London - Has there ever been a time when children didn’t play some version of ‘Doctors and Nurses’?
Curiosity about the sexual organs starts well before children know what their ‘bits’ are actually for, and the whispered exchange, “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine” was always a secret rite of passage for kids.
‘Kiss Chase’ and ‘Spin the Bottle’ were party staples in the buttoned-up Fifties when I was at primary school. I first saw the F-word scrawled on a wall when I was ten, had no idea what it meant - but really wanted to know.
So there’s nothing new about kids being fascinated by sex - sexual inquisitiveness is a natural part of growing up. But today, sadly, the innocence has been stripped away and it’s become something base and far more sinister.
For when children start ‘showing’ each other their private parts on mobile phones, footage that these friends then share with other friends, what does it become but home-made porn?
What’s more, if those videos are then used to blackmail and bully, isn’t that effectively criminal behaviour?
The news that British schools are having to expel as many as 15 sex bullies per day takes us into a very different - and more disturbing - world from the one I grew up in.
According to the Department for Education, around 3 000 children are excluded a year for sexual bullying, assaults and harassment.
The National Union of Teachers and charity ChildLine are just two organisations deeply concerned with an increase in sexual bullying and ‘sexting’ on smartphones.
Last week the Association of Teachers and Lecturers heard that girls as young as 13 are taking part in home-made porn movies, while there has been a surge in calls to Childline from girls who are victims of sexual violence.
They are ‘persuaded’ by boys to ‘sext’ (send an explicit text including nudity) and then to take part in sex acts that are filmed and shared. Do the girls want them shared? Of course not. This increasingly common behaviour is a source of terrible distress and can lead to depression and suicide. Yet - shockingly - it has become mainstream.
Campaigners say the increased sexualisation of society is fuelled by internet pornography and is the likely cause of these appalling figures. Lib Dem peer Floella Benjamin (formerly a children’s TV presenter) warns of an ‘epidemic’ of violent online porn and says it is leading youngsters on “unstoppable march into a moral wasteland”.
Meanwhile, Claire Perry, the Prime Minister’s childhood adviser, continues her campaign to force the government to introduce internet filters and improved blocks on mobiles. Despite his promises, David Cameron is doing nothing at all to speed up the process, while concern about these matters is still sneered at by many people as ‘moral panic’. And all the time very young minds are being corrupted.
There’s no doubt online pornography is a significant factor behind those shocking school statistics, and the weapon of choice is the cellphone.
What modern child can possibly retain the old, natural curiosity about sex in this era of explicit pornography on-tap? It was always a process of private discovery, but what is left for children to find out, when some have viewed online porn by the age of six?
Playing ‘mommies and daddies’ is a billion miles away from watching women crying and gagging as they are gang-raped. Increasingly, online pornography available at one click is violent, even brutal. This stuff is vile, ugly and degrading. Some argue nothing should be allowed to interfere with online porn, because one of the signs of an enlightened society is a contempt for censorship. Even if the price is paid by young minds so corrupted they have no idea how to conduct real relationships with the opposite sex. Truly, I despair.
But while internet porn is partly to blame, don’t we also have to ask what parents are doing about it? After all, who is putting the phones - the main tool that enables this to happen - into young hands?
It may seem incredible that any sensible parent would buy a six-year-old an expensive smartphone, yet they do. Lots of them. Parents who spend money on smartphones (saying the games are educational) insist they restrict their use. But how? Children are so media-savvy it must be impossible to know what sites they’re accessing.
My advice would be not to indulge them. Porn aside, child psychologists are worried about the effect of ‘screen time’ - televisions, computers and phones - because of its negative effect on developing brains and the way it impacts on a child’s ability to socialise and think.
Yet a 2012 Ofcom report revealed that 28 percent of children between five and 15 had a smartphone. It was based on a sample of 717 children, 190 of whom were aged between three and four.
Since 2011 there has been a 50 percent rise in 12 to 15-year-olds using smartphones; two-thirds of the age group has one - which is more than the UK average for adults (45 percent).
Children use their phones to get online and insist that this is the device they would miss the most.
Might this have something to do with the fact that the smartphone is the most difficult for parents to police? If your seven-year-old is at a sleepover, or your 12-year-old in the park with friends - who knows what they are watching online? Or what pictures they are taking themselves?
If government is sluggish and opinion-formers wilfully blind to the evils of porn, then it’s time for parents and teachers to mobilise to fight ‘raunch culture’ which treats women as sexual objects, and encourages children to mimic the worst behaviour.
For a start, I have no idea why any child should need to have a cellphone (smart or not) while in school. All phones should be handed in at morning registration and collected at the end of the day. Children have no business texting, let alone accessing the internet privately, in school hours.
An American survey found that 66 percent of parents believe kids shouldn’t have smartphones until the age of 16. Quite right, too. Parents need to toughen up against pester power and also make themselves as media-savvy as their children, in order to be able to have proper conversations about this issue.
They need to understand that if our children and teenagers continue to be allowed to have their notions of human relationships and sexuality fatally skewed by what they see online, the implications for the future are terrifying.
Already, teenage boys expect sexual behaviour from very young girls which we would associate with prostitution. How can young people accustomed to behaving in this way form mature relationships in which to raise children?
I’m sorry, but parents need to read these shocking school statistics and accept some responsibility for the way their children behave. Don’t give your children a smartphone because they say their friends have them.
They must learn to say ‘No’. And that way help the next generation understand that real women are strong and know how to say ‘No’ too. - Daily Mail