Technology, social media platforms, and anonymity become the tools and vehicles to fuel problematic, unhealthy, and sometimes illegal behaviours in many. How many of us have had a good solid education on things like online safety, setting healthy boundaries around tech usage, respectful interaction with others, and the dangers of something like porn?
Truth be told, very few of us. Many are only getting their lessons after something nasty has happened. For some, those lessons come too late to prevent serious issues arising or in some cases, heartbreakingly, suicide.
Porn addiction itself, often perhaps viewed as simply a tech story, should be considered a public health issue. Unhealthy usage of porn is linked with all manner of issues, from individual health challenges such as sexual dysfunction, depression, and relationship breakdown, to societal and moral issues around the mistreatment of workers, terrible messages around body consent, and child pornography.
These tools and platforms are developing quicker than we can keep up. Children as young as nine are watching pornography. They’re learning their lessons about sex not from healthy educators, but from unrealistic and sometimes harmful content.
In researching for my book, Be a Man About It: Building a Healthier Idea of Masculinity, I spoke to doctors who told me that some children and teenagers are undertaking violent and aggressive acts during sex, to the point of tears, not because it’s necessarily what they want to do, but because it’s what they believe they should do, having learnt about it from porn and assuming that’s what healthy, respectful intimacy looks like.
Nothing I write here is to argue for a blanket ban on technology or draconian surveillance laws like that seen in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it’s also important that we acknowledge the dangers of technology, and the platforms that come with it.
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Technology isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s just a tool. It’s how we use it that can become a problem, and the reality is that too many children and adults haven’t had a solid education on things like emotional awareness and regulation, respect and kindness, and the addictive nature of technology, to use these tools in a healthy, safe way.
The fix isn’t an easy or quick one, and we must look at this issue both on an individual level and a systemic one. Governments must do more to protect their citizens, and social media platforms must do better in safeguarding their users. Teenagers taking their own lives because of content they’ve viewed on these platforms is a global disgrace.
We have to look at the individual level too. People must take responsibility for their actions, and must be held to account for them.
Much of the commentary in response to the Grok issue is one of humour. But when this story, and so many stories like it, has clear, dark threads to things like acts of child pornography or bullying going unpunished, and in some cases, suicide, we have to realise that unless we get a better grip on the use of technology in society, then it will certainly continue to have a dangerous, sometimes life-ending grip on us.
George Bell is the author of Be a Man About It: Building a Healthier Idea of Masculinity, which looks at the pressures facing modern men, the impact that pressure is having and, importantly, what we can do about it.
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