Porn generation, the origin of a "terrifying" pandemic

• Sexual harassment Teenagers, porn and technology: the explosive cocktail behind the Almendralejo case

What would you do if your 10-year-old said any of these phrases to you? "In my generation, porn is fundamental"; "that you get bored, porn and straw"; "It's like a drug, man"; "I'm 19, I started watching porn at 16 and I'm addicted"; "I saw blowjobs and she didn't give me a blowjob"; "Sex between two people seems to me little thing..." They are real, they are the phrases of several of the kids who have participated in the documentary Generación Porno, premiered on TV3 and ETB and waiting to find a platform to reach all of Spain. They are phrases that are in the conversation of any boy or girl from the age of 9. Yes, you read that right, from the age of 9.

It is at that age when there is already a quarry of children who find online pornography, and they begin to consume it. At 12 years old they are already 50%, at 15, 90%. It's the Porn Generation. "Just as there is a Generation Z or the Millennials, it would be reasonable to think that we are creating a generation of pornographic children," says José Luis García, psychologist and sexologist, and one of the experts who along with other figures tries to shed some light on a problem that you do not want to look at in the face: the addiction to pornography of children and adolescents.

Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment.

Teenagers, porn and technology: the explosive cocktail behind the case of Almendralejo

• Writing: JOSE MARÍA ROBLES
• Writing: JOSETXU L. PIÑEIRO (ILLUSTRATION)

Teenagers, porn and technology: the explosive cocktail behind the case of Almendralejo

"I think Generación Porno is going to mark a before and after," says Oiane Sagasti, director of the documentary series. "Until now, we didn't know how porn affected teenagers. We could guess (some more, others less), but no one had sat down with the kids to talk in silver, to ask in depth. And that's why we weren't giving the issue the attention it requires. We have now accessed that information. And we know that teens are using pornography to educate themselves. And what's worse: they transfer it to real life. They aspire to imitate those videos that they have seen so many times online," he explains.

The Attorney General's Office, in its latest annual report, makes a clear association: "The figures of cases initiated are eloquent and the explanations of the delegated [prosecutors] move along similar lines. Without incurring any moralism, it warns against the carelessness and banality with which sexual relations between adolescents are faced. Emphasis continues to be placed on highly sexualized behaviours at very young ages. This early onset is linked, fundamentally, to access to pornography on mobile devices from unpubertal ages."

"We are talking about children who have been educated through learning the Internet and, in particular, pornographic films, and this does not come for free, this has consequences," warns García. The data shudders: children begin to watch porn at age 9 and at age 12 they already consume it regularly. One in four Spanish boys, before the age of 20, would have watched between 1,000 and 5,000 hours of porn. 35.5% acknowledge that they watch more porn than they should. 20% of everything on the internet is porn. 88% of all porn videos involve physical violence. It adds up and goes on.

The documentary Porn Generation, which sees the light after an arduous work that has lasted years, has a clear objective, according to Macarena Rey, CEO of Shine Iberia, which is "to make visible the problem we have with the sexual education of our children, with the relationship that exists today between adolescence and porn, take measures as a society to solve this problem to solve it.". And it hasn't been easy. First, because it is not being easy to "sell" the documentary. Only TV3 and ETB saw clearly the need for such a documentary. Because Generación Porno is not a documentary to use, Generación Porno puts on the table the reality, but the reality of the real protagonists.

Panic is knowing that you are educating your child, and yet porn envelops their life. See it or don't see it

Oiane Sagasti, director of the documentary

"Getting 13, 14, 15, 16, 18-year-olds to talk about porn is very difficult. And that they do it, moreover, in front of their parents is already miraculous. But that is what I call 'the Shine touch', it is the expertise of our production company: there is a brilliant work of the casting team that knew how to earn their trust and an equally brilliant work of the recording team that got the cameras not to matter, "says the director.

And this is precisely why the documentary leaves a sense of panic and fear about a subject that few give the importance it deserves. "Panic is knowing you're educating your child and yet porn wraps up their life. I see it or I don't see it," says Sagasti, who also insists that although the four families participating in the documentary are "exemplary" and "do everything that, on paper, is right," when the camera turns on and the interviews start "we see how those parents dismantle ... Their surprise and concern is resounding: they do not believe what their children tell. Why? Well, because they couldn't imagine it. Under no circumstances."

