Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #274 We Need to Talk About Pornography with Megan Maas
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
- 0:07Speaker 1: time poor parent who just wants answers.
- 0:10Speaker 2: Now, by the time kids graduate Hay School, over ninety
- 0:13Speaker 2: percent of boys and over sixty percent of girls have
- 0:17Speaker 2: seen phornography, and about half are intentionally seeking it out weekly.
- 0:22Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
- 0:26Speaker 1: and dad.
- 0:26Speaker 3: Kylie. I'm so excited about today's podcasts. We're talking with
- 0:30Speaker 3: Assistant Professor Meghan Mass. Meghan is at the Michigan State
- 0:36Speaker 3: University and has been studying for several years adolescent sexuality.
- 0:41Speaker 3: We're talking about all this stuff that's really big in
- 0:42Speaker 3: the news right now in Australia, pornography, consent, masculinity, the
- 0:46Speaker 3: stories that we're hearing coming out of high schools. This
- 0:49Speaker 3: is a big conversation. In fact, I don't think we're
- 0:51Speaker 3: going to get through it in one day. I think
- 0:52Speaker 3: it's going to take two.
- 0:54Speaker 4: I know you're really excited to talk to Megan.
- 0:56Speaker 3: Yeah, I am.
- 0:57Speaker 4: You've forgotten to introduce.
- 0:58Speaker 3: I sorry, I have to so. My name's doctor Justin Coilson.
- 1:01Speaker 3: Need to do that first, that's important on Doctor Justin Coilson,
- 1:03Speaker 3: the founder of Happy Families dot Com, dot you and
- 1:06Speaker 3: the author of six books about raising happy families, and
- 1:08Speaker 3: you are.
- 1:09Speaker 4: I'm Kylie, I am your wife and now co host
- 1:12Speaker 4: partner in crime on the podcast, and I'm the mum
- 1:15Speaker 4: to our six kids.
- 1:16Speaker 3: Before we go any further, I should just highlight today's
- 1:18Speaker 3: podcast contains mature themes that include conversations around pornography and sexuality.
- 1:25Speaker 3: It's not rated explicit, but the content may not be
- 1:27Speaker 3: suitable for some people. So let me introduce Megan Mass
- 1:32Speaker 3: because doctor Mass Assistant Professor Meghan Maass is amazing when
- 1:38Speaker 3: it comes to areas like adolescent sexuality, media based sexual socialization,
- 1:43Speaker 3: sexual media literacy, sex education, prevention of sexual violence including
- 1:47Speaker 3: harassment and sexual bullying. We're talking about some really important
- 1:50Speaker 3: things here and in the context of what's happening in
- 1:52Speaker 3: Australia at least and also around the world, this is
- 1:55Speaker 3: an important conversation. So a few weeks ago, for those
- 1:57Speaker 3: of you who missed it, a former Sydney high school student,
- 2:00Speaker 3: Schanel Contos posted online for girls to share their sexual
- 2:04Speaker 3: assault stories based on whatever happened at parties during high
- 2:08Speaker 3: school essentially, and more than five thousand respondents came through
- 2:12Speaker 3: before the petition was closed down. It sparked a huge
- 2:14Speaker 3: movement for consent education to be improved in schools, and
- 2:18Speaker 3: a lot of people are arguing that boys don't understand
- 2:20Speaker 3: consent and various other things that we can discuss later
- 2:25Speaker 3: in the conversation, but one of the biggest issues that's
- 2:27Speaker 3: arisen is that people are saying all of this is
- 2:29Speaker 3: happening because of pornography, and Megan, because you focus on
- 2:33Speaker 3: adolescent sexuality, we want to talk to you about two things. First,
- 2:37Speaker 3: pornography and then if we have time, second, consent and
- 2:40Speaker 3: how they may or may not interact. So today we're
- 2:44Speaker 3: going to focus on pornography and then probably next week
- 2:47Speaker 3: I'd say we'd love to have you back to talk consent.
- 2:50Speaker 4: So my first question, Megan, is just everybody knows what pornography.
