Prohibiting Pornography to Minors and A Future Way to Safeguard Young Minds
Contributed by Staci Yates, My House
My name is Staci Yates and I am the Director of Human Trafficking Recovery Services at My House, the Chair of the Alaska Stop Human Trafficking Alliance. I am asking for your support of Alaska House Bill 254 “Prohibits Pornography to Minors.”
Exposure to pornography is damaging our children; most kids are exposed online to porn by the age of 12. At least 1 in 3 porn videos now show sexual violence. Exposure to violent or rape pornography triples a child’s odds of experiencing sexual exploitation. I am a testament to that fact! I was exposed to porn at the tender age of 11. This led to hypersexualizing me at a young age, normalizing my sexual abuse as a child and lead me to become a victim of sex trafficking as a teen. Porn is a gateway to sexual violence; it is impossible guarantee that porn content is consensual – exploitation and trafficking are common experiences in the porn industry.
Decades of studies from respected academic institutions have demonstrated the detrimental impacts of porn consumption on individuals, relationships, and our society. A shocking 53% of boys and 39% of girls believe that pornography is a realistic depiction of healthy sexual relations.
Alaska is just catching up with the lower 48 in protecting our youth. We need to put protection in place to limit our children from being constantly exposed to porn. We need mandatory age verification for distributors of porn on the internet. We need the ability as parents to opt out of pornography being included with internet service in our homes.
The use of hardcore porn in youth is linked to harmful outcomes such as mental health problems, child-on-child harmful sexual behaviors, risky sexual behaviors, and physical and sexual victimization, to understand this in more detail please see a report done by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation titled “The Most Dangerous Playground is Now in our Kids Pockets…. Hardcore Pornography on Digital Devices is Damaging America’s Children.
How do we protect our kids? An effective way the United Kingdom is protecting their children is by filtering adult content by default at the internet service provider level. Internet service providers have the ability to block out harmful content coming to your home internet and cell phones using ISP Web Filters.
By implementing these filters, the UK has created a safer digital environment for its young users, protecting the most vulnerable from harmful exposure to adult content. My question then is why can’t we do this locally? We have the technology; we just need our local Internet Service Providers (ISP) willing to implement it. We are currently reaching out to the Matanuska Telephone Association to discuss what it would take for a local ISP to provide this kind of protection. In the UK all internet services come with adult content already blocked and the customers only have to Opt-In with age verification to the account and they have access to the adult content. I have spoken with many families around Alaska who want this kind of protection added; right now, parents are forced to buy and install expensive equipment to filter out harmful adult content (and that doesn’t include cell phone protection!). We are on the right track with Alaska House Bill 254 which would hold publishers liable for distributing pornography to minors on the Internet. Let’s go a step further and request our local Internet Service Providers to offer their customers a cleaner, safer internet for our families.
Please contact your local legislators and ask them to support House Bill 254.