“I don’t think I’ve been permanently scarred or anything”

Introduction In 2021, the (Irish) “National Survey of Children, Their Parents, and Adults Regarding Online Safety” (NACOS) showed that 18% of 9- to 17-year-olds reported seeing sexual content on the Internet in the past year. For comparison, the “EU Kids Online” 2020 study of 19 European countries reported an average of 33% of 9- to 16-year-olds seeing such images in the past year, positioning Ireland very much at the lower end of the European spectrum (Smahel et al. ). Since 2011, as indicated in the “EU Kids Online” Irish data (Livingstone et al. ), the trend in Ireland regarding exposure to sexual content among children aged 9–16 has not changed significantly. Ireland continues to maintain one of the lowest rates of children being exposed to sexual content in Europe. But significantly, in recent research, almost half of children impacted upon (47%) declared not to have been bothered by the experience of seeing sexual images (NACOS). In fact, just 15% said they were upset by this exposure and, comparing this with the finding from the original EU Kids Online study (Livingstone et al. ), where 38% of Irish children reported being “bothered” by seeing sexual images online, this indicates a remarkable shift in children’s attitudes and perceptions. So, is it the case that young people have “normalised” their experiences with digitally delivered sexual content? This article charts the findings from the Australian Research Council (ARC) -funded Discovery Project (DP190102435) Adolescents’ Perceptions of Harm from Accessing Online Sexual Content. This component of the four-nation comparative research draws on interviews with four Irish adolescents (and their parents, not included here) to uncover contemporary Irish teens’ perceptions around who they would talk with if they had concerns or were bothered about sexual content they saw online. Ireland was once known for its homogeneous society and culture, a strongly Catholic and sexually reticent nation (Inglis, Moral Monopoly). Over the past 50 years, however, the cultural landscape of Ireland has undergone significant changes. It has evolved into a multinational, cosmopolitan, and globalised society, with over 200 nationalities and more than 20% of residents identifying as non-Catholics (CSO). The country has experienced remarkable transformations in policy and politics, now widely recognised as progressive. It emerged as one of the pioneering nations to legalise same-sex marriage through a national referendum in 2015, followed by the legalisation of abortion in 2018. In June 2017, Ireland voted for Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach (Prime Minister), making him the country’s first openly gay, mixed-race leader (Gorman). These political transformations have been described as seismic, but what of the personal politics within Irish families? This article examines what Irish teens shared with their interviewer (Dr Thuy Dinh) about their experience of sexual content online, the harms they believed they may have encountered, the risks that they or their peers may run, and their perspectives upon how they have “positioned” these experiences. While the individual stories across four teens from four Irish families differ in important respects, most teens indicated that their peers were their go-to preference in terms of someone to talk to about any encounters they might have with sexual content online. Given the research question “what does listening to young people tell us about the best policy interventions to support healthy sexual development around sexually explicit materials? ”, the article starts with a discussion of peer-group dynamics around sexual content and broadens to consider the principal adults in teenagers’ lives: parents and teachers. Having discussed the contribution made by the interviewees to an understanding of the Irish teen experience, the article considers some policy implications of the findings and draws a brief conclusion. Peers and Sexual Content The Irish teenagers agreeing to take part were aged either 16 or 17, with an average age of 16 years, 6 months. In the context of the full ARC project (11–17), this was a comparatively mature aged group. Further, three of the four Irish teens recruited were female. In addition to the informed consent of the participant adolescents, the teens’ parents also needed to consent to their child taking part. Cillian (M, 16), the only male in the group, uses an adolescent “yeah, no” negation structure to rule out talking with his parents about any concerns around encounters with digital sexual content. Working out his response as he answers, Cillian starts by saying “if it was affecting me or anything, I probably would talk to parents, but I wouldn’t. No …. I’d probably talk to a friend first”. Quinn (F, 16) also suggests this might be the norm: “group chat to us are really handy and you can talk to multiple people at once …. You have all your friends added on”. But groups of friends aren’t always supportive. As with high-school children in other western countries (Korkiamäki; Pabian et al. ), an Irish adolescent’s peer group can be one or both of “a support”, and “a threat”. When peer dynamics are viewed in the context of digital access to porn, sexting, and other sexual communication, the Irish teen participants raise a range of challenges. As Niamh (F, 17) says: Image-sharing was a big thing when I was younger and still is, I suppose, of people sharing nude images with other people, and if that gets into the wrong hands it is – could be – very dangerous …. There was plenty of people I would have heard of that had content like that shared on them and that is scary for anybody. Niamh sees this as part of the educational ecosystem: “things like bullying … well obviously you see a lot of it online and I feel we experience a lot of that in the real world, as well, especially being at schools”. Orla (F, 17) also echoes that perspective: “lots of people my age, probably worried about online bullying or photos of them getting leaked and stuff”. As she thinks about these