Watch out for our children, it may be yours. Yours who, from their bedroom or basement, watches increasingly crude, degrading and violent pornography.
It would be wrong to blame young people. They have the hormones in the ceiling, they are curious and explore what is within their reach. It’s normal. What is not is the accessibility and trivialization of sexual content at the limit of legality.
It is all of us who, as a society, have the responsibility to protect minors from the multi-billion dollar porn industry.
The recent file of colleague Tristan Péloquin shows that certain forms of pornography have practically become incitement to rape. It also reveals that the algorithms favor these extreme scenarios when viewed1.
We are just beginning to understand the consequences of such content on children who are in the process of discovering sexuality and who do not always have the tools to put what they see into perspective.
Of course, no one wants to talk about it. Pornography is intimate. Its consumption is often hidden and kills.
The time has come, however, to burst the abscess. Because those who benefit from the current taboo are the giants of the industry.
As long as we don’t discuss their practices, as long as we pretend they don’t exist, they have free rein.
What is increasingly being described as a “public health crisis” rightly demands a public response. This should be all the more true here, since MindGeek, the world leader in the field which operates the Pornhub and YouPorn sites, is from Montreal.
Cleaning up the content that circulates? It’s utopian. For child pornography and for victims who find themselves on videos without their consent, it must be zero tolerance. But for the rest, good luck determining which practice is acceptable and which is not.
The least we could do would be to protect the eyes of minors. Germany, France, Great Britain and Louisiana are among the jurisdictions that have moved to require age verification for Internet users who want to access pornography.
Louisiana is achieving this thanks to the “digital wallet”, a concept similar to the digital identity that must be implemented in Quebec in 2025. However, we do not have to wait that long. It is already possible to force porn sites to verify the age of their customers through third-party companies that would be approved by the government. The Yoti platform, for example, offers such services.
At home, we must salute the efforts of Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, who has drawn up a bill intended to restrict access to pornography for minors (see other text in Debates 5).
This bill is now being studied by the House of Commons and we must hope for its rapid adoption. The famous freedom of expression is sometimes invoked in all sauces, but it is not about that here.
This is to protect minors from content that could cause them all sorts of problems, from addiction to trouble in intimate relationships.
The fear of looking puritanical should not prevent us from acting either. Nor is the idea that corporations (or young people themselves) will manage to circumvent the law. That would be abdicating our responsibilities.
Alongside age verification, it is also imperative to prepare young people for the new reality. The Ministry of Education specifies that “the compulsory contents in sexuality education of 2e3e and 4e secondary contain notions related to sexually explicit material, which includes pornography”.
However, one can wonder if this is enough.
The Culture and Citizenship of Quebec course will soon replace the one entitled Ethics and Religious Culture throughout the province. However, the word “pornography” is still not present in the provisional programs displayed on the web. It’s time to get it right.
In the meantime, why not send specialists to talk about pornography in schools? It would relieve teachers who do not always have the tools to do so.
The idea is not to sink into morality. But at a time when all the fantasies on the planet are accessible at your fingertips, you have to have the courage to recognize that this can cause problems. And act accordingly.