The pressure on children to grow up often takes two different but related forms: the pressure to take part in a pornified culture at a very early age; and the commercial pressure to consume the vast range of goods and services that are available to children and young people of all ages.
When it comes to sex online, the country is still finding its way. The opportunities to experiment are greater and at present, there is often little parents can do about it. Teenagers and children rarely give a second thought to the implications of their behaviour. It’s not right to pretend there aren’t any problems with this.
I believe we’re seeing the rise of a secret garden, strip-tease culture in British schools and society, which has been put beyond the control of British families by fast-developing technology, and an increasingly pornified British culture.
This is not about prudishness or hankering after some rose-tinted picture of childhood. It’s about working towards creating a society in which young people and adults can navigate their sexualities without risk of shame, harassment or violence. We’ve got to build a society based on open-minded family values, and not ‘anything-goes’ market values.
There’s something wrong with a society as a whole when children say they have no-one to turn to for advice because their parents – outwitted by technology, and struggling to juggle work and home life – don’t really know what’s going on.
There’s something wrong with a society when many young girls of all classes are pressurised into exposing themselves online, and are then humiliated.
There’s something wrong with a society when most children say their sex education is out-of-touch, irrelevant and too little too late. And where boys end up turning to hardcore online pornography to teach them what they think they need to know.
There’s something wrong with a society that normalises children of every background ‘sexting’ in schools.
There’s something wrong with a society that sells t-shirts for little girls emblazoned with “future porn star”, and when padded bras, thongs and high heeled shoes are marketed and sold to children.
There something wrong with a society that has gangs of disenfranchised young men who use rape and sexual assault as the weapon of choice.
This pornified culture tells girls in particular that the most important quality they need is ‘sexiness’, and not cleverness, sportiness, application or ambition.
I think one of the symptoms of the culture that has grown is that young girls and women are subject to “slut shaming” and sexual bullying in schools. The truth is that slut-shaming shames us all.
We must change the wallpaper of children’s lives. We need a sex education revolution in ordinary British schools. We need to look at statutory personal, social, health and economic education and sex and relationships education. Sex education, must focus on preparing young people to form healthy, respectful, emotionally fulfilling relationships, and also deal with issues of self-esteem.
Schools should encourage girls to value their bodies in terms of their physical ability. We need more Jessica Ennis, less Paris Hilton.
Parents should be given information and support to educate their children about the issues. And we must make it easier for parents to block adult and age-restricted material across all media. We also need to help our young people use new technology and media safely. Internet users should have to make an active choice over whether they allow adult content or not. We must also look at ‘child friendly’ computers and mobile phones where adult content is filtered out by default.
But perhaps most of all, we need to start a national conversation between parents and their children about sex, pornography and technology.
We cannot shield kids from the modern world. But we must let open-minded family values shine through in our society.
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Diane Abbott MP is shadow minister for public health
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