Online pornography is easily accessible for young people in New Zealand like ‘Tom’ who became an addict at age 11.
Video / Mike Scott
On a Saturday afternoon in winter, over herbal tea and raspberry slice, a Waikato mum of two invited her friends over to listen to her 15-year-old son speak about being addicted to porn.
Over two hours, Tom - not his real name - shared with them how it started when he was 11, that he struggled to see girls and women as anything more than objects for sexual gratification and how that culture is normalised among his peers.
But what could have been an awkward conversation for a child to have with a bunch of women in their 40s and 50s was an open, first-person account that left him empowered. It left the mothers with rare insight into a teenage boy's mind, and equipped with knowledge to help them talk to their own children.
Tom is now planning to share his story - which ends with him weaning himself off porn at the ripe old age of 14 and finding joy in life again - with more groups of parents.
He tells the Herald on Sunday he first started looking at it "as a curious child who had just begun puberty".
"I was looking around on the internet and easily stumbled across pornography. I felt strange and, honestly, just guilty the first time I saw some, but I kept bingeing over the next few months. Just after my 12th birthday, I masturbated to porn for the first time and it sparked an addiction."
He was watching it every day and he wasn't alone. Tom says porn was rife at his high school and he heard from friends at two nearby schools that it was just as bad.
"I would see pornography at lunchtime, on other people's laptops. I would see videos that were spread around school of underage sex, like of 12-year-olds. It was just this hyper-sexualised society and culture at the school."
And the way his peers spoke about girls wasn't any better. "It was disgusting, they treated them as though all they were good for was cooking and washing dishes."
Tom knew what he was doing wasn't good for him. "I really hated the way it would always make me feel. I'd search on the internet to see if it was bad for you or not. I couldn't have deep connections with anyone. I viewed women as just objects, essentially. It was hard to have any connection or conversation. I had no goals, I just did not care about life at all."
A quarter of young people in New Zealand who see porn will see it at aged 12 or younger, with earlier exposure for boys, according to figures provided by The Light Project, a charitable trust run by sexual health experts to help youth, families and schools.
Tom now shares his experience with parents. Photo / Mike Scott
Seventy-five per cent of Kiwi boys aged 14 to 17 have been exposed to it and 58 per cent of girls. For 71 per cent, the first exposure was by accident and 44 per cent were not on a porn site when they came across it.
Mum: 'I had no idea'
Tom's mother Sarah (also not her real name), 53, tells the Herald on Sunday she had no idea of the extent of her son's addiction. He had hinted at it during a conversation in the car when he was about 12.
"Tom asked me whether masturbation was okay... I said 'Yeah, yeah it's normal, everybody does it. There's nothing wrong with it'. I didn't know at the time he was searching for a way to end his addiction. I thought it was just a normal conversation we were having. I had no idea he was looking at porn."
Another time, Tom came home and told her he had seen porn at lunchtime on someone's phone at school. She rang the school to let them know but says she never heard anything more from them about it.
It wasn't until the country went into lockdown at the end of March last year that Tom, aged 14 and three months, really began to question what he was doing.
"The fact that I was taken out of the toxic culture, surrounded by the urges to pursue all this disgusting material, the fact that I was just by myself at home, I guess it made me think more about what I was doing."
Tom eventually came across an online community forum, supporting people who want to give up pornography and masturbation.
"I began to get immersed into this organisation of people. It took quite a while for me to make any progress with it because of how badly I was addicted."
He stumbled across a video about the neuroscience of abstaining from masturbation and pornography, which "changed my whole perspective".
"After learning about how it affects the brain and how it affects someone's life who is addicted, it just changed my whole perspective… with that information it helped me never masturbate again and never watch pornography again."
The eloquent teen talks about how excessive amounts of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that plays a role in how we feel pleasure) affects a person's wellbeing, increasing the likelihood of depression and drive to do anything. He says he has seen peers who were addicted to pornography go on to have other addictions, for example to drugs.
Tom eventually "dropped into conversation" with his mother about the online community he had joined and slowly she unravelled the extent of his addiction.
"As a parent you think that's what teenagers do," Sarah says. "They shut themselves away in their room because they want their privacy, You assume that's normal."
She was shocked to discover the kinds of things her son was looking at. "I had to say to my son, 'No, girls don't like that. Girls don't want to be in pain when they have sex.' It's where they get their sex education, and girls get treated like they're objects."
As a former early childhood teacher, Sarah says she prides herself on being open with her children. "We used to talk about penises and vaginas, we called everything by the proper name… so when we started talking about masturbation, it seemed like the next step.
"In my generation, no one cared what we thought... I worked really hard to have a good relationship with my kids so they want to talk to me about these things. I feel really honoured that he trusts me with these delicate, uncomfortable conversations."
'I'm a totally different person'
Tom says he's now been "sober from porn" for over 400 days. He never went back to school after lockdown and is studying NCEA level 3 maths and physics via correspondence. He is passionate about nutrition, cooking and weight training and excited for his future.
"I'm a totally different person to who I was back then."