issues, Orla (F, 17) remembers that: “I think the first time I ever saw something like that was 11 or 12 …. I don’t know like, obviously, that 18 thing wasn’t stopping anyone …. I think my friend was like ‘Do you want to see this video? ’ – Just showed me porn”. Clearly, in the same way that porn can’t be unseen, it’s difficult for a young person in Orla’s position to imagine how things might have been without that peer intervention. As the teenage interviewee attempts to work through the implications of this early exposure, she weighs up her belief that she hasn’t been impacted upon with the feeling that maybe it would have been better to have encountered porn later: I don’t think I’ve been permanently scarred or anything, but it definitely wasn’t beneficial to my development …. I wish I hadn’t seen it, but I don’t think about it. I’m not like, ‘Oh God, I wish I’d never’ – do you know? ‘Cause I would have seen it eventually …. Like, I’m not sad that I saw it young. Like, maybe when I’m older I will be, but I don’t care at the moment. It’s as if Orla (F, 17) believes her early experience with sexual content colours her subsequent encounters, and may yet be shown to be problematic, but that’s not the case, as yet. Niamh (F, 17) also notes ready access to porn across the high school age range, and the lack of an effective barrier: I suppose there’s not very much age restriction on any content like that. Like, other schools, back in the past, it would always have been something not so easily accessible, but now there’s not even just specific apps. You go on Instagram, and you see women and men and very sexualised situations and that is open from any ages, from 11 all the way up to 80. Orla, echoing Quinn (F, 16) above makes the point that adolescents go online together. If schoolfriends are on one social media channel, the entire friendship circle uses that app, or those channels: “when I’m online it’s just ‘cause I’m talking to my friends and when I’m in real life, I’m talking to my friends again. Like, it’s the same thing, it’s just on or off”. For Quinn (F, 16), the online inter-group dynamics used to be a challenge, but aren’t any longer: I remember in second year of high school we used to always fight online … like obviously, in person, you can hear your tone, or how people are saying stuff, but if you’re texting someone something it’s hard for them to understand it …. It would be just like small fights with my friends over like Snapchat, but on group chat, but now we grew out of it, we don’t really fight anymore, you know what I mean? It’s a maturity thing. Together, these participants paint a picture of shared peer engagement with digital media as being a possible channel for amplifying risks around both the form of communication, and the content being communicated, including sexual content. Risks appear to be exacerbated by multiple online participants, the views the group shares, and the comments made. Cillian (M, 16) highlights the critical dimension of individual difference as part of being a victim of group aggression: “it’s pretty bad online, like bullying and just bad stuff. I just don’t let it affect me, but some people aren’t able to do that”. This is a clear risk for young people’s preference to refer sexual issues to their peer group. Teachers and Parents as Mediators of Pornography Parents and teachers frequently came up in teens’ discussions of adult mediation of their online use and encounters with sexual content. Niamh (F, 17) argues that it’s the adults’ role to worry about their children. As a 17-year-old girl, Niamh feels “old enough to make a decision and say, ‘OK, I don’t want to see this’, or ‘Block this’, or ‘Get rid of TikTok altogether’”. At the same time, Niamh knows “people that were younger that would have had the same app Instagram and it would be a worry, I suppose, for parents and teachers and stuff as to what they were being exposed to when they have no control over what comes up on their feed”. Given that adults worry about what children are encountering online, Niamh (F, 17) regrets that the curriculum educates “around” pornography, rather than “about” pornography: There’s lots of worries about children accessing adult content like that porn that wouldn’t necessarily show a consensual relationship and that was a big one that we always had so many classes and talks on, like how to properly consent because of that. But other than that, I’m not sure there was much expressed to us personally. Quinn’s (F, 16) educational experience around online sexual content focussed on warning her against it: “we had a class in school that taught us about how it’s really bad to watch it adult videos … how bad addiction to that can affect you and what it does and how it affects you, basically”. She positions the harm as being in the age group of the viewer, rather than the content – for example, the modelling (or not) of practices around consent: “it’s very harmful for people my age ‘cause they’re not fully developed”. Niamh’s (F, 17) view is that education around porn and sexting is too little, too late: In school it would be very taboo, ‘Don’t tell the younger years that this is out there’. I broached the conversation many times in general, especially non-consensual image-sharing or anything like that, and it would always be said ‘Oh, don’t say that in front of the first years at high school, like, it might upset them’. But I think it’s the younger years that need that kind of education because it’s them that experience it more than we would because by then we’ve lived through it and come out the other side, but it’s the 12- to 14-year-olds that need that support and need, I suppose, the education on how to deal with such things. It may be in the absence of any active, anticipatory adult engagement around these topics that teenagers turn to their peers. It is clear that significant numbers of Irish teens are encountering sexual content and sexual images, but sense they shouldn’t be, and that the adults in their lives are reluctant to talk about such matters. Orla (F, 17) indicates that it is these experiences that drive the