- 2:55Speaker 2: Is, right, Well, you know, it's hard to measure and
- 2:59Speaker 2: it's hard to define. But when we do so in studies,
- 3:02Speaker 2: we talk about sexually explicit imagery that contains nudity, specifically
- 3:08Speaker 2: genitals and sexual behaviors that are meant to arouse the viewers.
- 3:15Speaker 2: Not just any kind of nudity or you would see
- 3:18Speaker 2: an art or something, but content that's specifically intended to
- 3:23Speaker 2: arouse someone sexually.
- 3:25Speaker 4: How old is the research saying that our children are
- 3:28Speaker 4: when they're first being exposed to this kind of content.
- 3:32Speaker 2: So these studies are hard to conduct. It's hard to
- 3:34Speaker 2: get younger folks and kids in these kinds of studies
- 3:37Speaker 2: and their parents to you know, allow for them to so.
- 3:41Speaker 2: But what we do know is that young kids eight,
- 3:45Speaker 2: let's say eight to twelve, they are most likely to
- 3:50Speaker 2: you know, stumble upon pornography accidentally or unintentionally because they
- 3:54Speaker 2: google words like but or you know, sex or something
- 3:58Speaker 2: that they learn at school. And that's why filters can
- 4:01Speaker 2: be pretty important. But the older kids, what we do
- 4:04Speaker 2: now is that by the time our kids graduate high school,
- 4:09Speaker 2: over ninety percent of boys and over sixty percent of
- 4:12Speaker 2: girls have seen pornography, and about half are intentionally seeking
- 4:18Speaker 2: it out weekly. So it is a very prevalent experience.
- 4:22Speaker 3: So Megan, just a quick comment on that, because I
- 4:26Speaker 3: hear so many different things bandied around. I heard a
- 4:29Speaker 3: quote unquote expert here in Australia recently saying that children
- 4:32Speaker 3: are seeing it now on average around about the age
- 4:34Speaker 3: of eight or nine. I've seen the standard research response
- 4:40Speaker 3: being somewhere around about the age of eleven. It's probably
- 4:43Speaker 3: worth mentioning it's really hard to get good data on
- 4:45Speaker 3: this because it's not ethical, Like a university is not
- 4:47Speaker 3: going to say you can go and ask eight year
- 4:49Speaker 3: olds about their pornography experience, whether they've seen it or not.
- 4:53Speaker 3: It's just it's an ethical quagmire. So we kind of
- 4:55Speaker 3: have to wait until people are eighteen years of age
- 4:58Speaker 3: and they're at university, and then we ask them to
- 5:00Speaker 3: retrospectively look back on when they were first exposed, right,
- 5:04Speaker 3: exactly exactly.
- 5:06Speaker 2: So usually these statistics are coming from you know, crime statistics,
- 5:11Speaker 2: or people that kids that are involved in you know,
- 5:14Speaker 2: community services, or sometimes the statistics are coming from kids
- 5:19Speaker 2: who are involved in studies on other things regarding development
- 5:23Speaker 2: and they happened to ask about pornographees already. But you're right,
- 5:27Speaker 2: it's very hard for me and other researchers to actually ask,
- 5:32Speaker 2: you know, kids and teams about pornography exposure.
- 5:34Speaker 3: Yeah, some years ago, I used to be a radio
- 5:37Speaker 3: announcer in a past life before I went back to
- 5:40Speaker 3: school and studied for a bajillion years and started doing
- 5:43Speaker 3: what I did now. In fact, it was a little
- 5:44Speaker 3: over twenty years ago that I was a radio announcer
- 5:47Speaker 3: and at the time, there was a song that came
- 5:49Speaker 3: out that was kind of provocative and controversial. It was
- 5:52Speaker 3: called It's just pawn Mum. I don't know if you
- 5:55Speaker 3: remember that song, and I used to hate the fact
- 5:58Speaker 3: that we had to play we only played it on nights.
