As a therapist, I am convinced that these images can be deeply traumatising to children — not least because a competitive market means that pornographers are trying to outdo each other to come up with the most extreme images.

This contest to push the boundaries means that straight intercourse is considered too boring. Images of brutal anal sex and women being humiliated and degraded by two or more men at any one time are the new norms.

For many young boys, this means their first sexual experience is not a nervously negotiated request for a dance from a girl at the end of the school disco. It is watching  grotesquely degrading images of women, all too often mixed in with violent abuse.

Evidence has found they become more prone to ‘real world’ violence, and less able to emphathise.

They bemoan the fact that they can’t go out with ‘real’ girls because they ‘want things’.

What’s more, it is also from porn that boys are forming their views of what women should look like, and how they should behave sexually. I hear young boys routinely refer to girls as ‘bitches’ who need to be dominated.

In other words, females who exist outside of cyberspace have needs of their own that boys resent having to consider.

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The author/therapist then goes on to mention how many parents don't monitor their children's computer activity because they think it could "never happen" to them, or they don't want to "invade their privacy." "Yet most remain in denial, despite the fact that the largest consumer group for internet pornography is  children between 12 and 17."