'It's A Matter Of When Not If Your Child Is Exposed To Porn'

As more kids are exposed to pornography online – sometimes accidentally – we offer advice to worried parents

- Lindsay De Freitas

He'd meant to be more careful with his phone. He knew his five-year-old daughter had started using it to play games when she found it lying around. But some evenings he was so tired when he got home from work that he simply plonked it down on his nightstand and forgot about it.

He doesn’t know exactly when it happened, or how many times, but what his child found while scrolling on her father’s device has probably scarred her mind forever.

She came across porn videos. And she was so intrigued by it, she started searching for pornography on her own device, after figuring out keywords to find it.

By the time her parents discovered what was happening and took her to see clinical psychologist Marita Rademeyer, the girl was masturbating to the graphic videos she’d so easily found online.

This is just one of a number of such cases Rademeyer has recently dealt with at her practice in Pretoria. While she doesn’t see many patients under the age of 10, the number has grown over the past year.

“Two or three years ago the Bureau for Market Research found that one in five children between the ages of 12 and 17 were watching pornography daily,” Rademeyer says.

Fast forward to 2021, she adds, and exposure to porn is happening a lot earlier than the teen years – hence the influx of under-10s she’s encountered at her practice who need psychological help because of it.

Studies show the average age at which boys in South Africa are exposed to pornography is nine, according to The Digital Law Company, which is headed up by social media law expert Emma Sadleir.