“Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ missed a trick or two about porn” explained our CEO Mary Sharpe in her opening keynote speech “Porn and the Adolescent Brain”. This took place on 3rd June at the Beira’s Place* conference “Should We Have Done Better? How social media and influencers can promote and fuel violence against women and girls”. Mary had the opportunity to critique the hugely successful Netflix series Adolescence which had inspired the title of the conference. “Should we have done better?” was the question asked by the father at the end of the series.
Basically, the script writers had unwittingly omitted one of the key drivers of sexual violence against women and girls, namely internet pornography. Hinting at misogynistic influencers on social media is a red herring. They are relatively minor, albeit infamous, players in this multi-billion-dollar industry. We know of this omission about porn’s role from Adolescence because the sister of one of the script writers attended a conference in England in May about porn and the adolescent brain where she learned how it was a critical contributing factor to youthful sexual violence. She passed on the information. Happily the script writers have agreed to include porn’s impact in Season Two.
With young men (and increasingly women) using porn sites and sexualised social media sites for years on end has been shaping their sexual tastes and behaviour at a crucial stage of their sexual and social development. Even gaming sites like Steam and Itchio contain porn and even child sexual abuse material. This pornified cultural environment also grooms them for pornographers and alleged sex traffickers like millionaire Andrew Tate who influence their attitudes further when the young user’s brain is still maturing.
The fact that pornography shapes the brain, especially in young people, isn’t widely known about, is further proof of how successful the porn industry has been thus far in suppressing evidence of the many resulting harms in the mainstream and online media. If you know of a good journalist who is willing to expose the campaign of disinformation (which we have written about previously) and the ongoing attacks on educators who seek to make the health risks known, please let us know.
You can listen to her full speech here.
*Beira’s Place is a Scotland-based private support service for female victims of sexual violence. It was founded in 2022 by J. K. Rowling. The organisation describes itself as a “women-only service”, and does not hire or provide services to transgender women.
