Make sure they know they can talk to you without getting into trouble if something is going on online that they are uncomfortable with. You don’t want them hiding a bad online situation from you for fear of what you’d say or do, any more than you want them driving home from a party drunk because they don’t want to admit to you that they’ve been drinking.
Which they should know about before they go looking for porn that they can access without a credit card, so they know how to avoid trouble. Just like they should know about safe sex before they’re actually having sex.
There have been a couple instances where my daughter has found an inappropriate DVD in the dvd player- she just scolds me for leaving my ‘girl movies’ out and about and tells me not to watch them unless she is having a sleepover at someone else’s house, and to put them away before she gets home.
There have been Suicide Girls books on the bookshelf for at least three years- hasn’t been an issue- she isn’t interested.
Anyway- I expect that she already knows more at six and a half then I did at eleven, just from overhearing other kids on her school playground. Even in elementary school they talk pretty raw these days.
Mixed with the fact that she has ‘Crazy Bitch’ by buckcherry and some Eminem on her ipod, and she’s got basic ideas. I draw the line at Geto Boys, however. That is a bit too explicit.
She may know some stuff that ain’t so, though. I heard the “gum stays in your stomach for seven years” story on the playground. I doubt the playground grapevine is any more of a trustworthy source of information on sex, computing, or law than it is on digestion.
One example: A lot of kids think it’s OK to download music or share music online without the permission of the copyright owner. You can get in legal trouble for doing that.
No, anyone NOT “doing” porn is limiting themselves. Anyone open minded enough to include porn among life’s many other pleasures is increasing their options.
It’s like the old saying, “Don’t use bad words. It just shows you have a limited vocabulary,” which was tried on me when I was young(-er).
“No, since I have the same vocabulary as you do PLUS a few more that you won’t use, it shows that my vocabulary is greater and more expressive than yours.”
I didn’t lie to them. This was about 10 years ago when the average porn site (at least the ones they found) had a “free section” featuring about six dozen popup windows, a page of links to other sites and JOIN NOW banners plastered over all the models’ genitalia.
They’re in their 20’s now. If they’re paying for online porn it’s their own damn fault!
No kidding. If my mom, when I was a teenager, had tried to tell me that I couldn’t access any kind of porn without a credit card, I don’t think I would have been able to keep myself from laughing in her face. And that was back in the late-90’s.
In general I think that potential legal consequences are just about the worst tack a parent can take. Realistically, absolutely nothing is going to happen no matter how much porn a teenage boy torrents, and the teenager in question knows this.
I don’t have kids, but when I do I can’t imagine being too strict regarding porn. Raiding my dad’s Playboys helped me figure out I was gay back in the day, and internet porn was, in all seriousness, something that helped me accept my sexuality much earlier than I would have in its absence.
