4.3 For children, exposure to pornography is associated with lack of contraceptive use for girls in the USA (Wingood et al., 2001) and boys in Switzerland (Luder et al., 2011) and there was more peer pressure to engage in sexualised behaviour (Bleakley et al., 2011).
1.4.4 The response to accidental viewing of pornography by children is again gender based; with most girls reporting feeling sick, shocked, embarrassed, repulsed and upset (Aisbett, 2001; Thornburgh & Lin, 2002) and boys reporting they are sexually excited (Sabina, Wolak, & Finklehor, 2008).

1.4.5 Although technically proficient, youngsters do not usually possess the decision- making skills, critical thinking abilities or experience required to safely use technology for watching pornography.
1.4.6 There is scant research on children’s online consumption of pornography and how it effects their relationships.

In summary, similar to the studies of the prevalence or trends of children’s access to online pornography, studies of the impact of pornography consumption among children is extremely small and very dated because of the sensitive nature of this research.
1.5 Lack of research The sensitive nature of the research on young people accessing pornography online gives rise to ethical, legal and practical restrictions.

In an effort not to harm children by asking them about sensitive topics, we are in fact doing them a disservice in the longer term by basing our decisions about how to protect them, not on evidence but on supposition and opinion.
1.6 Current methods and effectiveness Most current measures seem to be preventative measures to stop children’s access to pornography online.

Technical solutions are usually the first avenue, with parental monitoring or legal and ISP measures.

Parental communication and school education aim for both preventive and intervention strategies.
1.6.1 Filters Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 8 In 2003, 35% of parents with Internet home access used filtering software (NetRatings, 2005).

However, filters do not work with peer-to-peer networks (Greenfield, 2004) and are not entirely effective (Wright, 2014) but filters did reduce the exposure to sexual material from 43% to 25% in American homes (Ybarra, 2009).
1.6.2 Legal responses and self-regulation of ISPs In Australia the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 prohibits sexually explicit content.

However, in the age of the internet, legal solutions only have a national reach.

The Enhancing Online Safety Act 2015 established the Children’s e-Safety Commissioner and provides for a complaints system for undesirable material.
This includes a two-tiered system for removal of such material from large social media services, with Tier 1 social media sites such as Twitter continuing to handle these materials according to their own complaints procedure.

However, the Commissioner may revoke the services Tier 1 status.
Tier 2 services, such as, Facebook and Instagram are subject to direct regulation (Young et al., 2016) 1.6.3 Parental monitoring In 2003, 92% of parents had some kind of supervision or monitoring or rules for internet use (NetRatings, 2005).

However, the old advice to keep the computer in the lounge room has been superseded by mobile devices, with mobile phones being one of the main sources of both accidental and intentional exposure (Cowell & Smith, 2009; Papadopoulos, 2010).
Parents however, underestimate the degree to which their children accidentally or purposely encounter pornography (Byrne, Katz, Lee, Linz, & Mcllrath, 2014).

And children often don’t tell their parents.

Peter and Valkenburg (2006) found that use of online pornography was not associated with parental control, finding that young people can circumvent parental control (Cameron et al., 2005).

In fact, it is their peers who are more important to either encourage or discourage access to online pornography.
In addition, many parents of vulnerable children do not monitor.

As one submission from our members shows “I have also found that parents don't have the time and knowledge to put the proper measures in place to keep our children safe.

I feel that pornography is made too easily available.

It is so much advertised an 'in your face' that an individual has to go through great lengths to try and block or prevent it.

It should be the other way around, it should be hard to come by.
An M or R rating says nothing to an adolescent who is staying home alone in the afternoon while his/her parents work.
The government and community has to restrict these, NOT leave it up to young people who don't have the mental development yet to make that decision.” Or even if parents are vigilant Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 9 “I have had one incident when a child with restricted interests Googled animals extensively and came across an explicit YouTube relating to beastiality.

I did not see it but he sought clarification about the subject.
It was on a home computer in a home where parents are vigilant.” 1.6.4 Parental mediation Parental mediation is when parents and children discuss an issue.

There seems to be gendered reactions to this topic, with parents talking to girls more about pornography perhaps wanting to protect girls more (Gentile, Nathanson, Rasmussen, Reimer, & Walsh, 2012; Pluhar, Dilorio, & McCarty, 2010).
Some studies however, show parents talk to boys more because they are worried they will seek out pornography (CS Mott, 2009).

Rasmussen, Ortiz, and White (2015) however found no gender differences.

This study however, was retrospective but found if parents consistently talked about pornography to their adolescent their attitude was less positive to pornography and was associated with reduced use.
Additionally 692 Australian youth were found more likely to engage in more risky behaviour online if their parents did not have internet safety discussions with them (Fleming, Greentree, Cocotti-Muller, Elias, & Morrison, 2006).

Parental videos are available on ACMA sites, office of e-safety site as well as many others such as Raising Children Network.
1.6.5 School education There are three ways in which schools educate students about the dangers of online pornography, although most do not actually use those words.

One is by programs such as Esmart.

This program is a collaboration between the Alannah and Madeline Foundation and RMIT University.

The framework assists schools to navigate the digital world and online safety by providing links to online resources, products and programs.

However, it does not mention pornography.


Another method is by guest speakers, such as Susan McLean to the school about e-safety.

These are however, sporadic and not all students hear the one-off message.

The other is the Australian National Curriculum, in Health and Physical Education, where in stream 1 teachers are required to teach about personal, social and community health with a topic on relationships and sexuality.

However, no mention of pornography is specifically included.
In some states such as Queensland sexuality education is not compulsory, even though the National Curriculum “must be taught.” The Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority has no resources for the HPE curriculum on relationships and sexuality.

As Michael Flood contends pornography is a poor teacher of relationships and sexuality education and we are allowing the internet to teach children in a harmful way as discussion of sexuality is still taboo, let alone pornography.
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the InternetSubmission 252 10 1.7 Recommendations 1.

To the Federal Government Schools and parents should be encouraged to install filters and blocking devices on computers and phones, realising that they only work sometimes and only for preventing some accidental access to pornography online.
With the Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical education, safe use of the internet needs to be included, made mandatory for all states and be taught developmentally by teachers.

Also relationship education needs to address access and exposure to pornography.

Additionally, schools could specifically address these issues in policy documents related to the use of technology.

2.
2.

To the office of the e-safety commissioner The office should commission an Australian longitudinal study to investigate the trends of online consumption of pornography by children and its impact on the development of healthy and respectful relationships, together with a literature review on the effectiveness of prevention and harm minimisation to apply specifically within the Australian context.

This should involve a cross-disciplinary team of psychological, educational and legal researchers.

3.
3.

To State Education Departments Parental open communication with children is an evidence-based strategy to reduce online pornography viewing.

However, support needs to be provided as many parents find it difficult to talk to their children about sexual health and pornography.

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