- 6:00Speaker 3: It's only for the teenages to listen to. But I
- 6:03Speaker 3: wonder do you think that that's a fair reflection of
- 6:08Speaker 3: what the attitude is towards pornography in the general population
- 6:11Speaker 3: and particularly among kids.
- 6:14Speaker 5: Uh.
- 6:15Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would say we have generally over time,
- 6:20Speaker 2: we have more casual attitudes towards pornography. That's you know,
- 6:24Speaker 2: data driven has been jown. But there are people who
- 6:28Speaker 2: are alarmed about pornography today, and rightfully so because what
- 6:33Speaker 2: we're what we have access to today is not what
- 6:36Speaker 2: we had access to in the eighties and nineties. It's
- 6:40Speaker 2: you know, content that can be very violent and aggressive,
- 6:44Speaker 2: or depict minors, or maybe even actually showing miners, even
- 6:49Speaker 2: if it's you think you're watching somebody who's eighteen but
- 6:53Speaker 2: they are dressed to look like they're fourteen. All of
- 6:56Speaker 2: that is fairly new.
- 6:58Speaker 3: So when you say mine is You're not talking about
- 6:59Speaker 3: people who or working underground in helmets and shiny bests.
- 7:04Speaker 3: You're talking about a different kind of minor.
- 7:06Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, under eighteen children, teenagers and young teenagers.
- 7:11Speaker 4: So Megan, when I was growing up, I guess my
- 7:14Speaker 4: understanding of pornography was was more so you know, the
- 7:17Speaker 4: playboll magazines with their centerfold pitches, and obviously I knew
- 7:23Speaker 4: about videos and things like that, but without the Internet
- 7:27Speaker 4: and without you know, Google, you really had to go
- 7:30Speaker 4: looking for this information to be able to find it.
- 7:34Speaker 4: What are our kids seeing now? You know, in an
- 7:36Speaker 4: age where technology is literally in the palm of their hands,
- 7:40Speaker 4: what are they having access to now?
- 7:43Speaker 2: I mean, it's so important that you asked that question
- 7:45Speaker 2: and bring up this connection with the attitude, because I
- 7:48Speaker 2: think there are a lot of parents who are in
- 7:51Speaker 2: your shoes or you know, my shoes or whoever, who
- 7:54Speaker 2: have this notion of what pornography was when they were
- 7:57Speaker 2: a teenager and maybe curious about it or in their
- 8:00Speaker 2: early twenties and you know, friends were showing it or
- 8:03Speaker 2: things like that, and so it's it can be easy
- 8:05Speaker 2: to have an attitude like, oh, it's just pornography, and
- 8:08Speaker 2: I've talked with parents like you know that have that attitude. Oh,
- 8:11Speaker 2: you know, I got through that as a teenager as well.
- 8:15Speaker 2: But what they're seeing today are acts of rough sex.
- 8:22Speaker 2: Rough sex is a is a popular category and showcases
- 8:26Speaker 2: slapping and choking, and it can be something like I
- 8:31Speaker 2: had a teen once who shared that they were really
- 8:36Speaker 2: disturbed because their body, you know, reacted, it was aroused
- 8:41Speaker 2: by the content. But the content really scared them because
- 8:43Speaker 2: it was somebody who was clearly in pain, which can
- 8:48Speaker 2: be very confusing. And certainly when I was a teenager,
- 8:51Speaker 2: when our friends and stuff would try to stay up late,
- 8:55Speaker 2: you know, to see HBO After Dark or skin Imax
- 8:58Speaker 2: or whatever, it was kind of softcore stuff that was
- 9:02Speaker 2: highly produced and filtered, and you know, we could have
- 9:06Speaker 2: never seen anything that depicted pain or humiliation or anything
- 9:12Speaker 2: like that. And so that's what we're really trying to
- 9:16Speaker 2: advocate for education and for parents to know to prevent
- 9:20Speaker 2: you know, access to that kind of content, because we're
- 9:23Speaker 2: not talking about you know, just nudity or just people
- 9:27Speaker 2: engaging in sexual behavior.
