I'm the mom of a wonderful fifteen-year-old boy. Recently, my computer was down and he offered to let me use his. (You can see where this is going...) While searching for a website, an obvious porn site popped in the computer's history. I didn't want to embarrass him or make him feel ashamed or guilty, so I haven't mentioned it to him. I realize he's just responding to his natural curiosity, and that if he really wants to look at porn, he'll find a way to do it. I'm just concerned about the really extreme stuff like violence and bestiality. (I don't know if he's looked at any of this type of stuff, the thought just creeps me out.)

Any suggestions as to how we should talk about this?

Clueless Mom

All you can do, mom, is go to him and say—in as upbeat and positive a tone as you can—that you know he's looking at porn, and that's fine, that it's healthy and normal. Then tell him that he needs to bear in mind that there's a lot of completely freaked out shit on the Internets and that he needs to careful about the sites he visits and the shit he downloads. He doesn't want to pick up malware on crappy Russian porn sites or wind up a site that features illegal activity—i.e. minors—and that he absolutely, positively shouldn't chat with people via porn sites or post or email pictures of himself to anyone who asks.

He's 15, CM, so if he's going to be into freaked out shit when he grows up—if he's going to be into violence or bestiality or whatever—then he's probably already into that freaked out shit by now. He won't suddenly develop a taste for whatever freaked out shit he finds them on the Interwebs. I mean, did you want to fuck a horse the first time you saw a picture of someone fucking a horse? (Never seen a picture of someone fucking a horse? There are of them plenty online—go look at one and see if you're seized by a sudden desire for horse meat. No? Told you so.)

But whether he's into freaked out shit or just looking at mom-approved soft-core porn, CM, you should tell him that porn—particularly commercially produced porn—rarely gives a realistic picture of sex, sexual expression, the human body, etc. Porn is kabuki sex and it won't do him any lasting harm if he reminds himself, from time to time, that his actual sex life is unlikely to bear much resemblance to the stuff he's jerking it to online.