A friend of mine recently lamented that when he sat his teenage son down to have “The Talk,” he had to focus on the internet instead of relationships. “It’s not like the old days, when you’d tell your kid about the mechanics of it, and protection, that kind of thing. My son knew the basics from sex ed class at school, and didn’t want to talk with me about it. Instead, I had to lecture him about internet porn.”
Wow. I hadn’t thought about it yet, because my kids are a bit younger, but he’s right. Internet porn is ubiquitous, and so easy to find, most of us have found it at least a couple of times even when we weren’t looking for it. What does this mean for how my children will learn about sex? Is that the mental model I want them to bring into their relationships?…