Sex Sells

As I have grown older, I have begun to realize how sexualized our world has become. Several factors contribute to the rapidly increasing sexual content around the world but especially in the US, those being the internet (browsers), social media, and television. The sexual content can be anywhere from straight up in your face nudity to subliminal messaging. No longer are kids being exposed to sex through the safety of their parents, they now are exposed to it from a young age.

When I was growing up, the world wasn’t this sexual. When I opened Instagram, I saw pictures of people living their lives, selfies, food, sports, etc. but never sexual content. I could watch YouTube or browse the internet without ever seeing a provocative picture or ad. Times were different and parents didn’t have to worry as much about their children being exposed to sexually explicit content.

Nowadays, I can’t even open Instagram without seeing a girl my age bent over showing her butt or cleavage. Its almost uncommon if a girl doesn’t have a picture of herself in a bathing suit showing off her “assets” on her social media profile. With the uprising of social media, there are many new trends and even careers being introduced to the public. There are even people who have careers as “Instagram models” and have accounts filled with what someone could only describe is porn. Anyone with a phone or computer, no matter the age can see these things and that is a serious problem for our youth.

I remember the first time I was exposed to sexual content was when I was around 12 or 13. My friend and I were watching YouTube videos on his family’s desktop computer when he all of the sudden decided to type in the word “porn” on google. He clicked the first link and I can remember to this day the shock and disgust on our face with the videos that appeared in front of us. I felt like my innocence had been taken from me and I didn’t have any time to prepare for such a scaring event. My father had taken the time prior to give my brother and I the birds and the bees talk but at the same time, hearing about sex and actually seeing it for the first time are two completely different things. I can recall harping on it and being traumatized for a short period of time because I didn’t know what was going on in the video or what a woman looked like nude, so it was a shock to say the least.

One problem I have with sexual content such as pornography on the internet is often times the videos are scripted and not reality so a younger audience can be guided in the wrong direction when it comes to sexual encounters. Many times, the videos appearing on the first page of porn sites are the most popular videos and don’t actually show how sex is actually meant to be performed. It causes people who haven’t had sex before to think that women or men are objects for pleasure only and fails to show the side of sex that is based on love and commitment.

I feel like the direction our world is headed is a dark one and will only become more and more sexualized as we grow older. Soon they will allow anyone to post nude photos of themselves on their social media pages because at this point “why not?”. I was taught about sex by my parents but truly found out what it was all about through seeing it on the internet which is the wrong way in my opinion. Sexually explicit content such as pornography depicts the wrong way of viewing sex and causes the audience to form the wrong idea about the basis of having sex in the first place. I hope I am wrong and we can pull out of this and turn in a better direction but I don’t like where we are headed at this point in time.