A Médiamétrie study commissioned by Arcom reveals that half of 12-13 year old boys consult pornographic sites every month. Here are some tips to prevent your child from doing the same.

Nearly one in three minors consults at least one pornographic site every month. In total, nearly 2.3 million minors are thus exposed to pornographic images for more than 50 minutes on average every month, very far from what their parents can imagine, often abandoned and without advice on this scourge.

“These figures do not surprise us at all, reacts to the Parisian Justine Atlan, director of e - Childhood, Association for the protection of children on the Internet . There are no miracle solutions to fight against. Parents can't manage on their own, but they still have a role to play. Here are some tips for limiting porn consumption in your children.

1. Become aware of the problem

“Yes, there is a very high chance that your child will watch porn, even if he is 12 years old”. The director of e - Enfance prefers to be honest: “Becoming aware of the problem is the first step in being able to fight against it. An easy first step to say, but not so easy to do.

“The parents just didn't live in the same world with such easy access to porn sites. And anyway, you have to understand that your child does not tell you everything. You don't have to be in denial either. If the father or mother watches it, the child can also have access to this content, ”warns Justine Atlan. In its study, Arcom describes "mass consultation of pornographic sites by minors" which is "mainly on smartphones, that is to say out of the parental eye".

Electronic devices are therefore the heart of the problem. “When parents offer a tablet, a phone, a technological tool, whatever, they are offered access to pornography. In fact, we can say that pornography is not prohibited for minors. The first piece of advice is not to buy these devices too early”, recommends the director of the association.

2. Talk about it

After realizing the problem, take action. And the first thing to do is to talk about it. “Not informing is letting things happen. Protecting means informing about the risks ”, sums up Justine Atlan. Again, the task is not so easy.

“When you walk on the sidewalk, you warn your child of the dangers of the road. It's the same there. You just have to tell him that he risks coming across content that can scare him, content that is very dangerous for him. It must be established that this is not a taboo subject. It's when we don't talk about it that we expose our children even more,” explains the director of e-Enfance.

“What we have observed is that young children who come across this type of content feel guilty and withdraw into themselves. It is necessary to anticipate and make it less guilty upstream so that they are better able to discuss it, ”advises Thomas Rohmer, founder of the Observatory of parenting and digital education (Open).

Among teenagers, the problem is different for the director of the Open: “They will in any case try to defy the ban and consult this content. The problem is rather educational so that these images do not become tutorials. Here again, opening a space for dialogue with your child is essential. If the parent is not comfortable, and he has the right, he must be able to redirect to a resource person able to talk about it, such as a school nurse. »

3. As a last resort, censor

The last tool is parental control. For once, there is nothing simpler. Parental control exists on all access providers , on all types of electronic devices, etc. This system allows two things: filtering content prohibited to minors, and setting connection times.

“ These features are very good at filtering out pornography , through keywords and nudity. It's much more useful for a child under 12, because, in adolescence, you have to leave a little more freedom, ”explains Justine Atlan.

Second rather effective tool: SafeSearch . This configuration tool from Google, the first search engine to reach pornography, makes it possible to drastically restrict access to undesirable content. "We shouldn't kid ourselves either. These systems are not infallible. A normally constituted child these days will seek and find how to circumvent these controls via tutorials, ”tempers Thomas Rohmer.