网络色情时代的父母经

It had been another long day for Eliza, a 41-year-old stay-at-home mother who lives in Los Angeles with her two sons. She had taken the boys, 10 and 13 at the time, to school, taken care of the house, and after putting them to bed, planned to relax in front of her computer.

对41岁的全职妈妈伊丽莎(Eliza)来说，这又是漫长的一天。她和两个儿子住在洛杉矶。她把10岁和13岁的两个儿子送去学校，然后开始整理房间，晚上打发他们上床后，她打算在电脑前放松一会儿。

At least that’s what she was hoping to do. Eliza opened her computer and started to search for a document, but based on previous searches, the term “child porn” appeared on the screen.

至少，那是她的打算。伊丽莎打开电脑，开始寻找一份文件，但是基于以前的搜索，“儿童色情”这个词出现在屏幕上。

“I went into a panic,” said Eliza, who was given anonymity to protect the identity of her children. Her mind started to race in a million different directions.

“我吓了一跳，”伊丽莎说（为了保护孩子的身份隐私，她决定隐去姓氏）。各种念头涌进她的头脑。

Two nights later, as they were going to bed, she asked the older son if he had searched for “child porn” and if so, why. “He said he was looking for porn made for children,” she told me. “He explained, embarrassed, that he just wanted to know what his body was supposed to look like at his age.”

两天后，她在睡觉前问大儿子是否搜索了“儿童色情”，如果是的话，为什么要这样做。“他说自己在找给孩子看的色情片，”她说，“他尴尬地解释说，他只是想知道他这个年纪的身体应该是什么样子的。”

Welcome to the new teenage years. Not long ago, boys and girls nearing that curious age might sneak a peek at Playboy or scour the underwear section of a J. C. Penney circular.

欢迎来到新的青少年时代。不久前，男孩女孩们在这个好奇的年纪可能会偷看《花花公子》或者翻看杰西潘尼百货公司宣传单的内衣部分。

Today, teenagers have easy access to a seemingly endless supply of pornography, including things that even many adults don’t want to see, such as mock sexual violence, misogynistic videos and, in extreme cases, child pornography.

如今，青少年很容易接触那些似乎无穷无尽的色情片，其中一些甚至连很多成年人都不想看，比如模拟性暴力和歧视女性的视频，极端的例子包括儿童色情片。

“At first, I told my son the next time he wanted to look at things like this, to talk to me and we’d do it together,” Eliza said. “Yet as soon as the words left my mouth I realized, and said, ‘No, no, no, that would be a terrible idea.’ ”

“一开始，我对儿子说下次他想看这种东西时，告诉我，我们一起看，”伊丽莎说，“但是话一出口我就觉得不对，连忙说，‘不，不，不，这个主意很糟糕。’”

Parents I’ve spoken with who have young boys acknowledged that trying to stop them from seeing online pornography is all but impossible. One father, for example, said that he installed web filtering software on the home computer, only to learn that his son had watched a gross-out pornography clip at a friend’s house.

我采访过一些有未成年儿子的父母们。他们承认，阻止孩子看网络色情片几乎是不可能的。比如，一位父亲说，他给家里的电脑安装了网络过滤软件，但是发现儿子在一个朋友家里看了一段令人作呕的色情片段。

I spoke with researchers at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, who walked me through a number of long-term studies that the group has been conducting since 2000 on children’s exposure to pornography. In one paper, the group found that 42 percent of online users ages 10 to 17 had seen pornography, and that 66 percent of those had seen it unwittingly, often as display ads on file-sharing sites.

我采访了新罕布什尔大学涉童罪行研究中心(Crimes Against Children Research Center)的研究员们。他们给我简要介绍了该机构从2000年起进行的一些关于儿童接触色情内容的长期研究。其中一项研究发现，在10至17岁的上网者中，有42%看过色情片，其中66%的人是在无意中看到的，通常是在文件共享网站的醒目广告中。

Another study by the same university found that 93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls were exposed to online pornography during their adolescence. You don’t need to be a scientific researcher to realize that’s a lot of exposure for children.

这所大学的另一项研究发现，93%的男孩和62%的女孩在青春期看到过网络色情内容。即使不是科学研究者，你也能感觉到，对孩子们来说，这也有点太多了。

For parents, this leaves two questions. First, is the pervasiveness of online pornography bad for today’s youth, potentially creating a society of sexual deviants? And second, what can parents do to help protect their children?

