At last: An online resource discusses frankly the effects of pornography on young people

Anyone who works with young people and is looking for a resource to tackle the vexed question of pornography and its often negative effects would find the ‘It’s time we talked’ website extremely useful.

‘It’s time we talked’ has been set up by Reality and Risk, a community-based project that ‘supports young people, parents, schools, government and the community sector to understand and address the influence of pornography’. The site contains a number of practical resources including ‘In The Picture’, which has been designed for use in secondary schools to ‘address the influence of explicit sexual imagery’.

There is also a section for young people on the site, where they can go for guidance. It stresses that porn is ‘not reality’ and that it can have a negative effect on what young people expect sex to be like, and what to expect from their partners. The increasing use of violence and denigration of women in online porn is obviously of concern to anyone who works with young people in the area of sexuality, and this topic is sensitively addressed by the resources on this site.

To access the website, go to: http://www.itstimewetalked.com.au/

A documentary for use as a resource by parents, teachers, youth workers and others who work with young people will be released soon. It’s called The pornfactor; to register for notification of when it will be available, go to: http://www.itstimewetalked.com.au/resources/the-porn-factor/

(Source: Signposts, YACVic’s newsletter for rural youth, December 2014.)