We have mixed feelings about the way a Redditor dad handled his discovery of a wealth of porn sites in the browser history of his 13-year-old son’s computer. He composed a letter to his son not only accepting his son’s use of porn, but recommending better, less malware-rife sites for him to use.
Here’s a portion of the letter, from Reddit:
I want to tell you that it’s ok. Listen, I was 13 once too and it wasn’t so long ago that I don’t remember. I’m not mad or anything. It’s life and I did it too. I just want you to know that most of those sites are places that can and will ruin your computer. You were actually lucky that it only did what it did. There are viruses and other scamware that can completly ruin a computer and I can’t afford to buy you another 1800 dollar machine because you went to a site that fried it.
There are sites that are completely safe and you can go on them and not have your computer turned into a piece of junk. You can go to these sites and not screw up your computer. Don’t click on any links taking you to other sites and please only go to these. Ninty percent of porn sites have crap that can brick a computer.
[Recommended porn sites omitted]
Listen, I won’t tell your mom and I’m not gonna make a big deal out of this. In fact I’m not gonna make any size deal out of it. If you don’t wanna talk about it that’s fine and I completely understand. I’ve been on this earth three times as long as you and there’s nothing you have done or will do that I haven’t done before.
The dad later updated his original post, claiming that he spoke to his son about how sex in porn is not like sex in real life, and that women aren’t sex objects. Which is great, but isn’t that a bit of a mixed message to be sending? “Women aren’t objects, but, here, check out these sites that feature women as…objects.”
We’re sex-positive here at Sexcerpts and huge proponents of talking to your children about sex, but 13 seems awfully young to be given the green light to watch porn by your own father. Themes in some porn, especially in the Wild West of internet porn, can be difficult to absorb and process even for adults who can differentiate between fantasy and reality.
Over at Salon, Tracy Clark-Flory has written an excellent piece about this post featuring commentary from several noted sex experts, many of whom said it’s okay to flat-out forbid your kid to watch porn. We liked this quote from Clark-Flory’s story:
Amy Lang, a sexual health educator and founder of Birds + Bees+ Kids, tells me this Reddit dad got some things right: “I love that he wrote his son a note — this is the perfect way to communicate with a young adolescent boy about something like this,” she says. “What I don’t love is that he didn’t clarify that porn isn’t reality and that it will give him a skewed idea of what real sex is like and what it’s all about.” Perhaps it wasn’t just his son’s embarrassment that he was avoiding in his practical-seeming note, but also his own. “If I were this dad, I would leap at the opportunity to start having regular conversations about sexuality with my son,” Lang says. “The door has been kicked open.”
For more resources on how to talk to your kids about sex, visit the links at the end of this vintage Sexcerpts post, Study: Parents Want to Teach Kids About Sex.
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90% of porn sites will ruin your computer? Really?
I don’t have much of an issue with how his dad handled it, actually. If I were him, I would have probably just said nothing, especially since his concerns on malware and most likely incorrect.