UNICEF Is Not Testing Porn On Children
The Claim
A new UNICEF report on children’s online activity said that pornography may not always be harmful to children. They conducted this research by watching children view pornography.
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This May, the Center for Family & Human Rights released an article stating that UNICEF had claimed that pornography was not always harmful for children to view.
The article alleged that UNICEF’s findings were based on a study that had cited research that took place in 19 EU countries, which supposedly showed that many children reported neither being happy nor upset after viewing pornography. It also claimed that the research stated that some children were happy after viewing pornography.
This article, and articles that reposted the Center for Family & Human Rights’s article’s claims, spread via social media, with some stating that UNICEF was advocating for children to view pornography. Others claimed that individuals at UNICEF had watched children as they viewed pornography. These posts have gained thousands of interactions.
Misbar’s Analysis
Many sources have highlighted that sex education is a vital subject for children to learn. Therefore, a more accurate assessment of what the paper is stating is that sex education is important for children to access, but they may not be able to if online censorship conflates a healthy discussion of sexual health as pornography.
The Center for Family & Human Rights also highlights European research as evidence that the paper stated that children had either neutral or positive reactions to pornography. But the research makes it clear that these reactions were not in relation to pornography. Also, this data came from children’s responses to questions, not from viewing pornography. Specifically, the questions were in relation to sexual images, which included those found in television shows or movies. This source states the following: “We should note that we intentionally avoided using the term ‘pornography,’ which can give special connotations, but rather asked the children more broadly to think of images that were obviously sexual.” By using more careful terms, the images that the children responded neutrally or positively towards referred to scenes of people kissing or of people wearing revealing clothing.
Additionally, the UNICEF paper states that exposure to pornography poses risks and harms to children. Specifically, the paper states the following: “Some research associates access to pornography at a young age with poor mental health, sexism and objectification, sexual aggression and other negative outcomes.”
It describes how some children are harmed by exposure to some kinds of pornography but that the nature and extent of this harm varies. At no point does the paper deny that pornography is not harmful to children or advocate for children to watch sexual content that cannot be considered made for educational purposes.
The report has since been removed from the UNICEF website, but it is still available on the Internet Archive. This removal took place after the National Center on Sexual Exploitation sent a letter signed by almost 500 child safety experts. The letter does not state that the report denied that pornography was harmful to children. Instead, it took issue that the paper incorrectly stated that there is no consensus on the degree with pornography was harmful to children. The letter then provided many studies that highlight the negative impacts of children viewing pornography.
Essentially, the letter shows that it is inaccurate for the Center for Family & Human Rights to state that the UNICEF paper said that pornography was not always harmful for children. Instead, the issue with the paper was that it contained an incorrect claim about scientific consensus.
