Sexualistation of Young People

According to social learning theory, what
is important is not necessarily the content
of the media itself but rather the implicit
values that it represents, which provides
the potential for harm. As such, what is
of importance here is not simply that a
child sees two people engaged in sex, but
more to do with the nuances surrounding
how the couple relate to each other and
the attitudes this reinforces. As much of
the pornographic material available today
increasingly centres around gendered
themes of power and violence, then this
is what children will be responding to.
Of course, as is the case with all media,
effects on the viewer are mediated by the
perceived realism of the material and an
individual’s engagement with it. 222
‘Barely legal’ pornography
Despite a US Supreme Court ruling
in 2002 223 criminalising ‘virtual’ child
pornography – pornography featuring
adults who appear to be minors or
computer-generated imagery of minors
– there has been an ‘explosion in the
number of sites that childify women’ 224
These include sites focusing on the
youthfulness of the females depicted, on
loss of virginity, on pairing young women
with much older men, and on glamorising
incest. 225 There is also a trend for female
porn actresses to appear in preambles
to the main film talking direct to camera
about their early sexual experiences; often,
these will allegedly have taken place while
the actress was still a child. 226
There is evidence that such websites
encourage consumers to view children as
legitimate sex objects. Adults exposed to
‘barely legal’ or virtual child pornography
make stronger links between youth and
222 Peter and Valkenburg (2006); Ward and
Rivadeneyra (1999)
223 Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002)
224 Olfman (2008)
225 Dines (2008)
226 Evidence provided to the Review by Peter
Johnson, British Board of Film Classification (2009)
sexuality than adults exposed to materials
featuring older-looking models and are
also more likely to associate sex and
sexuality with subsequent non-sexual
depictions of minors. 227
“For some men, children became the
object of their sexual desire, especially
after they clicked on the pop-up ads for
teen porn, which led them into the PCP
[Pseudo Child Porn] sites, and eventually
into real child porn. For some men, the
teen sites were just a stepping stone to
the real thing, as they moved seamlessly
from adult women to children.” 228
Computer games
Online games are by far the most
common way in which children aged
8–11 in the UK make use of the internet,
with 85 per cent of younger children
and 64 per cent of adolescents playing
regularly. 229 With advances in technology,
games are becoming increasingly graphic
and realistic. 230 At the same time, children
are more and more likely to play games
without adult supervision: three-quarters
of 12–15-year-olds have a games console
in their bedroom. 231
Many games feature highly sexualised
content and there is a notable lack of
strong female characters. In a recent
content analysis, 83 per cent of male
characters were portrayed as aggressive,
while 60 per cent of female characters
were portrayed in a sexualised way
and 39 per cent were scantily clad. The
equivalent figures for male characters
were 1 per cent and 8 per cent
respectively. 232 Violence against women
is often trivialised. For example, in the
227 Paul and Linz (2008); Ashcroft v. Free Speech
Coalition (2002)
228 Dines (2008)
229 Ofcom (2007)
230 Martinez and Manolovitz (2009)
231 Ofcom (2009)
232 Dill and Thill (2007)
Sexualisation of Young People Review
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