Parents and teachers are concerned that children grow up in an environment where sexuality determines everything: success, happiness, good wealth. What threats does early sexualization pose and what should parents do?
Today, children and teenagers can easily access pornographic images, and Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) with its retouching capabilities makes many people feel ashamed of their “imperfect” body.
“Early sexualization especially affects girls and young girls, says family therapist Catherine McCall. “Female images that surround a girl become a source of role models by which she learns to behave, communicate and build her identity. If at an early age a girl has learned to treat a woman as an object of desire, she may have problems with self-esteem, increased anxiety, eating disorders and addictions may develop.
«I’m afraid to post my photos, I’m not perfect»
In 2006, the American Psychological Association created a task force to evaluate the problem of sexualization in children.
Based on the results of her work, psychologists have formulated four features that distinguish sexualization from a healthy perception of sexuality1:
the value of a person is determined solely by how he looks and behaves;
external attractiveness is identified with sexuality, and sexuality with happiness and success;
a person is considered as a sexual object, and not as an independent person with the right of free choice;
sexuality as the main criterion for success is aggressively imposed in the media and the environment of the child.
“When I go to Facebook (an extremist organization banned in Russia), the first thing I see is photos of people I know,” says 15-year-old Liza. — Under the most beautiful of them, people leave hundreds of likes. I’m afraid to post my photos because it seems to me that I should be as slim, with the same good skin and regular features. Yes, they also give me likes, but less — and then I begin to imagine what those who just looked and walked by think. It’s horrible!»
They grow up too fast
“Life moves too fast and we embrace technology before we realize how it is changing our lives,” explains Reg Baily, head of Mothers Council UK. “If a child sends a photo to a friend or shares it in public, he does not always realize what the consequences can be.”
According to him, parents often prefer to ignore these topics. Sometimes technology itself becomes a way to get away from awkward conversations. But this only reinforces the isolation of children, leaving them to deal with their fears and anxieties on their own. Why is this happening? Where does this awkwardness come from?
In 2015, British parenting information portal Netmums conducted a study that found:
89% of young parents believe that their children are growing up too fast — at least significantly faster than themselves.
“Parents are confused, they don’t know how to talk to children whose experiences are so different from their own,” concludes Siobhan Freegard, founder of Netmums. And they have a reason. According to polls, in half of the parents, the most important thing in a person is a beautiful appearance.
natural filter
Adults see the threat, but they can’t do anything about it. They fail to find the source of the problem because there really is no single source. There is an explosive mixture of advertising, media products and peer relationships. All this confuses the child, forcing him to constantly wonder: what do you need to do and feel in order to be an adult? His self-esteem is constantly under attack from all sides.” Can these attacks be countered?
If a child uploads his photo to the public, he does not always realize what the consequences may be
“There is a natural filter that filters out negative information — this is emotional stability, Reg Bailey says “Children who are aware of the consequences of their actions can make independent decisions.” A team from the University of Pennsylvania (USA) found out that it is wrong to protect the child too much from what can harm him — in this case, he simply will not develop a natural «immunity»2.
A better strategy, according to the authors, is a controlled risk: let him explore the world, including the world of the Internet, but teach him to ask questions and share his thoughts and feelings. “The task of parents is not to scare the child with images of the dirty “adult” world, but to share their experiences and discuss difficult issues together.”
1 For more information, see the American Psychological Association website apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report.aspx.
2 P. Wisniewski, et al. «ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems», 2016.