Teenagers watching pornography for the first time should not be viewed as “a normal part of growing up” anymore.

That’s according to The Times London journalist Helen Rumbelow, whose recent article entitled ‘I’m watching what the kids are watching: porn. It’s disturbing’ dives into young people’s exposure to pornographic videos.

“There's this idea that porn is a little bit like alcohol – something for adults, but teenagers are going to experiment with it,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.

“It's perhaps not like alcohol anymore, I think it's more like something like cocaine.

“There's really not that much chance of an ethical supply for your teenager.”

Research

Ms Rumbelow said a lot of the conversation around pornography talked about its effects, but there was not enough discussion of the content itself.

“I thought, right, I'm just gonna do it – I'll just open up my laptop and look at what's the most popular on the homepage of Pornhub,” she said.

“There are 32 little videos that you can watch and of them about a third involved quite distressing violence towards women.”

Ms Rumbelow said there is a parallel between the content she viewed and the ”violent practices” that have been showing up in the dating etiquette of young people, such as choking or slapping during sex.

“There were a couple [videos] that were seriously gruelling, and I would say in any other context, you would think this was some kind of sexual assault,” she said.

‘Traditional porn’

Ms Rumbelow said many parents have an “old-fashioned” view of pornography, which does not represent how the industry has changed.

“We think of someone like, probably the most famous porn star at the moment – Stormy Daniels,” she said.

“She's a very confident woman, no one is, degrading her.

“That's the old-fashioned view of these women that were very successful and making a lot of money and they're in the middle of their lives.”

Ms Rumbelow’s research showed that the “use of the performers” has changed.

“One of the most popular categories is teen, which on Pornhub they categorise as 18+,” she said.

“You hope that the girls are 18 but even so when you're looking at what they've gone through, you're thinking [even] if they are 18 – I hope they are – but that's still very young.

“They’re also going through things that wouldn't be classed as traditional porn, so that's very young to undergo that sort of body punishment.”

Boys looking at Pamela Anderson calendar in Oxford street London (Gianni Muratore / Alamy Stock Photo)

Impact

Ms Rumbelow said she feels that pornography gets “a free pass because it's so hidden in shame and secrecy.”

“I feel like in any other medium if this kind of humiliation of women or casual racist stereotyping was going on, we'd be more outraged whereas actually, we just hide this one away,” she said.

“Perhaps a lot of people might have memories of their own first exposure to pornography and it being relatively gentle.

“I think what we just haven't accounted for is the change over the last 10 years with smartphones, where teenagers basically how unvetted access to this infinite amount of videos and they're much darker than anything that adults now are exposed to.”

“I would advise certainly with teenagers to talk about it but that this isn't real.

“A lot of teenagers go on there curious, wanting to almost give themselves sex education … I think you have to keep saying this isn't what is in store for you, this isn't actually a guide to good sex.”