1. By: TravisVanLeeuwen

2. Sexual education in American public schools tends to begin when children are 11 years old. It is taught mainly in two forms: abstinence-only and comprehensive methods. Abstinence-only approach: teaches total abstinence before marriage Comprehensive approach: promotes abstinence but also informs students of the benefits of contraception and how to avoid STD's and STI's. 1

3. Neither approach discusses pornography. Almost all teens in America have received a formal sex education by age 18, but only two-thirds have been taught about birth control methods. 2 88% of teens who pledge abstinence and 90% of Americans overall will have sex before marriage, yet most are ill equipped, to navigate the physical and emotional landscape of sex. 3

4. The average age at which kids first view porn is 11 years old. 4 The average boy watches 50 porn clips a week. 5 A British survey found that 70% of children surveyed said they had never before been physically intimate with anyone. 6 Meaning that their first experience and understanding of sex was what they happened to see online. Today there is an entire generation of boys and girls growing up believing that what they see in hardcore porn is the way that you have sex. 7

5. Boys brains are being digital rewired for constant change, excitement, and arousal. Which means they are totally out of sync in traditional classes, analog, static, interactive, and passive. As well, they are totally out of sync in romantic relationships which build gradually and subtly. 8

6. Anti-pornography activist, Gail Dines, notes that young men who become addicted to porn, neglect their schoolwork, spend huge amounts of money they dont have, become isolated from others, and often suffer depression. Dr. William Struthers, who has a PhD in biopsychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, confirms some of these and adds more, finding that men who use porn become controlling, highly introverted, have high anxiety, are narcissistic, curious, have low self-esteem, are depressed, dissociative, and distractible. 9

7. It needs to be emphasized, that this is not an effect that only rests upon those who have viewed porn. The massive consumption of porn and the the size of the porn industry has hypersexualized the entire culture. Men and women are born into a pornified culture, and women are the biggest losers. 10

8. By inundating girls and women with the message that their most worthy attribute is their sexual hotness and crowding out other messages, pop culture is grooming them just like an individual perpetrator would. It is slowly chipping away at their self-esteem, stripping them of a sense of themselves as whole human beings, and providing them with an identity that emphasizes sex and de- emphasizes every other human attribute.11 It hurts the relationship between the genders by encouraging men to treat women and girls as sex objects, rather than as persons.12 Porn cultivates a single standard of beauty that no real women can live up to.13

9. Here is an example of what I am talking about. In his book Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction (Page 88 and 89) Patrick Carnes says the following: A girl reads the sexually explicit magazines in her fathers pornography collection and becomes convinced about how to get a mans attention. As an adult, she acts like the women in those magazines to attract the attention of the opposite sex. 14

10. Would you like to educate your children about sex – or would you rather let the industries, like porn and other media, which exploit your failures to do so, be their primary source of education? Don't do it, or Be safe, isn't an education. Condoms tend to break less than vows of abstinence, kids need more grown-ups they can talk with and readily accessible resources they can go to for issues and questions. 15

11. 1,2,3,5,8,15: Zimbardo G, Philip, and Nikita Duncan. The Demise of Guys. New York: TED Confrences, LLC, 2012. Amazon Kindle. 4,6,7: Gallop, Cindy. Make Love Not Porn. New York: TED Confrences, LLC, 2011. Amazon Kindle. 9,10,11: 7 Negative Effects of Porn, http://theresurgence.com/2011/11/19/7-negative-effects-of- porn. Web, 3/14/2013http://theresurgence.com/2011/11/19/7-negative-effects-of- porn 12,14: The Effect of Pornography on woman and girls. 2/18/2009 http://blog.cbeinternational.org/2009/02/the-effect-of-pornography-on-women-and- girls/ http://blog.cbeinternational.org/2009/02/the-effect-of-pornography-on-women-and- girls/ Web, 3/14/2013 13: The Negative Effects of Porn. http://www.oprah.com/relationships/The-Negative- Effects-of-Porn. Web, 3/14/2013http://www.oprah.com/relationships/The-Negative- Effects-of-Porn