I grew up before television, and long before mobile phones and the Internet.

After being stranded in a vast hospital car park one dark evening, after I had been working late, I bought a mobile phone. It was the size of a small brick, but gave a sense of protection. Subsequently I would always have it in the car and I believe I used it maximum five times – ever. Now very many young people have a mobile phone practically stuck to their ears, living a sort of virtual life through that communication, while ignoring the direct connection with those around them.

The Internet was going to be a ‘massive pool of information’ and was welcomed with open arms. It has become such a pool. I am computer literate and use the computer daily and find its possibilities and uses awesome. My books are written, corrected and printed digitally. Unbelievable progress has been made in so many areas. But with this progress, is a spectre hiding in the wings.

What was not in the calculation or belief of normal, decent people at the time of its birth, and what few foresaw, was that Internet would be used by the evil members of society, people who have neither morals nor standards and are proud to be rats in the sewer of society. People whose only wish is to poison society and ruin its values. People who hate rather than love.

I trained as a doctor. I learned about the healthy and the ill body. I was a psychiatrist. I learned about the emotion aspects of life, and the effects of traumas. I am a woman.  I learned through experience about relationships, childbirth, children, teenagers, parental responsibilities, looking after the elderly and about making the best of a life plagued by ill health. I made mistakes – I am a human being.

We have brains. Though one could be forgiven for forgetting in the present climate, this organ of the body is the most important. It is the seat of the memory, learning, experience, morals, and emotions. Damage your brain and life loses meaning. This part of the body, as it governs all actions, should be kept healthy in every way possible.

What adults do with their own bodies is their own responsibility. What adult couples, whether heterosexual or homosexual do to each other, with consent, sexually, is their own decision and no one else’s business. Only when another person is hurt, in any way, do their actions become an issue needing intervention from others.

However, what children/young teenagers are exposed to in the present day is not their ultimate responsibility and this is where society is moving into very dangerous areas and reneging on the protective responsibility to its youngsters.

Let me give just one example, Internet exposure to pornography.

I have written in other articles about drugs and drink, so let me stay with the Internet and the ‘invasion’ of sexual normality.

Apparently, according to recent surveys, a large proportion of boys under 14 years had watched pornography on the Internet and children as young as 10 years are sending sexual photographs via their mobile phones. Now, call me old fashioned, but I find this totally shocking. Are there no limits now to what is possible?

The ‘protection’ of parental control of the computer is patently ineffective, particularly as many have their own mobile phones etc. Exposure to pornography will already have taken away forever – and I stress ‘forever’, innocence, and in many ways future paths of choice. We live in unidirectional time, and once images are seen, like words spoken, the tape cannot be rerun. Only with expert help can the damage be reduced or limited.

For many, this pornographic pictorial exposure will skew their sexual beliefs and will never lead to emotionally sound, fulfilled or loving relationships. Once damage is done, it is done. Once images, geared to cause some effect, are embedded in the mind or beliefs formed – particularly without full understanding, then, I know from my long years of work in psychiatry, that these are likely to permeate their actions and lives from that time on.

Why is this not stopped? Is it ignorance, or lack of care, or even more worrying, is it gradually being accepted as the norm? When things last a long time, whether right or wrong, they subtly tend to become entwined into the normal spectrum.

Firstly, what are parents doing? Why are they not supervising their children and teenagers?  

Secondly, why are people allowed to put these images on the Internet when the Internet is available to anyone with a computer/ipad/iphone at increasingly younger ages.

Thirdly, why is the government/s not doing something about it? Their only answer is to tell the schoolteachers to educate the children, bringing non-contextualised sexual knowledge to ever younger and younger ages.

If people are clever enough to put viruses on the Internet to disrupt diverse programmes, then there are surely others clever enough to attack pornography. They could wipe it out at a stroke. So, why is there not a force working and being known to work with this specific aim in mind?

Until something is done – more and more of our young people will be carrying toxic information in their brains, information that will tarnish their future lives in ways that gradually undermine society. Once a path is opened, that path eventually has no end.

The answer is not more lectures from teachers, who are expected to be able to counteract a force way beyond their expertise or knowledge, or teach a subject for which they are neither trained nor competent to teach, as though it ‘doesn’t really matter’. It must be attacked at its source i.e. from where the images etc. are received.

Global warming is taken seriously, poverty and malnutrition is rightly being tackled, so why is the gradual but subtle destroying of innocence and future emotional health and fulfilment of children and teenagers not being recognised?

Sexual behaviour is governed by a person’s belief system about what is right and acceptable and what is not. I would suggest this is not an insignificant area for concern!

However, I am an optimistic individual, and I believe in the eventual power of good over evil. I predict that there will come a day when any computer carrying, accessing or viewing pornography will have its hard drive mysteriously deleted by a positive viral mechanism, that the evil people will never fathom or stop. Those propagating this poison will be apparent and there will be no hiding place. May that day come  - soonest!

But how? Awareness of its importance, particularly by parents,  is the first step in that direction.

 Copyright Audrey Coatesworth2013

Let your children visit, enjoy and learn from my website for children  and my website for teenagers