Sex education: Claire Perry MP: 'It's time to teach children the difference between porn and healthy relationships' It is now almost commonplace for young people to send each other pornographic "selfies," (or ask for one) in the way that we used to send notes across the classroom. Adults refer to this as sexting - for young people it is just part of normal life. Teenage girls now routinely remove all of their body hair saying that boys their age find pubic hair "disgusting" (a fact that I find particularly depressing as a mother of teenagers - we did not try to raise our children to think like John Ruskin). A recent survey by the sexual health charity, Brook, found that almost half of children had seen pornography which had made them unhappy, frightened or worried and a report by the Children's Commissioner said that porn is now everywhere, influencing young people's attitudes towards relationships and sex and linked to risky behaviour like having sex at a younger age. And of course, given the ubiquity of social media all of this can be captured on a phone in real time and shared instantly with the world, with tragic consequences for children such as 15-year-old Audrie Pott from California who committed suicide after images of her being sexually assaulted at a party were distributed online by her alleged attackers - three boys from her school. So what can we do? As the PM said in his speech, protecting our children is a collective responsibility, and the Government is working with British internet companies to improve access to better content filers in the home, to make public WiFi free of adult material and to upgrade adult content blocks on mobile phones. Claire Perry We are also closing the regulatory loophole that permits possession of violent online rape pornography, and taking a tough stance on the transmission of child abuse images. But regulation and technology can never be the complete answer in such a fast moving and borderless world, and so we need to make sure that parents and children are well educated about the potential risks lurking online and how to avoid them. That is why we are working with the Internet Service Providers on a major national online safety campaign that will speak directly to parents about how to keep their children safe online and take back control of digital boundaries and why the Education Secretary Michael Gove's changes to the national curriculum that aim to teach children from primary school upwards how to behave safely and responsibly in a digital world are so sensible and welcome. We must go further But, in my view, there is more that can be done. The current statutory guidance for schools on how to teach children about sex and relationships dates from 2000 - when only one in four UK households had a (slow and unreliable) internet connection, and makes no reference to the negative impact of easily accessible online pornography on relationships, or indeed the positives of new connectivity - one in three marriages in the US now begin online! It is because of this brave new world we find ourselves in, that I welcome The Telegraph's "Better Sex Education" campaign. The guidance could come in a variety of forms. But it should engage sex education experts who can safely explain the new threats and opportunities that the digital world provides to secondary school children. The rise of sexting, online bullying, porn and young people documenting their entire lives on the web, needs to be a core tenet of how we teach sex and relationships to children in secondary schools. And, rather than putting one more set of responsibilities on the shoulders of hard-working teachers, it should be possible to encourage schools to develop working relationships with the many excellent charities and organisations that used trained experts to deliver the right messages to young people in appropriate and high impact ways. The latest re-fresh of government's expectations for Personal, Social, Health and Economic education included excellent new guidance and information services for schools on drug and alcohol education and arguably, helping children learn how to form satisfying and healthy relationships, despite the pressures of the online world, is even more important. Claire Perry, the Conservative MP for Devizes, is David Cameron's adviser on the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood. Telegraph Wonder Women is campaigning for better sex education, urging David Cameron to bring sex and relationships education into the 21st century. Sign our petition at change.org/bettersexeducation or email us at bettersexeducation@telegraph.co.uk. Follow the campaign on Twitter: #bettersexeducation, @TeleWonderWomen. Video by Ju Zhang