Capstone Project - Essay Example

The Internet is a major problem for children with pornography addiction. As stated previously in other aspects of this project, teens are able to access the Internet for prolonged periods of time, which means that they can do this in the privacy of their homes; often they are looking at pornography while they are doing their homework. The solution to this problem has been for parents to begin to monitor their children’s Internet use. Unfortunately, this will not stop the problem. Generally speaking, teens do not only access the Internet from home. Today, they can access it from their cell phones or from a friend’s house. Fortunately, they usually cannot access pornography sites from public libraries or from school libraries.  The challenge is that there is more evidence that interventions need to be done with teens in order for them to stop the addiction.

Central to pornography addiction are teens’ attitudes toward sex and towards what they see on the Internet as sexual information.  Freeman-Longo (2000) asserts that psychologists do not exactly understand sexual addiction in teens or why it occurs. According to his information, it is difficult to study this area because so many teens do not talk about how they feel about sex, and often the parents do not know until their child begins to exhibit behavioral outbursts that deal with sex. Štulhofer, Jelovica,  and Ruzic (2008) studied the effects of pornography on teens that had early exposure to it. They wanted to understand whether teens that were exposed early had a tendency towards compulsive sexual behavior. They were particularly interested in Croatian teens and they used an email survey to develop their findings. They used a questionnaire that was comprised of 244 variables to test attitudes about pornography and to gather demographic information.  They found that those students that spend the most time on the Internet were also prone to be more compulsive in their use of pornography and in their attitudes towards sex. The challenge in this is that the Internet is not going to go away, and the intervention with teens must be done so that they understand a better way of relating to sex.

Advantages of Limiting Internet Use for Pornography Sites

Brezina and Vincent (2006) make the point that parents are the first place where children go for training. This includes information about sex and their behavior. When parents decide not to talk to their children about sex, this can lead to other problems where children go behind their backs. Many parents believe that if they do not talk about sex, their children will not engage in it. The truth is that teens are very curious about sex and if parents do not talk to them, they will find other ways to find out about it. As stated previously, pornography is one way that teens seek to find out information about sex. If parents talk to them and tell them about what to expect, it can be a way for them to stop relying on pornography as a way to learn.  Fara (2010) suggests that it is important to monitor teen Internet usage because they can be exposed to violent and graphic pornographic sites. This issue has also been raised by Peter and Valkenburg  (2008) in a study that interviewed 962 Dutch adolescents between the ages of 13 and 20.  Their study found that there was a difference between those teens in how exposure to “subjective sexual arousal” would affect adolescent development. What they found was that when boys or girls were exposed to porn sites that gave them this subjective sexual arousal, they were more prone to be preoccupied with sex. The more they were subjected to these sites, and they received sexual arousal, the more their cognitive processes projected the need for more sexual stimulation (Peter and Valkenburg, 2008).  This leads to a strong reason for parents to monitor their children on the Internet because these sites are creating problems for teens that they would not have if they were not exposed.

Another advantage of monitoring teens on the Internet is that they will not be exposed to other problems that may occur.  Guan and Subrahmanyam (2009) stated that many teens become addicted to one type of problem (e.g. pornography) and then are prone to other addictions like online gambling. Many of these children have also been chosen for cybercrimes that can involve sexual predators. They state that many teens will become involved with strangers online which can lead to relationships with these same people offline which causes other problems for these teens.

Disadvantages of Limiting Internet Use for Pornography Sites

 In researching this topic, there were no real disadvantages to limiting Internet pornography sites for teens. The only issue that this researcher could think of was that teens may feel their parents do not trust them or they may go to their friend’s house and look at porn. These two disadvantages have more to do with parental control and monitoring of children than it has to do with this topic.

Challenges and Barriers to this Implementation

 The challenges and barriers seem obvious in this intervention because parents cannot be with their children 24 hours each day. There will be times when teenagers are alone in their room or with their friends that they will do whatever they want to do. Parents also work and some work more than one job, which can also hamper their ability to stop their children from looking at pornography sites. Another challenge is that cable television and/or satellite services have porn channels that can easily be accessed. Parents will need to block these sites so that teens do not have access at all.