Nine in every 10 teenage boys here have watched or read sexually explicit materials within the past year, a survey has found, with some first exposed to it from as early as lower primary and below.
For the girls, 8 per cent admitted to viewing pornography last year, be it intentional or accidental.
Conducted by Touch Cyber Wellness, the main agency that gives online safety talks in schools here, the survey polled 921 students aged 13 to 15 to examine teenage exposure to pornography.
It did the first such survey on teenage exposure to pornography two years ago and followed up with a second one earlier this year.
Compared with the first survey, there is an increase of 6 to 14 per cent of the boys and girls who have been exposed to pornography.
The main mode of accessing such materials is via personal mobile devices.
Of those who viewed such content, 88 per cent of boys and 73 per cent of girls saw it on their smartphones or tablets. This is an increase of 6 to 8 per cent compared with the 2014 survey.
The earliest age of exposure is upper primary and below for 52 per cent of the boys who accessed such material, and 28 per cent for the girls.
Experts say the findings are worrying as such content can affect children’s studies, self-esteem, interpersonal relationships and their attitudes and behaviour towards love and sex.
If addiction sets in, it may lead to various forms of dysfunction and sexual crimes.
Touch Cyber Wellness manager Chong Ee Jay called the figures “expectedly alarming”.
“With kids owning or have access to mobile devices at a younger age, the risk of such exposures is greatly magnified.”
Delane Lim, chief executive of Agape Group Holdings which conducts talks and youth camps in schools, agrees.
“Exposure to pornography is a given. But we should start getting worried about the average age of kids being exposed to it and the percentage of youths addicted to pornography,” he added.
Experts say it is time for parents to monitor and talk to their children about such issues as the exposure rate can be expected to go only north, given that Singapore has one of the highest rates of mobile-phone usage.
When asked how they were first exposed to porno- graphy, 54 per cent of the boys said they intentionally searched for it on the Internet while 43 per cent of the girls stumbled upon it while surfing online.
While parents can install Web filters on their child’s mobile phones, this may work only for younger kids.
Mr Lim said a longer-term solution is to equip parents with the right communication skills to talk about such issues.
“But they may not have the moral authority to do so as, ironically, some parents are watching pornography themselves and the children know it,” he added.
K. Rosli, 42, mother of a girl aged 10 and a three-year-old son, checks the history of Internet sites and YouTube videos on her daughter’s phone daily.
Said the executive: “She hands over her phone willingly every day because we have a curfew for phone use.
“When the boy grows up, I will get dad to handle him.”
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