Words: Charlotte Philby

My abiding memory of formal sex education is at school aged nine, being shown a video of a particularly hairy couple playing volley-ball, naked, on a misty British beach. To say it failed to instil a real understanding of the complexities of love, sex and relationships is something of an understatement.

Today, childhood is arguably shorter than it ever was, and children more exposed to information from an earlier age – for better or worse. So in an age of online porn, with reports claiming that by the age of 14, as much as 45 per cent of children are watching explicit porn on the internet; of personal image sharing; of dating websites like mylol.com – aimed, incredibly, at 13-18 year olds – parents and schools surely need to be intervening earlier than ever, to talk through positive values, consent, and so many other of the issues surrounding sexuality; issues way beyond the nuts and bolts of a freeze-frame naked montage.

So when is the right time to introduce children to the birds and the bees? And where to start?

Sarah Champion MP told Motherland: “These days the internet is how children find out what is normal in a relationship, because there isn’t statutory child sex education in schools and what there is doesn’t really cover child protection. Instead, children are as their first port of call going to the internet and finding very graphic pornography and taking that as normality”.

Clare Lilley, Head of Child Safety Online at the NSPCC, added that Childline has had an increasing number of calls from young people about the impact that seeing such explicit images online at a young age has had on their lives: “These children are talking about the effect of porn on their relationships and the expectations within those relationships,” she said.

With this in mind, for this week’s debate we want to hear your thoughts and experiences with on sex education. JOIN THE CONVERSATION now on Instagram…