“Sex is kind of broken now”: children and pornography
The Children’s Commissioner’s latest report exposes how children are being exposed to violent and degrading pornography at increasingly younger ages, often accidentally. For youth justice, the findings underline how such early and harmful exposure can distort children’s perceptions of sex and relationships, providing vital context for mitigation in sexual offence cases.
Details
This report examines the increasing exposure of children to pornography online, and identifies two key issues:
- first, many children (as young as 11 years old) are exposed to pornography through social media and pornography websites, often incidentally, to the point of normalisation, and;
second, the pornography which children are exposed to is typically violent and extreme.
The first issue is being addressed through the recent introduction of the Online Safety Act 2025,[1] which requires pornography websites as well as social media sites and search engines to put in safety measures to prevent children from accessing pornographic content. However, the exposure to violent pornography is impacting children by normalising violent or harmful sexual behaviours, and influencing their understanding of sex, consent, and relationships.
Vulnerability Factors
Practitioners should be aware of the increased risk of exposure to pornography among vulnerable children, as highlighted in this report.
- Children who have learning difficulties, disabilities, or Special Educational Needs (SEN) are at a higher risk of exposure, with 76% affected, compared to 69% of those without SEN.
- By age 11, 32% of children who had ever received Free School Meals (FSM) had seen online pornography, in contrast to 21% of those who had never received FSM.
- Among children with a social worker, 34% had seen online pornography by age 11, compared to 24% of those without a social worker.
Commentary
With over 70% of children having been exposed to pornography at an average age of 13 and a majority of the content being violent, it is clear that pornography has become normalised among children [2]. This is evidently shaping children’s attitudes towards women and girls, with 44% survey respondents agreeing that girls can be ‘persuaded to have sex’[3]. Survey respondents also reported women being more ‘commonly depicted as receiving sexually aggressive acts’ [4]. The exposure is reportedly impacting children’s self-esteem, behaviour, and their perception of sex and respect, among other factors.
The findings of this report may support mitigation representations in sexual offence cases by providing important context. The report’s conclusions can be linked to the mitigating factors outlined in both the Child Gravity Matrix and the Sentencing Council’s Definitive Guideline for Sentencing Children and Young People to bolster representations in favour of a lower outcome.
Footnotes
1) The Online Safety Act https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/online-safety-act
2)The Children's Commissioner, “Sex is kind of broken now”: children and pornography, August 2025, p.17 https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2025/08/cc-sex-is-kind-of-broken-now-children-and-pornography.pdf#page=17
3) Ibid, p. 33 https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2025/08/cc-sex-is-kind-of-broken-now-children-and-pornography.pdf#page=33
4) Ibid, p. 34 https://assets.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/wpuploads/2025/08/cc-sex-is-kind-of-broken-now-children-and-pornography.pdf#page=34