The moment I knew internet pornography had cast its dark shadow over the lives of millions of ordinary British teenagers will live with me for ever.
I was sitting in the smart drama hall of a specialist sports college in the North of England with a fantastic reputation.
Before me were a group of 20 boys and girls, aged 13-14. Largely white, working class children, they were well turned-out, polite, giggly and shy.
As the presenter of a Channel 4 documentary called Porn On The Brain, airing next Monday at 10pm, I'd been invited to sit in on a forward-thinking class led by sex education consultant Jonny Hunt, who is regularly asked into schools to discuss sex and relationships. To establish what these kids knew about sex – including pornography – he had asked the children to write an A-Z list of the sexual terms they knew, no matter how extreme.
Most of these children had just hit puberty and some were clearly still children: wide-eyed, nervous, with high-pitched voices.
Some of the girls were beginning their first forays into make-up. Several wore braces on their teeth. Everybody was smartly turned out in school uniform, and the most anti-authority statement in the room was a tie worn deliberately short. A One Direction pencil case lay on a desk. These were clearly good children, from good homes. So far, so very, very ordinary.
But when Jonny pinned their lists on the board, it turned out that the children's extensive knowledge of porn terms was not only startling, it superseded that of every adult in the room – including the sex education consultant himself.
…[T]he first word every single boy and girl in the group put on their list was 'anal'.
When questioned, they had all – every child in a class of 20 – seen sodomy acted out in porn videos. I was stunned they even knew about it – I certainly hadn't heard of it at that age – let alone had watched it and as a result may even have wanted to try it.
One 15-year-old girl said, 'Boys expect porn sex in real life'. And one boy – to choruses of approval – spoke of his revulsion for pubic hair, which he called a 'gorilla'.
When Jonny pointed out that pubic hair was normal in real life, the boys scoffed, but some of the girls were angry that the boys' template of what to expect from real girls had clearly already been set by porn.
By the end of the hour-long class – and three others that followed with other children – I was profoundly saddened by what I had witnessed. While teenage boys will always be fascinated by, and curious about, sex, what's now considered 'normal' by under-18s is an entirely distorted view of intercourse and the way relationships should be conducted.
It seemed as if the children's entire expectation of sex had been defined by what they see in online porn. The conversation was horrifying enough, yet there was worse to come.
In the playground, I interviewed a brave group of seven bright boys and girls aged 14-15 to ascertain in more detail what online porn they had witnessed.
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