St Dunstan’s College in London will host a conference to tackle what it calls the “growing teen pornography crisis”.
The conference, titled Let’s Talk About… Porn, Sex and Educating for the Difference will take place in London in June and gather school heads, leaders and educators from across the country. The event will aim to educate delegates on the reality of children’s online lives and to open a discussion about what can be done to tackle the issue.
“We are dealing with a crisis”, said Nick Hewlett, head at St Dunstan’s College. “We know that children online access pornography, often at a very young age. The online space has become extremely sexualised and it is there where children spend most of their time today.
“As educators, we have a duty of care to help young people navigate this reality, to have the difficult and awkward conversations. Schools today need to do more than just pass on the knowledge; they need to support children’s emotional development too.
“The conference is about educating the educators. Children do not have the tools to navigate this overwhelming new reality, and the older generations are often simply unfamiliar with the scale of the risk and the impact adult content has on children.
“It is dangerous to give into the illusion that if educators don’t have these conversations with students, the problem will disappear. These conversations, and sharing of image and videos, will continue to take place between peers with or without adult supervision, and we remain responsible for guiding them through difficulties we as adults never had to face.”
According to a report from the Children’s Commissioner published in January 2023, half of children who had seen pornography had seen it by the age of 13. Seventy-nine per cent had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18.
A worrying 47 per cent of all respondents stated that girls expect sex to involve violence, especially strangulation. Exchange of nude photos and sending of unsolicited explicit images has become commonplace among school students.
The 2020 initiative Everyone’s Invited brought to light the extent of sexual harassment in schools.
A spokesman for the school added: “While the organisers of the conference believe that policy changes to curtail underage access to adult content are necessary and important, it is crucial that educators and parents understand the scale of the problem which might not disappear completely with the introduction of age verification.”
Speakers will include Nick Hewlett, head at St Dunstan’s College, Chanel Contos, founder of Teach Us Consent, Cindy Gallop, creator of MakeLoveNotPorn and Jess Alder, programme director of the Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationship Initiative at the Boston Public Health Commission.
The conference will take place at Mansion House on Tuesday 20 June 2023.