development of skills in managing different apps and content: “on Snapchat you block people ‘cause teenage boys’d send you photos you don’t want to see”. There are multiple indications that Irish teens (and Australian teens – see Woodley) believe it’s easier for educators to talk about a “safe” concern, rather than a sexual concern. For example, Orla (F, 17) notes that: Like, we do SPHE social, personal and health education, but the main thing that they think is harmful is the body image issues that you come up with. They aren’t worried that we are under 18 watching it because I think there’s a bigger worry, that we think we’re expected to look like that, or do things like that – that’s more of the worry. She goes on to say: “I have got friends who have become very insecure because of porn, because they don’t look like how the girls do in porn”. This latter perspective seems to call for wider-ranging sex education-focussed discussions about adult content dealing, amongst other matters, with gender dynamics, the production ethos of pornography, the imagined audience and what they want to see (and why), etc. Given that such an agenda might appear daunting to Irish educators, even as the country becomes more liberal, might it be a role that parents should take on? The teens seem to think not. Quinn (F, 16) shares her experience of watching adult content with her parents: Quinn: Sometimes, if we’re watching a young movie all together, and it’s got explicit or something, we’d not watch it anymore. Int.: So, it is like, they stop it? Or they tell you to go out? Quinn: Stop it, or skip through it, kind of… But Quinn (F, 16) doesn’t have confidence that her parents understand what does, and doesn’t, bother her: Int.: Do you think your parent would know what might upset you? Quinn: No. Like, in what way? Int.: Well, if something online, or even in daily life, what can upset you? Quinn: No, not really. Maybe somethings, like, not specific things, I guess. This means that Quinn (F, 16) may be positioning her parents as not best-placed to help her navigate challenging content. Indeed, the implication is that some of the reluctance around the suitability of the viewing content may say more about her parents’ vulnerabilities than Quinn’s. This kind of scenario was also hinted at by Orla (F, 17): Orla: I may have told my mum I had been sent an explicit photo I didn’t ask for, but it was in jest, like. I didn’t care. I just blocked the person. It’s so normal nowadays to get sent a picture of some teenage boy’s dick that it’s not like – you take it in your stride. So, I think I may have made a joke about it, like, nothing more than that … it happens all the time, that’s why everyone is blocking people on Snapchat…Continuing My dad I think would throw up if I told him. He’d be quite mortified. …Int.: So, who’re you talking to if you need some advice, or need to confide? Orla: My friends and I will talk about sexual content but I wouldn’t talk to my parents about it …. I don’t think my friends would mention it at all to their parents, I don’t think that there’d be any conversation around it …. I think it would make things awful and uncomfortable and I’m so happy not doing it. I really would not like to talk to them about it … if I had a child I don’t know if I’d want to be talking to them about it … this isn’t something that I think anyone talks to their parents about. In fact, I think it’s kind of weird if you did. In a subsequent section of her interview, Quinn (F, 16) indicated that there had been a conversation about the reason why her parents skipped, or turned off, broadcast sexual content in an “explicit” young adult movie. She told the interviewer that they had a “talk about it”. The interviewer pressed Quinn: Int.: So, are you happy with the way they deal with the issues? Quinn: … They deal with it fine. Like, it’s not a problem, not a common issue but they’ve explained it to me, and I know not to watch. This seems to indicate that the main aim of Quinn’s parents’ communication was to close down discussions around sexual content, rather than ventilating them, or responding to any of her questions and concerns. This seemed to be at odds with Niamh’s experience. Niamh recommended that young people should “have a trusted adult, whether it be a parent or a guardian or a teacher, someone that you can go to with things that you don’t want to see online and ask them for advice because adults usually have fairly good sound advice”. She added, subsequently, “I think as you grow up, like, my parents and I would have similar views now and I would have influenced their views and they would have influenced mine”. This reciprocity of impact was a little less self-confident (although maybe more realistic) than Cillian’s response to a question about whether parents worry when their children go online. “Not really”, says Cillian (M, 16). “I don’t know. I feel like I’m pretty smart when it comes to stuff online”. Discussion The Irish teenage participants were a far-from-random selection of adolescent interviewees. At the same time, the project was not designed to be representative, but to investigate meaning-making within small cohorts of teenage high-school students from three separate countries (Greece, Ireland, and Norway), while offering a counterpoint to the majority of the data: the 30 teenagers interviewed in Australia. While each teenager’s story is unique, a common thread runs through the narrative of this study relating to Irish teens’ encounters with pornography and adult content. Peers appear to be the primary sexual content confidantes for each of the research participants. These teens indicate they speak quite openly with their peers, primarily their same-sex friends, about online experiences with pornographic content. This includes talking openly about sharing intimate content, and about having one’s own intimate content shared non-consensually. The conversations seem to be part of teens’ management of sexual risks when they occur online. While parents naturally maintain an important presence in teenagers’ lives at this stage, the teens’ perspectives shared in