Introduction

This chapter will argue that we are currently experiencing a moral panic around children accessing internet pornography. This issue will be introduced within the context of society's views of young people, echoing previous moral panics about the influence of popular media on children. The chapter will then go on to consider what evidence (if any) exists for the extent of the problem of young people accessing and being influenced by internet pornography. This will be followed by scrutiny of ‘moral entrepreneurs’, that is, academics and others who are likely to benefit or prosper from internet regulation and the groups and communities who may be collateral damage in the ‘war on porn’. Finally, the chapter will evaluate the chances of internet porn initiatives succeeding in their stated aims and the wider implications for society and its relationship with the ‘wired worlds’ of the internet.

The nature of the panic

On the weekend of 9 and 10 November 2013, the colour supplements of both The Times and the Sunday Times featured stories about concerns regarding what children do online. The Times cover featured a posed shot of a schoolgirl alone in darkened room, her face lit by only her mobile phone, her slightly chilling (or was it fearful?) gaze fixed on the reader. This photograph illustrates well the current moral panic around children and the internet. Children are simultaneously understood to be innocent, yet capable of being corrupted; in control of bewildering technology, yet somehow vulnerable to its dark side; networked to the world, yet also alone and vulnerable. Articles like these have proliferated in print and online media; meanwhile, new scares have been identified and named, including cyberbullying, children sexting, online grooming, adults accessing child pornography and children accessing legal (adult) pornography. These phenomena are often discussed together and almost always interchangeably. The confusion between these issues is evident in, for example, articles that advocate for the use of internet filters to tackle child pornography, when in fact such material is mainly confined to the so-called ‘deep web’ (Pagliery, 2014).

The relationship with previous moral panics

Concerns about young people and the negative effects of media technology are not new. In the 1950s there was a campaign in the UK against American and ‘American-style’ comics on the basis of the horrific and violent content they contained.