Gone are the days when porn was confined to magazines, videotapes, and late-night TV. Now, a quick search online yields millions of results. It’s so easy to stumble upon that 58% of children report that they’ve been exposed to porn unintentionally; the average age that children first see porn is 12.
Whether accidentally or not, viewing porn at a young age causes a range of issues that can be carried into adulthood. Child psychologist Dr. Nicole Beurkens notes that porn has been linked to increased risk of anxiety and sexual aggression, as well as harmful expectations of future intimate relationships. Using parental controls can minimize these risks by preventing your child from accessing porn, and alerting you if they do stumble across it. Let’s see how they can help.
How to know if your child has been exposed to porn
Using a parental control tool like Qustodio makes it easy to know if your child has accessed porn on their devices. From your parent dashboard, you can see a detailed history of all your child’s activity, including:
Website history
Qustodio’s activity summary shows you a list of all the websites your child has visited. You can also visit their activity timeline to see more information, including the times they accessed each site and the content category each one falls under. If you notice a suspicious website, you can click on View details to learn more. There you’ll see the site’s safety rating, plus links to the individual pages your child viewed to check them out yourself.
Search history
Qustodio shows you what your child has been searching for across Google, Bing, and YouTube. You can see whole search terms in your child’s activity timeline, plus their most searched for words in their activity summary – so if your child is looking for anything inappropriate, you’ll spot it immediately.
YouTube views
Though pornagraphic content is banned from YouTube, it is possible for mature content to slip through the net before it is taken down, or for some videos to receive inappropriate comments. With Qustodio, you can see exactly what your child has been watching on YouTube. Their timeline includes links to the videos they’ve seen so, if you see anything suspicious, you can watch them yourself and have a look at the comments to check if they include any mature content.
Calls & messages history
Qustodio’s calls & messages feature allows you to see the text messages that your child is sending and receiving. This means that if your child is sending or receiving anything inappropriate, you can see it straight away. You can also see the phone number of the person they’re in touch with to fully stay in the know.
How to prevent your child being exposed to porn
Talking to your child about how they can use technology in a healthy way is always a good starting point. Discuss the pros and cons of being online, and help them to understand what kind of content is safe for them. Tools like Qustodio’s digital agreement can be handy in guiding these discussions.
Once you’ve agreed on your family’s guidelines for technology use, setting up controls with Qustodio will help your child stay safe and stick to these guidelines. Here are a few things you can do.
Filter websites
Head to the web filtering section of your rules page and click the 3 dots next to the Pornography category. Select Block. Now, your child will be unable to access any site that’s been recognised as having pornographic content. Do the same for the Mature content category – then content that is not strictly pornographic, but still explicit, will be blocked too.
If there are any specific websites that you want to block in addition to these categories, go to the Websites tab, click Add website, and add the URL you want.
Switch on SafeSearch
An easy way for your child to unintentionally view porn is by searching for something on Google, Bing or YouTube and it appearing in the results. With Qustodio, you can filter out inappropriate results to help prevent this from happening. Head to Web filtering and then Settings. Switch on the toggle next to Enforce Safe Search. Now, pornographic and other mature content will be removed from search results – and comments will be hidden on YouTube.
Block games & apps
There are numerous gaming apps that include inappropriate, sexualized content. Additionally, sometimes the apps themselves are safe for your child, but exhibit adverts for other games that are not. With Qustodio you can block all of these: head to the Rules page and then go to Games & apps. Click the dropdown next to an app and choose Block.
What should you do if your child has been exposed to porn?
If parental controls show that your child has been exposed to porn, it’s important to first work on staying calm. Your child could be feeling worried or ashamed of what they’ve seen, so ensuring that they don’t feel like they’re in trouble will help you both to have a more comfortable, productive conversation.
Ask them about what they’ve seen and if they have any questions – if you haven’t yet had any conversations about sex education, this could be the time. Talk to them about how porn rarely reflects real-life relationships and how important consent is. It’s also useful to discuss how to recognise inappropriate content and what to do if they come across it again.
By combining Qustodio’s parental controls with open, ongoing discussions about staying safe online, you’ll give your child the best chance of being protected from pornographic content – while also helping them feel prepared to react appropriately if they are exposed to it.
