The Impact of Pornography on Children and Youth

Persuasive Essay
Kurtis Olson
Per. 1b 2/6/11

Pornography is a word that is brought up as bad for kids to watch. Kids are most likely exposed to it at a young age. The largest group of viewers of Internet porn is children between ages 12 and 17 “Family Safe Media, December 15, 2005.” Kids will want to see it and try it. We need to have stricter pornography sites on the internet.

Entering a birth date isn’t enough clarification, it’s easy to lie. The identification number you see on an identification card or driver’s license should be used to go along with clarifying your age online for anything that requires a mature audience. Kids may think that they could steal their parent’s license but all pornography sites should have a small fee so their parents would know if they made a charge with their credit card. Teens are mostly lazy so an average teen or child wouldn’t go through all that work. Any parent who looks at their bill will penalize the child in someway.

Kids won’t be exposed to sex at such a young age, or making sacrifices to watch pornography. The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the western industrialized world. More than 2/3 of all teenagers who have a baby will not graduate from high school. Billions of dollars are spent taking care of teenage mothers and their children and they are more likely to be in the poverty bracket. Teenager pregnancies are dropping; it is still a constant problem as there are more and more kids who enter their teenager years each year.

It’s not always the parents fault when kids are looking at porn. Parents may work two jobs, have to cook, help with homework. With this economy parents aren’t always home. Parents could also have a schooling type of their own. With America being so much in debt and destroying the economy it’s almost impossible for two parents or especially a single parent to be watching every move their kid makes at all hours.

Charging for pornography will reduce how much kids will watch. At the same time it will boost the economy and possibly make more jobs. Some say exploiting sex for money isn’t right but I guess people have to make do in life. So the next time you think about watching porn for free, leave it alone and wait till you’re older to do it. Unless you actually realize that watching it is pointless and unproductive in any way. When you have kids always watch them and what they’re doing as much as possible.