Youth authorities have called for students to receive porn education at school, following research showing most kids have viewed explicit content online by the age of 11.

Research also reveals 92 per cent of boys and 61 per cent of girls aged between 13 and 16 have been exposed to pornography online.

For 84 per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls that exposure was accidental; the result of web pop-ups, a misspelled word in a search engine or even innocent searches for information about games and animals.

Educators have warned the portrayal of women in pornographic films could play a role in shaping children's views on sex and male-female relationships.

Leading pornography researcher Marree Crabbe yesterday said porn films gave "really unhealthy messages" about how women should be treated and what they enjoyed as part of sex.

Research from 2010 into the content of best-selling porn films showed 88 per cent of scenes included physical aggression and 48 per cent of scenes included verbal aggression, Ms Crabbe said.

Almost 95 per cent of that aggression was targeted towards women, but in nearly every instance the women responded with either silence or an expression of pleasure.

"It's normalising particular sex acts that we know women in the real world not only don't enjoy, but may also find painful, humiliating and degrading," Ms Crabbe said.

"There's evidence pornography is shaping young people's sexual expectations and practices in a way which raises really serious questions."

Research showed the average age children first watched porn whether accidentally or deliberately was 11, she said.

Deakin University sex education expert Debbie Ollis said unfortunately exposure to pornography was part of "the reality of social life" for most children in 2012.

As such, it was vital students were given the skills to understand and critique what they were viewing online.

Ms Ollis said she had developed curriculum content and teaching resources for use in schools to help students understand what was wrong with pornography.

"Somehow, we've got to prepare them to be able to deconstruct and understand what they're seeing and to realise that most of those images aren't the reality of life," she said.

"The internet is being used as a sex education tool without the expertise of an educator or more appropriate content to teach kids about intimacy, about desire, about safety, all those sort of issues."

Ms Crabbe said pornography was marketed so aggressively on the internet, it was easy for young people to be exposed to explicit content unintentionally.

Geelong families keen to learn the best way to talk about sex and pornography with their children are invited to attend a special forum at Skilled Stadium on Thursday. The Let's Talk About Sex forum is relevant to parents of children in grades 5 to year 8. The forum starts at 7pm.

Source: Geelong Advertiser