NIKKI DENHOLM
Nikki Denholm was 11 when she and her cousins stumbled upon a box of Playboy magazines stashed in the garage at an older relative’s house.
What an age of innocence that seems now. These days, she says, centrefolds are so old-fashioned kids don’t even think of them as porn.
Still, the memories she has of that first X-rated encounter – feeling a little bit naughty and giggly but also “uncomfortable and quite confused” – aren’t so different from the way children feel today when they come across porn – except what they’re likely to see is far more extreme than anything Hugh Hefner would have let across the line.
In 2018, a survey of 2000 New Zealand teenagers found 89% thought porn had influenced the way they think and act, with 73% of porn-watchers using it as a way to learn about sex. Conducted by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), the NZ Youth and Porn report also found one in four had been exposed to porn by the age of 12 – in most cases accidentally.
Not only are children seeing material designed for adults, but much of the content is pretty disturbing. In December, the OFLC released its Breaking Down Porn analysis of almost 200 of the most popular videos watched by New Zealanders on Pornhub. One in 10 involved aggression, a third depicted some non-consensual behaviour, such as being pressured or “tricked” into sex, and nearly half were “step porn”
