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Easy access to Internet pornography creates awkward opportunities for parents and kids to talk BY
44 NOVEMBER2012
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katherine jacante jill colbert illustrator
Some parents are lucky. One day they are looking at their browsing history, trying to find a catalog item they visited a few days before, and they notice a site that has an odd name. They click out of curiosity and that’s how they find out their son is looking at pornography. I, on the other hand, am not so lucky. I walked into my 12-year-old son’s room to deliver laundry (the door was open), and he slammed the laptop shut and gave me the most shame-faced look I have ever seen. I had a couple of options, one of which was to ignore his behavior, but I am not built that way. I asked him what he was looking at and sat next to him so we could look together. If there was such a thing as disapparating (a la Harry Potter),
my son would surely have been anywhere else on the planet. I knew what was coming, or so I thought, as I imagined videos on the order of the late night TV ads about sexy singles hotlines. What I saw instead was an extreme close up from a camera angle I still cannot figure out. Oy! I played it cool, “Let’s get rid of that,” and asked Josh* if he’d been looking at a lot of sites like that. He said no, it was the first time (I looked at the browser history later that day and he seemed to be telling the truth). When I asked him why, he said he was curious, that some kids at school were talking about a site they found, and he wanted to check it out. And when I asked him how he found it, he gave me the simplest answer, “I just
Googled ‘porn.’” Just to be clear, I am a fan of the Internet. You can find infinite of information, you can keep in touch with friends, you can look up the adult translation of texting acronyms like LMAO, ROFL and YOLO. But there are so many things online that are not appropriate for children of any age. And we all know this is going to happen; no matter what conversations you have or which parental controls you have in place, sooner or later, your child will find a site like this. Josh was near tears he was so ashamed of getting caught in the act, so to speak. I kept my voice level and said, it’s OK, this is what boys do, they are curious, and the computer is an easy route. Beyond that, all I could