It was a typical playdate: My 8-year-old son and his buddy were in his bedroom, hitting each other with swords, jumping off the bed and generally being wild third graders. I was at my computer and didn’t even notice that they’d snuck into the living room behind me and grabbed my son’s iPad. In fact, it wasn’t until his friend’s mom called me to ask if I knew if they’d seen anything weird on the Internet that I learned they’d even been using it. Apparently her son had asked her, “Mommy, how do I unsee something that I saw?” Yikes. I asked my kid if he’d Googled something weird. He looked down and admitted they’d searched “poop.”
Well, if you’re squeamish, don’t Google “poop” because I immediately did, and it is pretty gross — lots of turds floating in toilets. But nothing that bad. It wasn’t until I pressed him again that he admitted he’d Googled “naked lady.” I typed that one in to see what would come up, and one of the first images was straight porn, with a man having sex with a “naked lady” from behind.
My first instinct was to yell at my son about how wrong that was, how he can’t be trusted with electronics, and how he should have known better. As punishment, I told him we would take away the iPad. I put on all the parental controls I could — my fault for not having them on in the first place — then stuck it on top of the refrigerator where I said he could have it back… never.
It turns out, those yelling and punishing instincts weren’t ideal, but they were natural. “It’s not fair to ask parents not to yell,” says Dr. Drew Ramsey, M.D., a psychiatrist in private practice and an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. It can be difficult for parents to reconcile the modern attitudes about sexuality many of us aspire to with the landscape of the Internet today, where adult content is plentiful, varied, and easy to find. “It’s a whole new era for young boys and their moms when it comes to the discussion of porn, and later masturbation and sexuality,” he says. “There are things we know now — like masturbation is super healthy. And of course we want children to have a lot of involvement with their own sexuality. But as parents, we’re very conflicted about pornography and how to teach them about healthy sexuality because we no longer have the same kind of control that we once had.”
Trying to keep the conversation open is a good first step. “Instead of scolding, it’s better to ask them about what they saw and if they want to talk about it,” he says. “Which they probably won’t. Still, it can be a lot for parents to have these conversations because many of them have shame around sex and sexuality themselves.” And if you do get upset and yell, you should explain why. “Yelling without explanation is really confusing if they’re really young,” he adds. “Explain your reaction. Say something like, ‘I got upset because I didn’t want you to get introduced to images like that.’”
Grounding the conversation in your specific concerns can also help. “We know that online porn is not healthy for good social development for really young kids,” says Steven Hassan, Ph.D., an educator and mental health expert. Decades of peer-reviewed research suggest that mainstream porn can distort children’s ideas of what healthy sexual relationships look like and that violent or aggressive porn can lead to viewing women as sexual objects. “These aren’t centerfold images of naked women and men like we saw [growing up],” Ramsey says. “[There are] HD videos of people doing of fetishist stuff, aggressive stuff — the kind of things might be impossible stuff to talk about with their parents. The best way to handle that is to have a talk with them when you feel comfortable with it.”
You can adjust the conversation depending on the age group. For younger kids, that might mean having early conversations around sex and bodily autonomy; experts recommend using anatomically correct words for genitals and introducing children to the idea of consent. For older kids, Ramsey says, you might “try to explain that there’s a difference between simulation of sex that they see online and what real sex looks and feels and sounds like. So many young people these days have anxiety going into their first experience because they think they need to look and act like they’re in a porn.”
Talking with your child about adult content online can be a good occasion to talk about healthy Internet habits in general — and vice versa. As much as we want to trust our kids, Hassan explains, it really is best to keep a sharp eye on the websites your kids are going to. “Parents need to be educated about [the Internet] and what your children might see on it,” he says. “While we’re at it, set time limits for all of their online activity, because as parents, we know that mindless scrolling is kind of a hypnotic phenomenon where you lose orientation and time, and that’s not good for anyone.”
Which was a lesson I learned — the hard way. My husband and I had been far too relaxed about handing the kids the iPads whenever they wanted them, in no small part to make our lives easier. I was mortified when my mom friend told me what they’d Googled at the playdate, but it was the wake-up call I needed. Parental controls went on, and time limits were set. Do I always enforce those limits? Of course not. But I feel like I have some semblance of control and, now, a better foundation for the next version of “the talk” we’ll inevitably have.
Sometimes I’m still puzzled by my son’s search history — which is full of idiotic stuff like teens jumping into pools of Orbeez or girls cutting open squish balls to see what’s inside of them— but at least it’s not a blond lady who maybe sort of looks like mommy getting it from behind.
Gillian Telling is longtime entertainment journalist who has worked as an editor at People, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Us Weekly. She is the author of Dirty Girls: The Naked Truth About Our Guilty Secrets (Unpretty, Unclean, and Utterly Horrifying) and has also written about sex and relationships for Maxim, Cosmopolitan, and Details. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two sons, and a cat that acts like a dog. (What up, Bootsie!) See more of her work at gilliantellingstories.com.
