How to react when your child or adolescent shows an interest in sexual or violent content

By Dr Nigel Camilleri, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist

As a parent, it is definitely shocking when your adolescents start showing interest in sexually demeaning or violent content online. However, for the most part, it is part of curiosity and experimentation.  

Studies reported very mixed findings between violent TV and aggressive behaviours. However, there are stronger correlations between young children watching violence on TV and aggression than teenagers. Additionally, there is also some correlation between decreased school performance, poor body image, and a distorted view of sexual activity. That said, the most robust evidence is for teens who are predisposed to violent behaviour due to antisocial genes or have witnessed violence in their families (Bandura theory) and teens who struggle neurodevelopmentally with understanding social norms. For the majority of teens, there is no increased risk of violent behaviours, but there is evidence for desensitisation towards viewing such content. 

There is an increased risk for violent behaviours in teens who play long hours of computer games. This is not because of the violent content but due to the amount of time spent in front of a screen instead of being outside doing extracurricular activities. So engaging your teen in other positive interests - sports, dance, and music- is prosocial and beneficial for social norms development.

What to do?

We teach our children mainly through our examples, and keeping an open and honest relationship helps. But, in truth, there is little we can do to control our teens' behaviours - as Dylan wrote, 'our sons and our daughters are beyond our command', and that was in 1964. So I guess parents have been shocked with their teens for pushing boundaries for many years. Putting our teens in perspective helps. When we were younger, cartoons like Lupan were pretty messed up, and so was music like Iron Maiden etc ... and we did not even have the internet to put things into perspective ... but our own imagination - so we drew up our own images of Bruce Dickenson - and his satanic and violent music promotion - when in fact he is now a man with a PhD.

Evidence favours having open, honest communication channels with our teens. Focusing more on the positive behaviours and constructive interests they display and offering praise for these, whilst disattending/ignoring certain behaviours. Disattending behaviour extinguishes behaviours we don't wish to see, but parents have to disattend also with their non-verbals - and say they are cool about something - when in fact, there is shock written all over parents faces. So possibly, if I were not in favour of such anime content - I might state what I think and not engage or show obvious interest in this, but not be emotional about it. If there is something which, as a parent, you strongly disagree with within your house, then that is where clear ground rules come in.

Lastly, there is a strong effect-size for the influence peers have on our teens, and a very low effect-size for the influence parents have on our teens’ behaviours. So the old saying of “parents knowing their teens peer-groups” holds water. 

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(17)30033-0/fulltext