- 9:30Speaker 3: Megan a little while ago, I heard a podcast with
- 9:32Speaker 3: doctor Lisa Demore. She's a New York Times bestselling author
- 9:35Speaker 3: she's written a couple of fabulous books about teenage girls,
- 9:38Speaker 3: and she's just yeah, she's absolutely brilliant. She said, when
- 9:42Speaker 3: she was writing one of those books, she decided, as
- 9:45Speaker 3: a non pornography consumer, that she would get online and
- 9:49Speaker 3: look up one of those porn hub websites, and she said,
- 9:55Speaker 3: the screen filled with it's almost like a multiple YouTube squares.
- 10:01Speaker 3: They all came up on the screen at once. There
- 10:03Speaker 3: was nine or twelve of them or something like that,
- 10:05Speaker 3: and each of them had some kind of sexual activity
- 10:07Speaker 3: occurring in that screen. And she said she was so
- 10:11Speaker 3: confronted by it because in a normal, consenting, healthy adult relationship,
- 10:18Speaker 3: the kinds of behaviors that she was seeing literally assaulting
- 10:21Speaker 3: her on the screen in each of these videos were
- 10:25Speaker 3: just not the kinds of things that she understands most
- 10:29Speaker 3: adults in healthy relationships would engage in. And yet this
- 10:33Speaker 3: is the kind of thing that our kids are viewing.
- 10:36Speaker 3: And I think that's kind of where you're going. This
- 10:37Speaker 3: stuff is provocative, it's confrontational, it's icky, and yet it's
- 10:42Speaker 3: still arousing because our bodies are designed to be aroused
- 10:44Speaker 3: by that. I want to come back with you in
- 10:46Speaker 3: just a sec because our podcast is the podcast for
- 10:49Speaker 3: the time poor parent who just wants answers now, and
- 10:52Speaker 3: talk with you about how we can have effective and
- 10:54Speaker 3: positive conversations with our children about this so that they
- 10:58Speaker 3: can be protect from what seems to be bad for kids.
- 11:03Speaker 4: Do that right after the break.
- 11:05Speaker 3: It's the Happy Families Podcast.
- 11:07Speaker 5: Imagine a home where discipline got results without anyone having
- 11:10Speaker 5: to feel bad or in trouble. The do's and don'ts
- 11:13Speaker 5: of discipline as a webinar to help parents set limits
- 11:15Speaker 5: with love, compassion and humanity. Find it now at happy
- 11:19Speaker 5: families dot com dot au slash shop.
- 11:22Speaker 4: It's the Happy Families Podcast, the podcast for the time
- 11:25Speaker 4: poor parent who just wants answers Now. And today we've
- 11:28Speaker 4: been talking with Megan Mass, Assistant Professor Meghan Mass.
- 11:32Speaker 3: At Michigan State University, an expert in adolescent sexuality. Megan,
- 11:36Speaker 3: one of the big questions that I have relates to
- 11:37Speaker 3: the scientific evidence around how pornography affects people that is
- 11:41Speaker 3: the cause of a relationship. If you watch pornography, what
- 11:45Speaker 3: does it do to you? And I know that there's
- 11:47Speaker 3: not a lot of science that we can really lean
- 11:49Speaker 3: on heavily here, but I'm specifically interested not about how
- 11:52Speaker 3: it affects adults as much as that would be an
- 11:54Speaker 3: interesting conversation, I'd like to know how it affects our kids' behavior.
- 11:58Speaker 2: Yeah, So what we do know is the studies that
- 12:02Speaker 2: have been able to recruit teens to participate, teenagers who
- 12:07Speaker 2: do consume more pornography are less likely to use condoms
- 12:11Speaker 2: during sex. They are more likely to hold what are
- 12:15Speaker 2: called rape supportive beliefs, or ideas that you know, it
- 12:20Speaker 2: was a woman's fault because of something she wore, or
- 12:23Speaker 2: she was at the wrong place at the wrong time,
- 12:25Speaker 2: or those kinds of beliefs, and they're lower and sexual
- 12:32Speaker 2: satisfaction when they emerge in college than high schoolers who
- 12:39Speaker 2: abstain or view little internet pornography.
