Young people’s perceptions of harm from accessing online sexual content

Harm—and the ways in which it is interpreted, negotiated, discussed, and unpacked by adolescents themselves—is a key term in almost all debates about young people’s experiences with online pornography. This essay situates the topic of this special issue—adolescents’ perceptions of harm from accessing online sexual content—within a broader context of the discourses and practices that inform research in this field. We show how discourses of harm and risk circulate around the figure of the innocent child in need of protection and argue for more nuanced understandings of and research about childhood that take into account the lived experiences and perspectives of young people themselves. The papers in this special issue cover a range of academic perspectives and reflect diverse epistemological, methodological, and academic cultures. The special issue underscores the complex nature of the topic and the need for nuanced, rigorous, and robust empirical research.