A government report released by the U.K.’s Children’s Commissioner has delivered a grave warning about the state of childhood in the digital age, revealing that the internet has become “completely unfit for children.”
Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, called the findings “among the most sobering my office has ever published,” according to LifeSiteNews. The report, titled “‘Sex is kind of broken now’: children and pornography,” exposes how pornography has infiltrated children’s lives — not by choice, but by design.
“Pornography is no longer something that children might seek out in adolescence,” de Souza wrote. “Today it has become something many children stumble upon accidentally while they are still in primary school.”
The Commissioner warned that much of the material children encounter is “violent, extreme, and degrading,” often portraying acts that are “illegal — or soon will be.” She urged that this report “should be the last of its kind,” calling it “a line in the sand.” “This report should be read as a snapshot of what rock bottom looks like,” she wrote.
Children Exposed Before They Understand
The study found that 70 percent of respondents had seen pornography online, with 73 percent of boys and 65 percent of girls reporting exposure. Shockingly, 27 percent had seen pornography by age 11, and some by age six. Nearly 60 percent said they found pornography by accident — often through social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
The report noted that “social media sites that are popular among children had high rates of pornography exposure,” with 29 percent on Snapchat and 23 percent on Instagram encountering explicit material.
A Culture of Violence and Exploitation
According to LifeSiteNews, the content many children see involves acts of sexual violence:
- 58% had seen depictions of strangulation
- 44% had seen portrayals of rape
- 69% had seen hair-pulling
- 67% had seen choking
- 64% had seen degrading name-calling
- 57% had seen incest
The report warned that such depictions are reshaping young minds. Nearly half of respondents agreed with the statement, “Girls may say no at first but then can be persuaded to have sex.” Troublingly, girls were more likely than boys to agree with that statement.
As LifeSiteNews summarized, “pornography is grooming girls to become victims, and boys to become predators.”
Erosion of Innocence and Truth
Beyond statistics, the report captures a chilling cultural transformation. One 16-year-old girl told researchers, “I definitely think that pornography changes people’s outlook on sex … it can lead to sex being more violent.” Another 17-year-old said, “[Porn] makes boys act vile towards girls.”
De Souza concluded that the sexualization and violence of online pornography are eroding not only innocence but the very ability to understand love, dignity, and intimacy. “It paints a stark picture of what childhood looks like in 2025,” she wrote, one where children are not merely consumers of the online world, but casualties of it.
A Call for Moral Renewal
For Catholic readers, this report underscores the Church’s long-standing teaching that human sexuality must always be rooted in love, respect, and the sanctity of the human person. Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body warned decades ago that the distortion of sexual imagery “depersonalizes and exploits” rather than dignifies.
As Dame Rachel de Souza implores society to draw “a line in the sand,” Catholics are reminded that true renewal begins in the restoration of the human heart — seeing every person, especially the vulnerable, as made in the image and likeness of God.
“If we are going to protect children,” the LifeSiteNews report concluded, “that will have to change.”
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