On the docket of the US Supreme Court is a case that is bound to have a huge impact upon parents battling to protect children from pornography.
Last week the justices heard oral arguments about a Texas law which requires "adult sites" to use age-verification technology to keep minors to accessing pornographic images and videos. A Federal appeals court has allowed the law, but the pornography industry contends that it violates a constitutional right to free speech.
The justices ruefully acknowledged that pornography is a big problem for American parents.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who has teenaged children, commented that technology makes parents' job difficult. "I can say from personal experience," she said, that content-filtering software "is difficult to keep up with."
An important legal precedent for SCOTUS is a 1968 case, Ginsburg v. New York. A majority of the Court back then ruled that pornographic magazines were capable of harming children, over the objections of justices who insisted on absolute freedom of speech. Since then, pornography has become incredibly more intrusive. "You would admit that we're in an entirely different world" nowadays, said Justice Clarence Thomas.
Even the lawyers for the pornographers are not arguing that their products are healthy and normal. Everyone seems to agree that the state has an interest in protecting children from pornography. But is it a compelling interest, one that should override the right to free expression because of the damage that it does to minors?
A just-published summary of research into internet pornography and children argues convincingly that the damage is compelling. In fact, it is catastrophic.
Scholars from the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University and the Institute for Family Studies recently examined research studies from the last 20 years to document trends in pornography use among children and teens and to identify how that use may be harmful to their development. Their findings are contained in a report entitled: "Unprotected from Porn: The Rise of Underage Pornography Use and the Ways it is Harming Our Children."
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In an article in Deseret News, they challenged readers to think about the harm of pornography:
Imagine someone drove a white van into your neighborhood, opened up the panel door, and invited children and teens from the neighborhood, including yours, to watch sexually explicit videos of men and women doing the most degrading things possible. In most of our neighborhoods, such a man would be arrested in minutes, and we would make sure that no such vans came cruising for our children again.
Children and adolescents now have more access to pornography than any generation in history. Research has shown that most children and teens today have been exposed to pornography before the age of 18 and the rate of habitual use of pornography among teens is more than twice as high as it used to be.
Dozens of studies have also documented the potential harms of this pornography consumption on young people, including increased mental health problems, unhealthy sexual scripts and behaviours, increased sexual aggression, potential compulsive struggles, decreased future relationship stability, and other developmental challenges. The report states bluntly:
Despite pornography being designated as "adult content," in this new form of childhood our judicial system has gone out of its way to protect the rights of porn providers to distribute this material to kids (and adults) without constraint. That the pornography industry is afforded this deference - despite the overwhelming social science research that shows that underage pornography use is now the norm, rather than the exception, and that its availability has radical implications for healthy adolescent development in our society - is one of the crises of our time.
"In today's digital world, a growing concern for many parents is how to protect their children from sexual media and online pornography," said Jason Carroll, a co-author. "Despite pornography's designation as being for "mature audiences," studies consistently find that large portions of underage minors access online pornographic content on a regular basis." In fact, regular pornography is the norm, and not the exception for boys and for girls.
A Swedish study found that more than 80 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls view pornography at least once a month; nearly one in four teenage boys were looking at pornography every day. And it's not just Sweden - "these trends are consistent across most parts of the world," says the report.
The report documents how the rise in underage pornography use has been paralleled by more extreme and harmful types of pornography being available online.
The authors detail how a growing body of research has consistently shown that a large portion of the sexual media available online is not only sexually explicit, but also regularly depicts rape, violence against women, deviant sexual behaviours such as incest and sex with minors. They also review a growing number of studies that show that a significant portion of children and teens are directly seeking out and viewing these types of harmful online sexual materials.
"The alarming rise in pornography consumption by adolescents is a worrisome trend and a growing body of research is showing just how harmful it can be to their development and behaviour, both short and long term," said Brian Willoughby, another co-author. "When all of the various ways that pornography can harm child development are considered, there is really no defensible argument for children and adolescents having unrestricted access to sexual media and pornographic materials of any form."
The report argues that studies to date also confirm that while pornography poses a significant risk to all users, the likelihood of harm is increased among underage children and teens due to their sensitive developmental stage of life. Studies also show that many of these risks continue into adulthood and have deleterious effects on later relationship quality and adult wellbeing.
The authors note that such effects have been documented across dozens of studies, including large national surveys, recent meta-analyses (studies designed to systematically assess the results of previous research), and critical reviews of scientific literature, the highest standards for social science research.
The report outlines several strategies for protecting children from pornography.
The authors note that parents have the primary responsibility to safeguard their children from these harms and that research shows that one of the best predictors of child wellbeing is the quality of the parent-child relationship. They also note how important it is for parents to teach their children the risks of viewing pornography and setting boundaries with technology. However, the report's authors conclude that parents should
not be left alone to safeguard their children from an unregulated industry of sexual media, pornography websites, and social media platforms.
"Without reservation, we support efforts to hold both the producers of pornography and social media platforms accountable for failing to ensure they are not contributing to and profiting from underage engagement with pornography," said Michael Toscano, of the Institute for Family Studies. "We also support the new movement to implement device-based age-verification and require parental supervision for minor social media accounts, parental consent for app downloads, and accurate app ratings from the industry. These would all create a safer digital app environment for kids in which parents are effectively involved."