Once everything was out in the open, the mother and son spoke about what they could do to combat the "terrible ideas about what a relationship is" among teenagers. They decided to invite a group of Sarah's friends over.
"I thought, 'Gosh, I thought I was a parent who communicated quite well. My son went through that and it never occurred to me once to have a conversation about porn'," Sarah says. "So I got some brave people together to come and listen to my son so that they would go away and have those brave conversations with their kids.
"Often we hear from these researchers and adults about what's best... but to hear a 15-year-old boy talk is like, 'Woah'. It's so much more powerful. Some of the stuff he said I had never heard before."
Tom says it was scary opening up, but ultimately it felt good.
Jo Butler with her twin girls, Maisey and Keeley. Photo / Supplied
Sarah says one friend who has daughters was reluctant to come, thinking girls weren't affected by porn. But mums need to understand girls are looking at it too and their relationships are affected by what boys are looking at, she says.
That mum, Jo Butler, is now organising more talks for Tom. A mother of 10-year-old twin girls, she says she initially only went to support her friend's son.
"On the way to this talk, my mind was full of questions - my girls are turning 11 soon, and it's a big wide world out there. I know I can't protect them from it, so I'm going to equip them as best I can with the knowledge and confidence to navigate their way through it. And listening to a 15-year-old boy speak about his experience of something that quite frankly terrifies me is a step in this direction.
"I wasn't shocked, more saddened and angry that this is the world our kids are facing. This is the world my precious girls have to navigate... and I can't keep them wrapped in cotton wool at home, no matter how much I wish I could.
"Something that I anticipated would be awkward and icky, turned out to be an incredible experience. And I hope this brave young man continues to spread his message because we all need to hear it."
Sex therapist: 'It's normalised'
Jo Robertson, a sex and relationship therapist at The Light Project, says she's not surprised someone as young as 11 had been exposed to and impacted by porn.
"Porn is accessible, anonymous, affordable, and watching it is now normalised among New Zealand young people. The porn industry is unregulated and actively markets porn content to children through games, streaming shows, social media etc."
Porn teaches children and teens problematic ideas about sex and relationships, she says.
"The content they will most likely see is often aggressive and degrading to women, LGBTQI+ and people of colour. It can teach them that consent is not that important or that it's okay to just ignore someone's 'no' during sex. Adults have a higher level of critical thinking and have some real-life sexual experiences to compare porn to."
Eighty-nine per cent of teenagers say they know porn is influencing them, with 72 per cent saying they have felt uncomfortable about something they've seen, Robertson says. Forty-two per cent of frequent users say they would like to spend less time looking at it but find it hard not to.
Robertson encourages parents to have age-appropriate conversations with their children.
"A few of the key things are to ask them questions before jumping into lecture mode, be unshockable, give them a non-judgmental space to ask questions, and remind them you are safe to talk to."
If teenagers want to reduce their porn use they can put filters on their devices, have more device-free time, and identify when they are triggered into viewing it (like when tired or stressed) so other coping strategies can be developed for those emotions.
Secondary Principals' Association of New Zealand president Vaughan Couillault. Photo / Dean Purcell
Vaughan Couillault, Secondary Principals' Association of New Zealand president, says schools do a great deal of work to try to prevent students from accessing harmful material on their IT networks. But students often use their own data plans and VPNs to open up restricted access.
"It is certainly very troubling to discover that an 11-year-old child has disclosed a pornography addiction."
Many schools learn about porn in year 10 health class. "The heart of this piece of work focuses on the mental effect that pornography has on the adolescent mind and how it can affect healthy, loving, sexual relationships later in life."
School counsellors are also on hand should they be needed, Couillault says.
A loving home
Sarah's other child, a daughter now aged 21, has suffered many unwanted encounters growing up which wouldn't have been helped by what young boys and men were looking at on the internet.
"When I think about the amount of unprovoked sexual attacks, just one after the other, and then the secrecy around it because you don't want to dob someone's friend in, it absolutely sickens me," says Sarah.
She remembers saying to her children how thankful she was she didn't go through anything similar herself but then "within seconds", memories of three sexual attacks came flooding back to her. She had "hidden it all away" as it was "normal back then".
Sarah and Tom were shocked to learn of the recent survey at Christchurch Girls High in which 20 students said they had been raped. It sparked a conversation between them about why some boys or men committed such crimes.
A study last week revealed 20 students at Christchurch Girls' High School had been raped. Photo / Kurt Bayer
Tom believes their upbringing has a lot to do with it. One teenager he knows sings a song about porn with his father. "When you've got a dad who encourages crap like that it's no wonder kids turn out like that," Sarah says.
Tom's own father is learning to have more open conversations with his son. "He'd rather not talk about it at all but he won't run away from it, not all the time," Sarah says. "But he's a good dad. He's really supportive.
"I've got a son who doesn't think he has to be tough and a typical rugby, beer-swilling tough guy, he can actually express all his emotions and not be ashamed to do that in this home."
• If you would like to hear Tom speak, email jobutler78@gmail.com
