Restricting a Young Person’s Online Access to Pornography
Written by Stuart O’Connell (Barrister/Solicitor), Toronto. There is a fantastic online safety ad created by the New Zealand government as part of its public awareness campaign, Keep It Real Online . The 2020 ad has rightly gone viral and is one of my all-time favourites. In it two adult film actors (played by Cassandra Woodhouse and Paris Theodosiou) arrive naked at the front door of a young teenager’s house and tell his stunned mother “Hiya …We just came over because your 14-year-old son has been watching us…online… . Online we just get to it, we never really talk about consent. …We usually perform for adults but your son’s just a kid.” The dumbfounded son emerges from inside the house holding his laptop. His shocked mother (hair wrapped in a towel) reels from the disclosure that her son has been accessing pornography from his computer, and from the fact that two nude people have come to her door to explain—with hilarious nonchalance—that the online pornographic scenarios they are