对父母们来说，这引出了两个问题。第一，网络色情无处不在，这对如今的青少年有害吗？会导致这个社会充满性变态者吗？第二，父母们能做些什么来保护孩子？

There is no definitive answer to the first question, although it is a running debate in the nation’s culture wars. For example, the 2013 movie “Don Jon,” which starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a man hooked on pornography, prompted a new round of anti-pornography commentary, including one from a sex therapist arguing that online pornography is severely corrupting today’s youth. “I see a sexual and relational train wreck happening,” the therapist said.

第一个问题没有确切答案，不过它是美国文化论战中的一个长期论题。比如，在2013年的影片《唐璜》(Don Jon)中，约瑟夫·高登-李维(Joseph Gordon-Levitt)饰演一个痴迷色情片的人。该片引发了新一轮反色情评论，其中有一位性心理医生认为，网络色情正在严重侵蚀如今的青少年。“我看到很多人难以维持正常的性关系和亲密关系，”这位心理医生说。

But other experts who monitor teenagers and sexuality say that there is plenty of evidence pointing in the opposite direction. Teenage pregnancy has dropped sharply in recent years; the number of sexual partners that teenagers have is down; and the number of ninth graders having sexual intercourse has fallen, to cite just three examples.

但是其他观察青少年和性的专家说，有很多证据表明情况正相反。先举三个例子：近些年，青少年怀孕案例急剧减少；青少年拥有性伴侣的人数减少了；发生性关系的九年级学生人数减少了。

“If you just look at the indicators of sexual responsibility, you don’t see a generation of kids looking like they are off the rails,” said David Finkelhor, an author of several books on child abuse and a director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. But Dr. Finkelhor acknowledged that the long-term psychological effects of teenagers’ access to online pornography was still being determined.

“如果只看和性责任相关的某些指数，你就不会觉得这一代孩子好像都误入歧途了，”大卫·芬克霍尔(David Finkelhor)说。他是新罕布什尔大学家庭研究实验室的一位主管，写过几本关于虐待儿童的书。但是芬克霍尔承认，青少年接触网络色情对心理的长期影响仍有待确定。

Which leads to the second question. Dr. Finkelhor and other experts I spoke with said that today’s easy access to pornography, especially its violent and illegal forms, makes it imperative for parents to educate their children, not only about sex but specifically about online pornography, in all its flavors. And given how easy it is to find it online, it is important to inculcate them at an early age.

这就引出了第二个问题。芬克霍尔以及我采访过的其他专家说，如今接触色情内容变得太过容易，特别是暴力和非法的色情内容，所以父母们必须得教育孩子，不只是关于性，还要特别就各种类型的网络色情对他们进行教育。考虑到现在很容易在网上找到色情内容，所以从很小就谆谆教诲很重要。

Here’s the new reality: Thanks to the Internet, children will see things that children probably shouldn’t. Teenagers with active hormones will get together with their friends and, when parents are out of sight, seek out and explore dark and salacious imagery.

新的现实情况就是这样的：因为有了互联网，孩子们会看到他们不该看到的东西。父母不在身边时，荷尔蒙分泌旺盛的青少年会和朋友们聚在一起，寻找阴暗淫荡的画面。

So as uncomfortable and embarrassing as it may be for both parents and teenagers, part of raising a child today means explaining that, like Hollywood movies, pornography is often a fantasy that can take things to extremes.

所以，虽然对父母和青少年来说，这让人难受、尴尬，但是如今养育孩子的部分责任是向他们说明，色情片就像好莱坞电影，往往是一种幻想，有时会比较极端。

Also, children should be warned about the dark and dangerous material they may stumble across online. If parents don’t, that uncomfortable and embarrassing feeling could be replaced with something much worse.

另外，应该警告孩子们，他们在网上会碰到一些阴暗危险的内容。不警告的话，倒是可以避免难受、尴尬的感觉，但取而代之的是更糟糕的情况。

Take it from Eliza. The last thing you want to find on the home computer is a previous search for the term “child porn.”

伊丽莎就是个例子。你在家庭电脑上最不想看到的就是历史搜素记录里有“儿童色情”的条目。