Áilín Quinlan:Children are viewing sick porn - and parents are their enablers

Years ago – and to this day the memory makes me wince – I attempted to wave a red flag to some parents about the hazards of giving young children internet-enabled devices.

Even young children, I said, could be exposed to very inappropriate material by being allowed to use, unsupervised, the kiddie iPads in pretty blue, pink or unicorn-patterned covers that the parents were running out and buying them for Christmas/birthdays/First Communions, and so on.

Research was showing that they could enable access to pornography, I said.

Psychologists and other professionals were becoming increasingly concerned that screen-time could also adversely affect children’s concentration and ability to focus on tasks, their interpersonal communication skills, even their empathy levels.

It was feared, I said, that children who were allowed to entertain themselves regularly with these devices were quite literally losing the skill of healthy, traditional play.

There were other things. Their patience levels were being adversely affected, which in turn affected their ability to concentrate on schoolwork or take pleasure in making the effort and taking the time to submit well-presented work.

I explained that play therapists around the country were reporting that small children were reporting feeling lonely, because everyone in the house was on devices and nobody had time to talk to them or play with them.

That older children who should have been far beyond the tantrum stage were having fall-down screaming fits over the word ‘no’, because of the effect the endless instant gratification offered by online games and activities was having on their brains.

The immediacy of online play meant children were not learning how to wait, how to have patience with a task, or how to take pride in putting real-time work into something.

I’d been researching this issue as part of my work, I said, and there were growing concerns that this was only the beginning of what some experts felt would be a tidal wave of problems coming down the line.

Look at how many children were now staring into screens, wearing cute pink or blue furry headphones, which made them oblivious to the real world.

Children were far better off reading books and playing catch than sitting inside on a sofa staring at a screen, I said. You can’t keep tabs on what they’re doing on-screen all the time, I argued.

I shut up when I caught two of the mothers raising their eyebrows at each other and exchanging smirks.

I was left feeling wrong-footed and foolish.

Last week, a GP from Roscommon stood up at the annual conference of the Irish Medical Organisation and called on the government to urgently introduce regulations to prevent children from watching porn.

She warned of the shocking scale and pace of change in pornographic material now compared to only a few years ago.

Dr Ní Madeleine Dhálaigh said aggressive intercourse and non-fatal strangulation as well as gender-based violence were among the acts being normalised because they were so widely available to view online.

This material was essentially changing sexual norms, particularly amongst young people.

The effect on young men and women has been profound, she warned, adding that many of them were learning about sex from violent pornography which taught young males to push boundaries.

Online porn had normalised coercion and encouraged young men to frequently disregard the pain and discomfort of a woman being subjected to violent sexual activity.

A teacher from Wicklow, Eoghan Cleary, stood up and addressed the conference. He speaks to 15- and 16-year olds about the impact of pornography.

These young people, he said, had had access to the internet since the age of 11 or 12.

But now, he warned, there was a cohort of children coming up behind these teenagers who had had access to the internet – and unregulated access to the internet – since the age of six. Since the age of six.

These children, he warned, would be robbed of the opportunity to develop their natural sexuality because it was being dictated to them by the porn industry long before they even had a sexual thought.

If something was not done to interrupt the pervasive role that porn was playing in the sexual development of children, Mr Cleary said, the difference between sex and sexual violence would simply cease to exist for the next generation.

Pornographic content that was once viewed as extreme, or even niche, was now mainstream and available on every pornography platform to anybody, including children, with a couple of clicks.

Ruth Breslin, director at the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute, told delegates about the increasing eroticisation of sexual violence. Pornography, which included slapping and strangling, was now widely available, she said, and most of it was directed at women who were expected to react either as if it was a pleasurable experience, or to remain neutral.

Imagine that. Imagine all of that, along with the effect of the manosphere culture and incel ideology on young minds.

Think about that the next time you notice that your child is spending a long time up in his or her bedroom alone or staring at a screen.

Think about digital misogyny and the UK National Crime Agency’s recent warning about networks of online, violent boy gangs, mostly teenagers, sharing sadistic and misogynistic material and grooming young girls into sexual abuse and self-harm.

The Netflix Adolescence crime drama series provided deeply disturbing insights into the influence of online misogyny on boys.

For many parents, the series was a horrifying revelation. But it’s not fiction. It’s real.

This material is widely accessible. To our children. Via the screens we ourselves give them.