Porn can be harmful

• Sexy images can appear in the media, magazines or on billboards. They are usually trying to sell you something
• In a similar way to advertising, porn also tries to get your attention. This is especially true when you’re on the internet
• Pornography is a multi-billion dollar business that makes a lot of money because they believe ‘sex sells’
• Porn sends us messages about what sex ‘should’ be like
• Porn can change your thinking about sex which means you could have problems in your relationships later on
• Watching porn can actually make your sex life less enjoyable
• If you watch porn you might start to believe that people’s feelings don’t matter and only the physical act of sex is important – but that’s not true because sex is an emotional act as well as a physical one

Make up your own mind about it so you can choose whether or not to watch it.

• Porn isn’t real and doesn’t show you what sex in real life is like

• People in porn aren’t having sex for fun, they’re acting like they enjoy it even when it hurts or doesn’t feel good

• Porn is a fantasy but you might be tricked into thinking that’s how regular people have sex

• The bodies you see in porn aren’t what regular bodies look like

• Porn shows people having sex without a condom but it’s really unsafe as 50% of porn actors have a life-long sexually transmitted disease

• In porn, the women are often there only to please the man but women are not sex objects - sex must be consensual and respectful

• The type of sex they have in porn isn’t very common in real life

• Sex in porn can last hours but in real life penetration only lasts about 5 minutes on average

• Women in porn are often mistreated which is not ok in real life - women’s needs and wants matter just as much as a man’s

• In porn, they’re always ready to have sex but in real life that’s not the case – many things affect if a person is ready for sex or not

• In real life when somebody says "no" to sex you need to respect that – it’s not ok to pressure people into sex or try and convince them like they do in porn

• In porn, they make sex into a performance for the cameras which isn’t how people have sex in real life

Try telling a parent or a trusted adult who can support you, or you can always visit the eSafety website to find out more about what you can do.

If you're still unsure about what to do and need to talk to someone about it, give us a call, start a WebChat or send us an email today.