Conversation with David Shanks, Chief Censor of New Zealand
Conversation between David Shanks, Chief Censor of New Zealand and Jocelyn Rout, co-Managing Director, Kantar Public New Zealand
David Shanks
Jocelyn Rout
For many children and young people, porn can be as close as the nearest phone. Yet youth and porn had been a taboo subject for a long time.
In 2018, the New Zealand Classification Office set out to break this taboo by leading a government working group on pornography and embarking on a three-part research programme in partnership with Kantar Public (formerly Colmar Brunton) and the Collaborative Trust.1 2
In 2020, New Zealand’s Ministry of Education used the research findings to introduce a pornography section in the relationships and sexuality education guidelines for schools, and to develop an online learning module on pornography for teachers.
In this article, David Shanks, who commissioned this research, talks to the importance of centring the voices of young people to understand their experiences, engage with them on this sensitive topic, and shift the debate from a moralistic stance to a focus on their wellbeing.
Praised for paving the way for positive social change, this study won the Supreme Award at the 2021 NZ Research Association Effectiveness Awards. It has also been commended abroad, and served as a blueprint for research commissioned in Australia.
Jocelyn: Researching youth on the topic of porn at scale and in such an in-depth manner is pretty ambitious. What drove you to commission the work?
David: It absolutely was an ambitious project to engage with a comprehensive study of youth and pornography. In fact, we ended up surveying nearly 1% of the 14-17-year-old cohort here in New Zealand, which was a very significant achievement.
What drove us to that ambition was clear. During the 1990s, the development of new technologies began facilitating the proliferation of porn and other types of harmful content.
This triggered a discussion, debate, and policy response, which led to the creation of the Classification Office in 1994 to regulate this material.
While the internet was in its infancy, most adult pornographic material was still being watched in physical media form. This could therefore be reviewed by the Classification Office and be age restricted, then marketed to adults in a regulated way, or distributed via rental outlets in a relatively effective regulated manner.
When I became Chief Censor in 2017, the industry had completely changed. It had been some time since an adult DVD had come into our office, but pornography was still being watched.
There was a reasonable assumption that the historical regulatory protections preventing children and young people from accessing this material were no longer effective, particularly as the average age for a child getting their first smartphone in New Zealand is 11 or 12 years old.
Given this and the wider global industry context, it was clearly necessary to engage in an evidence-led approach to understand the scope, scale, and impacts of the problem, as well as thinking about strategies to deal with it.
Jocelyn: From your perspective as Chief Censor, how concerning is the problem of youth and porn in our world today?
David: It’s a very concerning issue. Our research has cast a spotlight on how prevalent exposure to porn is from a very early age. However, there are still so many unknowns about the long-term implications, and the harms and issues that are associated with it.
Part of our objective in commissioning an extensive quantitative study was to unpack these issues, to gain information about exposure and prevalence: how early, how often, and via what platforms.
Following on from that, we conducted research into the ‘what’: what were teenagers looking at, what was the most popular content on online commercial porn channels? And finally, the qualitative research: talking with young people directly to get their experiences about how and why they engage with porn, and their concerns and issues with it.
The findings emerging from our research and other research around the world, show that this is a complex issue. Engaging with young people directly has made clear that there are impacts. However, these impacts can be subtle and far-reaching; not what we originally anticipated.
For example, one of the things that comes through clearly when you talk to young people is their acceptance that porn is a fact of life for them, and that they are using pornography to try and educate themselves on what sex is all about. This leads to significant concerns about their expectations.
Commercial porn is a product created for adults for a particular purpose, but young people are using it as a way of understanding sex, and are getting quite seriously conflicted and confusing messages about it.
They know their peers are having the same experiences too, so there are significant anxieties about what sorts of things people are supposed to do, as well as other significant issues and concerns around body image.
The impacts of young people's exposure to porn can be subtle and far-reaching; not what we originally anticipated
Jocelyn: The youth voice was put front and centre in the research. From your perspective, how effective or valuable was that approach?
David: From my perspective, it was so effective and so valuable. If you are conducting research with a view to inform how you can help young people in a digital environment, you need to factor in the perspectives of the youth that you are seeking to reach.
Our preconceptions as adults about what the problem is, how young people are thinking, and how they might be helped, are almost always wrong.
Young people, teenagers, and increasingly children, are digital natives navigating the internet in ways we can’t really understand unless we talk to them.
Pornography is a paradigm for a whole range of other internet-related potential harm issues, which I believe are only going to become more prevalent. So, we must put the voices of youth foremost in that equation.
Jocelyn: Given all of that, and the finding that most people, including teens themselves, think that children and young people’s access to porn should be restricted, whose responsibility is it to address the issue of kids watching porn?
David: It was such a striking result from our research that 89% of young people said, ‘children and young people shouldn’t be able to access this sort of material, and certainly not as easily as we can’.
The question about whose responsibility it is to tackle this, is an important one for everyone anywhere around the world facing these issues.
One school of thought says it is the responsibility of young people themselves: they should be accountable for what they do; be more resilient; behave in certain ways. Another school of thought disputes this, suggesting parents should be in control by monitoring their children’s internet usage, and applying online censoring tools.
There is an opportunity for young people to be given tools and information to limit their access to porn, to critically analyse and reach out for help if needed.
When asked about how easily porn should be accessible...
Others argue that the industry is responsible since they are in effect distributing adult entertainment products to an under-18 audience. Finally, some place the responsibility at the government’s door: they should ensure that young people are kept safe, and that the industry adheres to the standards set by the government.
The conclusion from these debates is that it is not one single group’s responsibility; no isolated response will fix this problem. Rather, what is needed is an integrated strategy that encompasses elements across all these areas.
