The average age of first exposure to pornography (male and female) is lowering each year.
As of 2005, one study found that the average age of exposure was between 13 and 17 years old. As of 2011, the average age was 12. Today, the average age is 11.
Boys are exposed to pornography at higher rates than girls. One study in the United States found that by the age of 12, 53% of all boys had exposed to pornography compared to 28% of girls. In Australia, however, approximately 70% of boys and 53.5% of girls were exposed by the age of 12, and 100% of boys and 97% of girls by the age of fifteen.
Two out of three children are first exposed to pornography involuntarily (meaning, one in three seeks it out the first time). Typically, children are exposed via misleading websites, friends, and adults.
(Any analysis of the harms of childhood exposure to pornography [or, for that matter, the harms of a society that cultivates and rewards the ideologies of pornography and unwanted sexualization] demands exhaustive consideration and care, and thus won’t be covered here but in a separate page or series of pages. Though the effects are clear to those with a basic understanding of socialization, trauma, and childhood development, the rate by which the age of first unwanted exposure to pornography continues to decrease unabated. The effects on exposure of pornography on children, in addition to the real world harms pornography and a pornified culture perpetrates against women, must be studied, recognized, and acknowledged on a massive scale in order for anything to be done. Before we can take care of our young, we must be able to look in the mirror and recognize ourselves and what we have done.)