this research appear to indicate a growing gap as to what they feel they can easily share with parents and teachers about their lives, norms, and experiences. Interestingly, while peer groups are shown in this study to provide support around issues that arise around online sexual content, they can also pose risks. Peer group culture is clearly identified as a key influence in introducing young people to sexual content. Online pornography and unsolicited sexts are readily shared among teens who, almost universally equipped with smartphones, have ready access to such content. Notably, for younger teens, this exposure is something for which teens feel ill-prepared, adding additional pressure to the transition to secondary schooling. Peer aggression, toxicity, and cyberbullying must also be managed and tolerated as part of growing up, at least for this group of research participants. The teens in the study were noticeably dismissive about online safety protections such as age restrictions for adult content sites or, indeed, about efforts made by mainstream social media sites to provide age-appropriate experiences. Many sites were regarded as highly sexualised environments exerting their own pressures as to how to look, behave, and interact both offline and online. Teachers’ efforts to discuss this in the classroom were regarded as largely ineffective and too narrowly focussed on dominant tropes about avoiding online sexual content, risky body image issues, and a lack of focus on matters of consent. Indeed, it may be that Irish sociologist Inglis’s view – from a generation ago – may still have currency. He argued that Irish attitudes towards sex and sexuality represent an unsettled culture and reflect a deep and continuing ideological conflict with inherited repressive morality. More open or positive attitudes towards sex, he suggested, or support for reformed sexuality education in schools, is made more complex and challenging when significant portions of the adult population are still coming to terms with their own sexuality (Inglis, "Origins"). Insights from discussions with the teens in this study point clearly towards the need for new policy interventions. There are obvious implications for online service providers, for educators, and for parents. On the industry side, the lack of effective content controls, often in contravention of their terms of service and community guidelines, is palpable. Whether it relates to toxicity, cyberbullying, or inadequate privacy provisions, reforms that meet the needs of young people are urgently needed. Educators and schools likewise have a key role to play in supporting young people at this formative stage of their development. The important influence of peer-group culture noted in this study is frequently centred around the school and, in this context, there are ample opportunities for schools to proactively foster positive and safe environments. This resonates with an Irish Minister for Education-commissioned 2018 review of “Relationships and Sexuality Education” (RSE). That review found current RSE education to be largely “too little, too late and too biological”, focussing too much on the risks and dangers associated with relationships and sexuality (NCCA). The new senior cycle curriculum, currently open for consultation, includes a new proposed learning outcome “to investigate the influence of pornography on attitudes, behaviours and relationship expectations” (NCCA 14). Finally, in relation to parents, also interviewed as part of this study, while noting the importance of autonomy and privacy in teenagers’ lives, parents can provide more direct support for their children by informing themselves of the risks and opportunities young people face online and developing appropriate and sensitive parenting responses. Conclusion This article focusses on the circumstances affecting a small cohort of Irish teens’ experiences of dealing with online sexual content. It offers contrasts between the pervasive experiences among teens of dealing with such content and the wider social context which reflects a society in transition, sometimes struggling to escape from its sexually repressive past. The article provides insight into Irish teens’ attitudes towards pornography and whom they discuss sexual issues with, particularly in the context of Ireland’s more recent progressive political atmosphere, something not necessarily reflected in parents’ and teachers’ behaviours. Teens themselves articulate some of these dilemmas in expressing concerns about the highly sexualised environments they encounter online, and share among their peers, while claiming that they are not bothered by these experiences. The major finding of this article is that peers are the primary confidantes for teenagers’ discussions about sexual content, including sexting and pornography. The data indicate a growing gap between what teenagers feel they can share with parents and teachers versus their peers. It also suggests that current sex education in Ireland is insufficient, aligning with views that Irish attitudes towards sex and sexuality remain conflicted. Notwithstanding the strides made nationally in advancing a liberal social agenda, these teens indicate that the responses of their parents, and of educators, fall short of meeting their needs. New initiatives in reforming the RSE curriculum in schools, therefore, come at an important time and should prioritise addressing gaps highlighted by these young people’s voices. In summary, the research calls for a multi-faceted approach to address the complexities of teens’ interactions with online sexual content, emphasising the roles of peer support, improved education curriculum, parental involvement, and industry accountability. References CSO. “7 Migration and Diversity. ” Census 2016 Profile. Ireland: Central Statistics Office, 2016. . Gorman, Tommie. “Shy, Complex and a Political Outsider: Leo Varadker Confounded the Brexiters—and Everyone Else. ” The Guardian, 23 Mar. 2024. . Inglis, Tom. Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland. 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