Youth and Porn Resource KitPrinciple 4: Strengths-Based Approach
Taking a strengths-based approach to porn-related conversations and care with young people is important in building resiliency and critical thinking.
This can include:
- Affirming any strengths you have observed in a young person.
- Acknowledging critical thinking skills they are already applying to other areas of their lives (such as the ability to ask questions or explore the messages in other media).
- Drawing on other coping skills and strategies they have used before (such as supportive friends, exercise, listening to music, etc.).
- Encouraging them to draw on their own cultural, religious, or personal sexual values and beliefs.
- Engaging and working collaboratively with them to define or shape any porn-related care.
- Affirming diverse sexual and gender identities, including pointing to support groups for Rainbow young people.
Previous
“I have a lot of faith in my friends and in my generation …so I think if there was some education or some culture shift that people started talking about [porn], I think there would be a real change ….”
Male, 16 years