Nearly a quarter of teenagers said they have viewed pornography at school, according to a , a nonprofit that studies the impact of technology on youth.
Assistant principal Scott Wisniewski found that finding disturbing, but not particularly surprising. On the day of the report鈥檚 release, he had spent part of the morning talking to two students who were caught looking at inappropriate images online.
鈥淭wenty years ago, it was more of a process to acquire that type of materials. And now it鈥檚 not hard at all,鈥� said Wisniewski, who works at Wayne Valley High School in New Jersey. 鈥淭his is really the first time a lot of us, even in education, are navigating these conversations.鈥�
Many students look at pornographic images quite a bit at school. Sixty percent of the teens who said they had viewed pornography during the school day said they had done so several times a month. And 40 percent said they had done so at least weekly. About 24 percent of boys had looked at porn while physically in school, compared with about 20 percent of girls.
What鈥檚 more, 13 percent of the overall number of teens surveyed said they had viewed pornography on a school-issued device.
That has Wisniewski wondering: 鈥淚f they鈥檙e doing this on their school device, what do you think they鈥檙e doing on a personal device?鈥�
In fact, the figures on personal devices seem to be much higher, Common Sense found. Nearly three quarters of teens have seen online porn in some form, the report found, and more than half鈥�54 percent鈥攈ad seen it by age 13. While many teens look at pornography intentionally, 58 percent of those who reported seeing porn online said they saw it accidentally.
The survey, which was conducted in September, included more than 1,300 teenagers in the United States. This is the first time that Common Sense has examined this issue. As far as the organization is aware, the report is the first to consider online pornography use among a large, demographically representative sample of teens, a Common Sense spokeswoman said.
鈥楪et a step ahead of them鈥�
Chris Smallen, the chief technology officer for Lenoir City Schools, near Knoxville, Tenn., suspects that if there were prior data, it would show the problem has worsened in recent years, due to the expansion in the number of district-issued laptops and tablets, spurred by the pandemic.
A survey of educators in the spring of 2021 by the EdWeek Research Center found that about two-thirds recalled there was one school-issued device for every middle and high school student before the pandemic. Another 42 percent said the same about elementary school kids.
Those numbers skyrocketed during the pandemic, when nearly every school engaged in some form of virtual learning, fueled in part by federal relief cash. By March of 2021, 90 percent of educators surveyed said their school or district had at least one device for every middle and high schooler, the EdWeek survey found. An additional 84 percent said the same about elementary school students.
Lenoir City鈥檚 1-to-1 computing initiative was rolled out in 2016, several years before the pandemic. One early challenge: Working out the kinks in online filters to ensure students didn鈥檛 get access to inappropriate content.
Smallen remembers a barrage of questions from parents asking how they could strengthen the internet filters on devices at home. He wound up referring them to a short instructional video on parental controls.
Both Lenoir City and Wisniewski鈥檚 district, Wayne Valley Public Schools, use tech that doesn鈥檛 just block inappropriate sites, it also pings district officials when students try to access them.
That way, school leaders or teachers can 鈥渓et [students] know they鈥檙e being watched,鈥� Smallen said. 鈥淭he big thing for us is just seeing what they鈥檙e trying to get to. Then we can get a step ahead of them.鈥�
Wisniewski鈥檚 district also proactively tells students that their online activity is being tracked. He鈥檚 hoping that knowledge may clamp down on inappropriate browsing among kids who may not take the district鈥檚 messages on digital citizenship to heart.
Nothing in tech is full proof though. Case-in-point: When a teacher who had advised National Honor Society students retired from Lenoir City a few years ago, a foreign pornography site ended up taking over the webpage she had created for students using a free tool, evading the district鈥檚 internet filters.
鈥淚t was just unavoidable,鈥� Smallen said.
