North Shore's teen boys addicted to sex and violence online

11-4-2010 Australia:

NORTH Shore boys as young as 12 are becoming addicted to graphic and violent internet pornography.

Ku-ring-gai Youth Development Service counsellor David Citer said the worrying behaviour was an addiction, like drugs and alcohol, and was replacing normal relationships.

“Internet porn is everywhere and a lot of young boys have become addicted,” he said.

“It’s all about instant gratification, rather than delaying urges and building relationships. It teaches them they can have sex there and then and doesn’t teach good values”.

Mr Citer said some schoolboys had developed “rites of passage” where they were required to sexually assault girls to become members of a club.

“A lot of this (internet) stuff is very violent, where you have five or six males having sex with a woman and if you look at the kind of stuff that’s happened in rugby league, a lot of that is bred out of internet pornography.”

He said internet porn was increasingly “a coping strategy” for boys under stress and the harder life got at school, the more they turned to it. The danger was they were being duped into thinking sex without a relationship was normal behaviour.

Many 12-year-olds were regular browsers of pornography and some were even younger.

Parents had little control because “kids are too computer savvy and always one step ahead”.

While schools promoted computer use, “once parents go to bed, they don’t know what they are doing in their room.

“Children aged 14 and 15 end up chatting to people in their 30s and 40s and sex advances are made.”

Another concerning trend was “sexting”, where young girls text nude photos of themselves to their boyfriends.

``He then passes it to a lot of his mates, sending it around mobile phones, and when you are dealing with 14 and 15-year-olds, that’s child pornography,’’ Mr Citer said.

``We are hearing a lot of that.’‘

But chairwoman of the department of digital cultures at the University of Sydney, Kathy Cleland, said fear around the internet was overstated.

``I think the internet is often beaten up for social problems. There’s fear with new communication technologies, like there was with television.

``Kids do go through intense adolescent phases and don’t want to communicate with their parents and it’s not necessarily about technology,’’ she said. ``However, the internet does provide instant gratification It’s easy to turn to as it’s always available.’’ ..Source.. by Julie Huffer