Let’s Talk About Pornography. No, Seriously.

Science|It’s Time to Talk About Pornography, Scholars Say

Brian Willoughby knows he’s doing a good job when parents become uncomfortable. That’s because part of his job involves telling them that their teenagers are looking at pornography — hard-core, explicit, often violent. Sometimes, the conversation is with a church group.

Dr. Willoughby is a social scientist at Brigham Young University, where he studies the pornography habits of adolescents and the impact this has on relationships. When he goes into the community to explain what the modern world is like, he speaks plainly.

“I always have to be careful to couch things by saying, ‘I’m not saying porn is good — but I am saying it’s a reality,’” he said. “You can stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist, and say this is bad and pray harder, or use addiction language, but you have to have a realistic understanding of what’s happening.”

In the past, many parents have tried to ignore the watching of pornography by their children, forbid its use or wish it away. But scholars who study the adolescent use of online pornography say that the behavior is so commonplace and impossible to prevent that a more pragmatic approach is required. When it comes to pornography, they want us to talk about it.

The aim: to teach adolescents that the explicit content they encounter is unrealistic, misleading about many sexual relations and, as a result, potentially harmful. The approach does not condone the content or encourage its use, Dr. Willoughby emphasized, but acknowledges its ubiquity and unrealistic, hard-core nature. Long gone are the days of nude magazines that left much to the imagination.

“That was nudity, sexualized,” Dr. Willoughby said of the pornography of yesteryear. “A lot of parents still think that porn is Playboy.”