A THERAPIST has warned that porn is giving teenagers a warped view of sex.

Psychosexual and relationship therapist Caroline Lovett told parents that the problem was not going to go away and “might get more extreme”.

The 54-year-old said: “I am seeing a lot more young men with erectile dysfunctions within their relationships.

“They have not learned to be aroused with a person, just a computer screen.

“It’s not just boys, we are also seeing young women who have grown up with role models in porn.”

Caroline offers workshops for parents, as well as speaking in schools and providing therapy sessions for individuals and couples.

She works in the Brighton and Lewes area and said that when she visited secondary schools through her work all the students she spoke had been affected by porn.

She said: “This is not going to go away.

“Parental controls don’t work, young people have told me they switch them off, and you can’t remove the porn or the internet.”

Caroline said many of the young people she had spoken to were left with a “confused” perception of sex.

This was because porn was taken as reality by those viewing it who had no prior experience to “balance” this.

She said: “Porn is like a soap, it’s performed by actors and isn’t real life. Unless we feel confident to enough to talk to young people about that they are going to get a very confused view.”

Caroline said the young mind was especially influenced by porn.

She said: “I am speaking to more and more young people who say the problems they are having are in relation to their porn use when they were young.

“It can have a large effect on these people, particularly at that prime time when they are going through puberty and finding out what their sexual identity is.”

She offered advice for parents who were concerned about their child’s porn use.

Caroline said: “My message for parents is don’t panic.

“All parents are going through the same thing.

“The answer is to talk.

“Children are never going to come to you with these problems, but if you will talk to them then they will talk to you.

“One of my biggest pieces of advice is to not take away their devices or turn off the internet as a punishment, or they will never tell you about something they have seen which could have been quite scary for a young person.”