It is not an uncommon practice in Jamaica to hear a man publicly blurt precisely how and what he would do sexually to a woman’s body if given a chance. Never mind if there are children in earshot, as age, gender, or title does not escape their verbal public lasciviousness and contrived ‘bedroom bullyism’. “Eeh, baby, mi woulda love fi kill yuh wid…”

Several years ago I gave the Norman Manley Lecture at The University of the West Indies, on the Sexual Harassment Bill and how it could be understood to achieve its intended objective, given that we live in a country where some of our cultural mores have become so blatantly infused with sexual overtures, sexual innuendo, and just plain raw sex talk.

When I was the minister of youth, on several of my visits to our residential care facilities, some children would confide in me that they had been forced and coerced into sex from a very early age. Worldwide, around 15 million adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 have experienced forced sex in their lifetime. Twenty-four per cent of Jamaican girls between 10 years old and 15 years old reported being forced to have sex on their first sexual encounter. (UNICEF Report, Jamaica, 2017)

People under 18 years old make up 30 per cent of our population. So our children born in Jamaica today face a different reality from when I was growing up 30 years ago. All of them are immersed in a digital world and exposed to more information and content than is conceptually manageable. This includes pornography and how easy it is for children to access it online. Years ago, if someone wanted to view porn they had to buy a magazine or rent a tape from the adult section of a secluded video store. Then they would have to hide it and share the proverbial secret with friends and companions. Back then, it was a Mills and Boon or Harlequin novel for us girls in high school. Today, with cell phones in their pockets, access to some of the most hard-core porn images and videos imaginable is just a click away with Wi-Fi or data as many of these sites are unrestricted. Now, children have a front-row seat to everything available on porn sites, including Hentai — a type of Japanese anime. In fact, the average age of first Internet porn exposure is 11 years old, whether intentional or accidental. The US Department of Justice states that never before in the history of telecoms media has so much indecent and obscene material been so easily accessible by so many minors in so many American homes with so few restrictions. Currently, 85 per cent of Americans choose to watch porn on their smartphone.

It’s argued that the net worth of the global porn industry ranged between US$6 billion and US$97 billion — more cautious figures say US$6 billion to US$15 billion. In January 2022, visits to the top porn sites globally were approximately 8.12 billion: xvideos, 3.32 billion; XNXX, 2.5 billion; and Pornhub, 2.3 billion. The average time spent watching a porn video is slightly over 10 minutes. Porn sites receive more website traffic in the US than Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, Pinterest, and Zoom combined. “Teen” is reported as the most common word used in porn titles.

Moreover, 2019 statistics reveal close to 6 billion hours of porn were watched on Pornhub alone. “Jamaican school girl” has been a search category on their site for several years.

Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison raised the alarm in 2019 that “revenge porn” was a trend being practised among high school Jamaican teens. That is, a boy and girl in a relationship have no problems filming themselves in a sexual act; however, if the relationship ends badly, one of them releases the video digitally to embarrass the other party.

“Gyal, cock up mek me f@#$ you dehso

A nuh nutt’n if you snap a video

See di middle mek you whine di muckle

Nah roll wid di gang den you nah get nutt’n…”

(Likkle Miss by Skeng & Nicki Minaj 2022)

Pornography impacts the brain much like an addictive drug by triggering ever-increasing amounts of dopamine. The brain is wired to respond to sexual stimulation with surges of dopamine often associated with reward anticipation, programming memories and information into the brain. This means that when the body requires food or sex, the brain remembers where to return to experience the same pleasure. (Neurosciencenews.com)

Additionally, the regions of the brain that are active when someone is viewing porn are the same regions of the brain that are active while the person is having sex and can have the propensity to spread violent behaviour because of the mirror mechanism in the brain. (Professor Marco Lacoboni, University of California, 2019)

Therefore, access to free online pornography should be a brutal wake-up call that we need to modify our approaches towards sex education for our children. We need to get real about the solutions to the challenges of teenage promiscuity, child sexual abuse, and teenage pregnancy in our society, understanding that we cannot stop sexual violence and mistreatment unless we are honest about the different forms of sexual advances now being made to our boys and girls.

Our definitions in our laws are still backward and do not support the current trends and practices of what many teenagers engage in and what they have learned from watching and acting on porn. Suppose we are to seriously confront our children making conscious choices about their sexual responsibility and combat the horrors of child sexual abuse in Jamaica. We must begin to think differently about the solutions.

First, we must acknowledge that any child with a smartphone is watching porn. Then, once we accept this reality, we must rid ourselves of the notion that teaching our children responsible sexual habits won’t happen with obsolete conventions of the “birds and the bees” conversations. Our children a far more sexually high-tech.

Lisa Hanna is Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a former Cabinet member.