Back to What’s On This event is for parents, carers, families and other interested adults in young people’s lives. Not suitable for children and young people.
About Speaker: Maree Crabbe is the Director of the Australian violence prevention initiative, It’s time we talked. She is an educator, author, researcher and filmmaker who is passionate about gender-based violence prevention, and about supporting parents, schools, communities and government to address pornography’s influence on young people.
What will this forum explore?
- What parents need to understand about pornography and its influence on young people’s sexual understandings and expectations
- How parents can support their children’s healthy social and sexual development in an age of pornography.
Pornography has become a parenting issue we can’t afford to ignore. For young people growing up in this era of ever new and accessible technology it is almost impossible to avoid exposure to pornography. Consumption – particularly for young men – has become normalised. But porn is no longer the centrefold it used to be. Porn’s move from a brown paper bag onto smart phones and personal laptop computers has been accompanied by a shift towards more aggressive content. While many young people express some awareness that porn is fantasy, they also commonly convey the ways their sexual understandings and experiences are being influenced by what they – or their partners or peers – observe in porn. Porn’s influence has serious implications for young people’s capacity to develop a sexuality that is respectful, safe, freely consenting and mutually pleasurable.