There is an opportunity for young people to be given tools and information to limit their access to porn, to critically analyse and reach out for help if needed; a task for parents to become aware of the issue and protect younger children from exposure; education has a role to play in providing a counternarrative to the one presented by pornography.
The industry has a responsibility to adhere more effectively to the checks and balances that they can put in place; and government can play its role in implementing regulation that is fit for purpose in a digital world.
Jocelyn: Youth had a lot to say about porn in the research and were very candid. What were some of the key lessons learnt and how have the insights and evidence helped?
David: One of the key takeaways from our research is that if you give young people an opportunity and safe space to talk about a deeply personal topic like pornography, they will engage very forthrightly, directly, and honestly.
It quickly becomes clear that they are not the naïve and manipulated consumers that we might suppose. They are quite sophisticated and aware in terms of their own behaviour and the potential implications for young people generally.
We are using the voices of young people talking candidly about their experiences in the materials and resources we’ve made available to young people and adults so that they can have conversations about these issues.3
The authentic voices of young people telling their own stories, immediately cut through and connect in a way that nothing else can.
Jocelyn: There were relatively few differences in the findings along demographic lines, like gender and sexual orientation. What do you make of that?
David: The implications of that finding are very significant in terms of challenging stereotypes. Part of the value of that insight was making that known, and destressing some of the behavioural pressures that young women in particular were feeling, when conversations around this topic came up, or they felt that they were supposed to act in a certain way, be a certain way, and that the evidence showed that watching porn is a reality for them as well.
Different demographic groups did have different perspectives, as you might expect, but the consistency of exposure to porn and the issues related to that, were very similar for young women and young men, or teenage girls and teenage boys. Again, that really highlights the value of research and evidence to cut through preconceptions and stereotypes.
Jocelyn: The porn ad in the ‘Keep It Real Online’ campaign was very popular – quickly going viral with more than 22 million views and being picked up by media outlets around the world.4 The creative that used naked ‘porn stars’ to knock on the door of an unsuspecting family was brilliant, but the message also seemed to strike a chord. Did that surprise you and how did the evidence from the research guide those messages?
David: It didn’t surprise me at all that the episode took off and sparked an international conversation in the way it did. We knew from our research that this was a topic everyone was thinking about. It was on people’s minds – teenagers and parents of teenagers alike – but nobody had figured out a way to get it on the table.
When those adverts were running on national television with families all sitting in the same space, it got a reaction. The campaign adopted a direct approach to a taboo topic, whilst avoiding offense. It took people by surprise as it exposed some of the myths and stereotypes around pornography.
One of the findings from our research was that young people were not buying into these myths. They didn’t believe in the stereotypical presentation of porn stars or the porn industry. The episode shows porn starts as “real” people genuinely concerned about the impacts of porn on the child.
This shifts the conversations away from the stereotypical moralistic blame game when discussing porn.
Our approach and suggestions here helped the advert to gain traction and generate discussion rather than emotional outrage or blaming. This was the key to its success.
Jocelyn: As our world and technologies constantly change, what are the challenges over the next five to ten years for youth and their relationship with porn?, And are we now better prepared to deal with these challenges?
David: I think technology is going to continue to evolve at a pace that creates massive challenges for policymakers, governments, parents, and young people.
I think we’re facing an ever-accelerating technological change which presents fantastic opportunities for engagement, entertainment, and communication, but also significant risks that we need to manage.
One current example is the promulgation of the ‘metaverse’ where people have avatars meeting and communicating, sharing experiences in a virtual world. That’s cool in many respects, but as a regulator, there are potential downsides to an immersive, virtual world in the realm of pornography, abuse, or extremism.
Generally speaking, the pace of technological change is outstripping the pace of policymakers, regulators, and lawmakers in keeping up. We need to think in new and creative ways to close that gap.
We need to be talking to the young people impacted by these changes, who are engaging with these new technologies, in the most direct way – although it is often these groups that policymakers initially overlook.
There is an opportunity to completely rethink our policy and law-making approach, to ensure that we too are taking advantage of technological change, whilst building in safety-by-design to avoid unwittingly creating harms for our most vulnerable.
Jocelyn: What advice do you have for governments and public agencies around the world on what can be done to address kids watching porn?
David: The advice I have is to look at your evidence base. Do you have robust, effective, up-to-date evidence that you can use to inform the policy shift that will likely be needed in your jurisdiction?
Everything we’ve been talking about is the first step – putting youth voices front and centre, using research that is objective, unbiased, direct, and informed. After that, the next step is to understand that this is not a simple regulatory fix.
A law change may have a significant impact, but it will not be enough. You need to think about the education system, the health system, about tools and resources for young people and parents – all as part of an integrated strategy.
No one single agency will be able to get to that level of mature response, alone.
This is why, in the course of developing, publishing and talking about our research, we pulled together an interagency working group involving ministries of health and education, accident compensation corporation, our social development agency, and many others.
We've brought all of these together as a coalition to consider the evidence, but also to consider how we can apply that evidence to make the change that’s needed to help young people.
Once you’ve got a coalition of agencies like that, you’ve got a force multiplier effect which might enable you to find the mature, systematic response that covers all the bases.
References and notes
1. The New Zealand Classification Office is an independent Crown entity established under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993, which is responsible for the censorship and classification of publications in New Zealand.
2. The Collaborative Trust is a not-for-profit Trust that supports the healthy development of young people in New Zealand through research and evaluation, training, and advocacy.
3. Drawing on the findings from the research, the Classification Office produced resources to help parents and teens talk about porn, including animated video.
4. Drawing on the findings from this research, New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs launched the ‘Keep It Real Online’ campaign targeted at both young people, and parents and caregivers. The campaign’s website provides tools, advice and support to help people better understand and tackle the different issues pertaining to young people’s exposure to pornography.
