How Kids & Teens Access Pornography on the Internet

Accessing Internet porn accidentally isn’t particularly easy anymore, so if your kid tells you he just stumbled across a porn site, you might want to take that with a grain of salt.  On the other hand, you shouldn’t get too upset, either, because such curiosity is normal. 

Indeed, discovering that your kid or teen has been checking out porn sites is a good time to sit down with them and explain that porn sites are demeaning to women and don’t provide a realistic view of sex. 

The time to be concerned is if your teen begins spending an inordinate amount of time on porn sites.  After all, Internet porn addiction can be a real problem and seriously affect your child’s healthy development.

Generally speaking, porn sites are either found by actively searching for it or by going to semi-shady sites that use porn links to help make money.  For example, should your kid decide to download a free (but illegal) copy of a computer game by going to a warez site, there’s a good chance that at least some of the links, ads, and banners will go to porn sites.

If you want to see if your teen has been accessing porn sites, it’s usually pretty easy.  You can check the browser History to see what sites your kid has been accessing.  You can also check the Search history by clicking the drop down arrow on the Search box.  Even though they might know how to clear the history, most won’t remember to. 

You can also check the Favorites (bookmarks) file to see if your teen has bookmarked his favorite porn sites.  Kids will often do this so they can go back, and don’t even think that you might check.

Should you kid or teen access pornography, it’s usually deliberately.  But don’t panic.  Usually it’s just normal curiosity that can be stopped by a parent-to-child talk or, if necessary, parental control or filtering software.