- 12:42Speaker 3: So let me just say that again, just to put
- 12:44Speaker 3: a big red line underneath this, our teenagers who consume
- 12:48Speaker 3: pornography are less likely to use condoms and therefore have
- 12:53Speaker 3: intercourse safely. They are more likely to endorse unhealthy beliefs
- 12:58Speaker 3: about essentially what saying is, they more likely to objectify
- 13:01Speaker 3: women and believe that they deserved anything sexual that came there, why,
- 13:04Speaker 3: whether it was consensual or not, And they have less
- 13:07Speaker 3: satisfying sexual relationships as they get older and start to
- 13:10Speaker 3: be old enough to be surveyed about that sort of stuff. Yep,
- 13:13Speaker 3: it's topically a healthy way to launch into your sex
- 13:16Speaker 3: life as a teenager. What else is there?
- 13:18Speaker 2: So well? And I have to say there's a couple
- 13:20Speaker 2: of caveats. So there's two protective factors, and the associations
- 13:27Speaker 2: are still there, but they're they're smaller for youth who
- 13:31Speaker 2: have parents who talk to them openly about sexuality and
- 13:35Speaker 2: our who are caring and monitoring their their lives in
- 13:39Speaker 2: that way, and for teens who perceive what they're watching
- 13:42Speaker 2: to be less real. And those are two factors that
- 13:46Speaker 2: you know, we can we can protect as parents by
- 13:51Speaker 2: talking to our children about sexuality and pornography, but we
- 13:55Speaker 2: can also hopefully mitigate over time or help with me
- 14:00Speaker 2: illiteracy type classes, so you know, classes that talk about,
- 14:04Speaker 2: you know, how media are created and how they're not
- 14:08Speaker 2: real life. But in terms of other effects like addiction
- 14:11Speaker 2: or brain stuff and you know, arousal and that type
- 14:15Speaker 2: of thing, we aren't able to do those kinds of
- 14:18Speaker 2: studies on teenagers for the ethical reasons that you mentioned earlier.
- 14:24Speaker 2: We can't bring teenagers into the lab and have half
- 14:27Speaker 2: of them, you know, view pornography and half of them don't,
- 14:31Speaker 2: and measure their sexual arousal and their brains and things
- 14:34Speaker 2: like that. But what we do know, I think it's
- 14:37Speaker 2: safe to be to be on the safer side, is
- 14:39Speaker 2: that the teenage brain is really sensitive. It's a very
- 14:44Speaker 2: sensitive period. Now that's thought to be just as sensitive
- 14:48Speaker 2: as infancy. So a new sort of explosion in terms
- 14:51Speaker 2: of brain growth. And this is because you have a
- 14:55Speaker 2: whole new you know, there's a whole new environment that
- 14:57Speaker 2: you need to adapt to. So an infancy up to
- 15:00Speaker 2: your the mother child the parent child bond. In adolescens,
- 15:04Speaker 2: you're going to need to adapt to this new pure
- 15:07Speaker 2: culture in this in this environment outside of the home.
- 15:10Speaker 2: And so the brains are just are really sensitive to
- 15:14Speaker 2: all sorts of different influences. And so when we think
- 15:17Speaker 2: about it from that perspective, we want to make sure
- 15:21Speaker 2: that their you know, their relationships and their friendships and
- 15:25Speaker 2: the media they consume and all their experiences that are
- 15:28Speaker 2: having are going to be ones that really help and
- 15:31Speaker 2: support their brains growing in healthy ways.
- 15:33Speaker 4: I actually have two questions I'm going to wrap into one. Megan,
- 15:37Speaker 4: how do we talk about this with our kids, and
- 15:41Speaker 4: in the process, how do we safeguard them from it?
