A sexology professor has called on Danish schools to show students porn to help them become “critical consumers.” Christian Graugaard believes it's important for teens to distinguish between adult movies and real sex relationships.
“Instead of having sex education be boring and technical,
where you roll a condom onto a cucumber, I want us to educate
young people to be critical consumers who see porn with
reflection and critical distance,” Graugaard, a Professor at
Aalborg University, told public broadcaster DR.
Denmark is among one of the world's most porn-friendly countries.
It lifted a ban on pornography in 1967. In 1969, it became the
first country in the world to completely legalize pornography.
According to research conducted in the Nordic countries in 2006,
up to 99 percent of teenage boys and 86 percent of teenage girls
watched porn.
A 2013 study from the University of Copenhagen showed that
viewing online porn or sexually explicit content in magazines has
little influence on the sexual behavior of teens and young
adults.
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Researchers carried out an online survey of 4,600 Danish
youngsters, aged between 15 and 25. The study found that nearly
88 percent of boys and 45 percent of females had watched porn in
the previous year. The study results showed that watching porn
resulted in only a 0.3 to 4 percent difference in sexual
behavior, but they did note it increased the tendency to be
adventurous while having sex.
"These findings contribute novel information to the ongoing
debates on the role of SEM [sexually explicit material]
consumption in sexual behaviors and risk, and provide appropriate
guidance to policymakers and program developers concerned with
sexual education and sexual health promotion for young
people," the authors wrote in the Journal of Sexual
Medicine.
Professor Graugaard, who was president of the Sex and Society
organization for 10 years, insists schools should help teens
understand that their own sex life is not what they may see on
screen.
He warned that should teens try to imitate what they encounter in
hard-core porn films “it's a recipe for broken necks and
disappointment,” he told Danish TV.
When the broadcaster discussed the possibility of porn education
at a school in Aalborg, the students were all for it.
"I think you could get something out of it – for example the
difference between real love between two people who have sex and
hard porn and orgies from the US," ninth grade student
Anders Kaagaard told DR.
While sex education in Danish schools has been compulsory since
1970, parents can withdraw their students from classes if they so
wish.
According to DR, efforts to introduce porn education in schools
are underway in the UK and Sweden.