Shadow health minister Diane Abbott has warned that young people are being seriously damaged by an increasingly ‘pornified’ British culture.
She raised concerns over the ease at which highly explicit material was accessible by children online, stating that parents were struggling to track their children’s internet browsing due to smart phones and other new technology.
Pressure
She stated further that children were being placed under increasing pressure to send sexually explicit images of themselves to others, and that better sex education was needed to teach young people how to say ‘No’.
“For so long, it's been argued that overt, public displays of sexuality are an enlightened liberation,” she said.
“But I believe that for many, the pressure of conforming to hypersexualisation and its pitfalls is a prison. And the permanence of social media and technology can be a life sentence”.
Ms Abbot also backed proposals for an opt-in system that would automatically block access to internet pornography campaigned for by Conservative MP Claire Perry.
She added: “I want to highlight what I believe is the rise of a secret garden, striptease culture in British schools and society, which has been put beyond the control of British families by fast-developing technology, and an increasingly pornified British culture.
Wrong
“There's something wrong with a society as a whole when children say they have no one to turn to for advice because their parents - outwitted by technology, and struggling to juggle work and home life - don't really know what's going on.
“There's something wrong with a society when many young girls of all classes are pressurised into exposing themselves online, and are then humiliated”.
Research from Australia conducted by Maree Crabbe and David Corlett found that the average age for children to first view pornography is just 11 years.
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