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Expert warns parents to teach children not to watch porn

A clinical psychologist has warned parents that they need to talk to their children about pornography and teach them not to watch it [1]. Writing in the Irish Independent, David Coleman, an adjunct associate professor at the School of Psychology, UCD, said that pornography can act powerfully on a teenager’s brain so they can get rapidly addicted to it. Furthermore, he said regularly watching pornography “leads inevitably to teens moving on to more extreme forms of pornography to get aroused”. This, in turn changes their sexual “tastes” and they can “become desensitised to things that they previously may have considered disgusting, degrading or dangerous”.

Professor Coleman warns that parents need to educate themselves and recommended a website called “Fight the new drug [2]”. Then, he advised a no-nonsense approach with children: “Much like we need to promote an abstinence message in relation to alcohol to preteens and younger teens, we must do the same with pornography.”