A BRISBANE Catholic who works in relationship and sex education said the Australian Government’s push on an age-verification system to make it harder for children to access online pornography was a positive step, but not a “silver bullet”.
Any safeguard is a good thing, Real Talk Australia co-founder Paul Ninnes said.
“Anything that reduces the risk of exposure, particularly accidental exposure, is a good thing,” Mr Ninnes said.
The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, which tabled a 2020 report on “Protecting the age of innocence”, drew on many studies showing the average age of first exposure to pornography was between eight and 10 years of age.
The key recommendation was to introduce mandatory age-verification for online pornography platforms, as well as gambling websites.
Many submissions to the report pointed to the negative effects of pornography exposure, including harms to health, education, relationships and wellbeing.
Mr Ninnes and his team at Real Talk presented their workshops at schools and talked to students, teachers and parents.
He said many parents and teachers were naïve about the extent to which children were exposed to pornography.
“Everyone always thinks their own child is never going to be the child who looks at porn, but research would show that every child looks at porn before they become an adult,” he said.
The age verification system was likely to draw criticism on privacy concerns for consumers, as it has in the other countries which proposed them.
Critics voiced concerns about what kind of evidence would be required to prove a consumer’s age and how that information would be kept secure.
While that argument had some stock for the adult population, Mr Ninnes said no one was arguing children had a right to consume pornography.
“This is about protecting kids, not censorship,” Mr Ninnes said.
“I think it (age verification) is an obvious and easy thing that will reduce the amount of porn use for kids.
“It won’t stop it, but it’s an important step to reduce the amount of porn consumption.”
Mr Ninnes said it was important to have multiple layers of safeguards for an effective prevention strategy.
His model included five layers – the first is the internal filter, which he said was the central safeguard; the second layer was at the level of the app or internet browser or program being used; the third layer was on the device; the fourth layer was Wi-Fi filtering; and the fifth layer was at the level of the Internet Service Provider.
He said the government’s proposal was likely to happen at that ISP layer but said “as many layers you can tick off the better”.
“I think no one layer of safeguard is ever going to be enough,” he said.
“Central to that is the internal filter – teaching people to have the right moral compass and the resilience and the ability to self-regulate.”