You only need to read some of last week's headlines in the media with minors creating false nudes of classmates with AI to realize, as Susana, the mother of Uxue (17 years old) and Goizane (14 years old), says, that "we are abandoning our children in the arms of porn". "In my generation, porn is fundamental," Goizane says in the documentary to the amazement of his father who can only articulate one question: "Fundamental?"

Generación Porno shows the testimonies of four families from Catalonia, Euskadi and Madrid made up of parents and children aged between 14 and 18 years. Children and parents who sit face to face and talk not about sex but about porn, about the pages they enter, the type of content they see, which one excites them more, the differences between how girls and boys see porn... What is discovered, scares.

"Hearing that your child watches porn because 'I'm bored,' 'I'm stressed,' or 'I want a quick masturbation,' is hard," says the director. If you add to that, in addition, that your son tells you that these scenes try to reproduce them when they flirt, the surprise already becomes frightening, "he concludes.

The documentary captures a serious situation, "the origin of a terrifying pandemic", in the words of Juan Carlos Prieto, a health psychologist expert in addictions, which is not only already happening but is beginning to be the cause of consequences that are in the day to day and that we do not seem to want to face. "It's time to get off the pedestal and it's time to meet the teenagers," says Marina Maroquí in Generación Porno. This sex educator tours associations and institutes treating porn addiction with young people and parents. With it they open up and tell their experiences. In the documentary Maroquí throws them a question: what is the most aberrant thing you have seen in pornography? "A dismembered girl who is being fucked," says one of the boys. Yes, our children are seeing this. "Now we are facing what they call vulture pornography," explains Antonio Marcos, producer of film X. It is a pronography that does not offer something that can be liked but "something that is as disgusting as possible so that it attracts attention and people – the kids – bite".

How are you going to argue with an orgasm? According to The Economist magazine there are 800 million pornographic websites and in each one there is an average of 12 million porn videos. "It multiplies," says Garcia. 9,600,000,000,000,000 is the result. And this amount available to minors without any control and, above all, without anyone telling them that porn is not reality.

Porn has an addictive power superior to cocaine and, in addition, it is free and gives pleasure which encourages its consumption

José Luis García, psychologist and sexologist

"In my first sexual relationship," says Gerard (17 years old), "I tried to apply what I saw in porn." Gerard relates that he saw "blowjobs" and was very surprised when the girl with whom he was having that first sexual relationship did not want to give him fellatio. "I said, 'Where's the blowjob?' And since it didn't arrive, I asked for it. I saw that I was not convinced and we continue normal and I realized that it is not something that has to happen, "she says.

"Porn has an addictive power superior to cocaine and, in addition, it is free and gives pleasure which encourages its consumption," explains García and confirm the kids themselves: "It's like a drug. It activates dopamine."

Prieto, for his part, is clear that porn is a "super stimulus." That is, who makes continuous use there comes a time when "a real relationship is not satisfactory enough". They want more, the same as porn teaches them and offers them, violence, humiliation, group sex, anal sex, unprotected ... And they want it anyway.

"I don't think there are many parents who knew that girls go into sex shops asking for a spray that makes my throat numb, because my boyfriend wants me to suck it like in porn and I'm not able to. I gag." Neither the parents (nor the team that filmed the documentary) imagined this type of situation," says Sagasti.

Cause and effect. "If you build your desire by always seeing violence, then you're going to need it to excite you," say the experts in the documentary. A WhatsApp group of boys and girls from high school. They start texting each other after dinner. One proposes to make a straw, everyone accepts. Another proposes to record himself. They accept, too. In an hour the WhatsApp group will begin to receive videos of everyone masturbating. It's their own porn.

What can be done? Generación Porno also responds to this: educate. "If something is clear to me," says Rey bluntly, "it is the need to implement sex education in schools, because the Government has to ensure that this information reaches all children and is not optional, and of course the legislation of free access to porn by children is absolutely necessary. "