Online addiction has ruined the joy of sex for the young

Porn flew a kite for the extremism we see everywhere now across our culture. Along the way, teenagers have lost touch with what sex is supposed to be about, writes Chloe Combi

- Chloe Combi

Teenagers having unfiltered access to hardcore and violent pornography through their smartphones is one of the biggest problems facing parents, teachers and anyone else concerned with the wellbeing of young people.

But when I qualified as a young teacher 13 years ago, the issue was only just emerging. I wrote at the time about the dangers of Generation Z being the world’s first teenagers to have access to the internet 24/7 – and why they weren’t just using it to do homework research or play online chess.

In those early days of smartphone ubiquity, teenagers had already figured out they could access pretty much any kind of pornography when and wherever they liked, and like the bellwether porn was to become, they were already favouring the extreme and shocking content. I noted how pornography had started intersecting with mainstream media, with some of the big (and very hardcore) performers of the time including James Deen and Sasha Grey, appearing in studio films, TV shows and gracing magazine covers.

But porn wasn’t just intersecting with mainstream media. It was intersecting with the lives of almost every young person, and it wasn’t just the watching that was becoming the problem – it was the influence it was already having.

Sexual violence, misogynistic attitudes to women, unrealistic beauty and body standards, and a warping of teenage sexual norms are all things we worry about and are emblematic of discussions about the manosphere and the influences having such a toxic pull on today’s teens. But these were the exact things I flagged and warned against then, pleading with the government and tech providers to take action and protect future children and teenagers.

Those warnings went largely unheeded, and we’re in a similar position today – except worse off in every way.