- 15:45Speaker 2: Yeah, these are two I mean, these are the million
- 15:48Speaker 2: dollar questions, right. So, you know, like Justin is just
- 15:51Speaker 2: saying with younger kids, and there are parents who think,
- 15:56Speaker 2: you know, oh, I don't need to talk about this
- 15:57Speaker 2: until they're sixteen or something. I think it's okay, you know,
- 16:01Speaker 2: especially now that kids are spending so much time online
- 16:04Speaker 2: because of the COVID nineteen pandemic. I think it's okay
- 16:08Speaker 2: to tell younger kids. I'm talking like eight nine ten,
- 16:13Speaker 2: that there's a lot of content on the Internet that
- 16:17Speaker 2: shows people being mean to each other. That's people who
- 16:20Speaker 2: are abusing each other, taking advantage of people. There are
- 16:26Speaker 2: images and videos of people who are naked, and those
- 16:31Speaker 2: kinds of images are going to make you feel a
- 16:34Speaker 2: lot of different things. Sometimes you might feel really embarrassed.
- 16:37Speaker 2: Sometimes you might feel kind of queasy in your stomach.
- 16:40Speaker 2: Sometimes you might feel excited, and you might feel tingly,
- 16:44Speaker 2: And all of those kinds of reactions are normal. Our
- 16:48Speaker 2: bodies react to all sorts of imagery. You can even
- 16:52Speaker 2: you know, talk about food imagery as an example. I use,
- 16:56Speaker 2: you know, when we see advertisements of cheese and chocolate
- 17:01Speaker 2: cake and stuff, you know, all of a sudden we
- 17:03Speaker 2: wanted and are you know, are you can notice your
- 17:06Speaker 2: brain reacting. I think having those kinds of small conversations
- 17:11Speaker 2: and then obviously getting a little bit more detailed for
- 17:14Speaker 2: your older teens versus the younger kids in terms of
- 17:19Speaker 2: your terminology instead of you know, people naked online or
- 17:23Speaker 2: people being mean to each other, you know, and an
- 17:25Speaker 2: older team can know that we're talking about people having
- 17:29Speaker 2: you know, sex on camera or people being videotaped without
- 17:32Speaker 2: their knowledge. So I think preventing, you know, talking to
- 17:37Speaker 2: them about how their bodies are going to react regardless
- 17:41Speaker 2: of age is important. Having those developmental differences in terms
- 17:45Speaker 2: of talking about like what pornography may be and what
- 17:48Speaker 2: it might look like. That's going to evolve over time.
- 17:52Speaker 4: So call you Techi message three points pornographies everywhere.
- 17:57Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 17:58Speaker 4: Secondly, our kids are almost I only going to see
- 18:00Speaker 4: it at some point. And number three, we have to
- 18:03Speaker 4: have conversations.
- 18:04Speaker 3: Whether it's intentional or not, it's gonna come up in
- 18:07Speaker 3: their world. Well. Professors and professor Meghan mass from Michigan
- 18:10Speaker 3: State University, it has just been an absolute delight to
- 18:13Speaker 3: be able to spend some time with you. Thank you
- 18:14Speaker 3: so very much for your time. We didn't get near
- 18:16Speaker 3: the consent conversation. Can we get you back to talk
- 18:18Speaker 3: about that on another episode?
- 18:19Speaker 2: Absolutely, thanks for having me awesome.
- 18:21Speaker 3: That'd be great and we really hope that you have
- 18:24Speaker 3: enjoyed the podcast. The Happy Families podcast is produced by
- 18:27Speaker 3: Justin Ruhlan from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our executive producer.
- 18:31Speaker 3: If you'd like more info about making your family happier
- 18:33Speaker 3: and protecting your kids from the danger's harms and concerns
- 18:38Speaker 3: around pornography and sexual content online, you can read any
- 18:43Speaker 3: of Meghan' stuff. She's got a website meganmass dot com.
- 18:46Speaker 3: You can also visit the e Safety Commissioner here in
- 18:48Speaker 3: Australia over in about twenty articles about how we can
- 18:50Speaker 3: help our kids stay safe, or just visit us at
- 18:53Speaker 3: Happy Families dot com dot au