8yo girl being shown pornography by a friend

My 8yo daughter confided in me yesterday, and I need to get it off my chest. I suspect most of you will encourage me to tell the mother of the other girl, and I do plan to somehow, but for now I just need to get the words out anonymously.

Yesterday, my daughter and I were having one of our chats where she gets in the mood to confide things to me that she's been stewing over, or pondering, or bottling up for a while. These conversations seem to happen every few weeks, and I'm so glad she can confide in me. I try to stay neutral and not make a big deal of things, so that she's not afraid to tell me anything in the future.

So yesterday's conversation centred around what her friend showed her on her iPad. Her friend has virtually no restrictions on the time spent using her iPad, or (as it turns out) the content she can access. It appears that while her parents are sleeping in the morning, this 8yo girl has been using Safari to search for things like "vaginas" and "world's biggest penis". She showed my daughter on her iPad during a playdate. Of course I was a little shocked when she told me, but not initially too worried. I figured curiosity is entirely normal, and I remember quite fascinated by all of that stuff at a similar age. We have a pretty relaxed view of nudity in our home, we answer questions honestly, and use correct terminology etc. We also ensure that our kids know boundaries, and what kind of touch is okay, and what is not okay, and by whom.

However, what my daughter described after the initial confession was entirely NOT okay. Pictures and videos that she cannot un-see. My daughter has now been exposed to pornography - there is no doubt. She described in detail what the man and the woman were doing, their facial expressions, the camera angle, where the man's hand was, and so on. I'm devastated that this has been her first introduction to adult intimate/sexual behaviour. Sex in real life is not like pornography - and I don't want her to think that this is how intimacy looks in a normal loving relationship. I always hoped that our children would discover all of that in a far more appropriate way - through being educated by the right people - us as parents, but also age-appropriate books and educational materials, and of course those achingly beautiful first experiences and discoveries with your first love, years down the track from now. It's been less than 24 hours since my daughter told me about this, but a few weeks since the playdate where the pictures and videos were shown to her.

Thanks for reading, I just needed to get it down on paper (or screen?!) before I work out what to do next. I want to tell the girl's parents, I'm sure they'd want to know. But it's a bit complicated because there has been tension lately between our girls, which as led to intense awkwardness between me and the girl's mother, who I have previously been good friends with. She gets heavily involved when the girls have a tiff, whereas I tend to let them sort our their own issues, and just stay on the sidelines, ready and open to discussion if need be. So far, they've been sorting out their dramas in a totally age appropriate way, and at my parent-teacher interview, their teacher says she has no concerns with how they handle conflict (no name calling or aggression etc, and they always end up friends again after their squabbles). I'm not sure how to raise the topic without upsetting the parents, or burning bridges, as I know this mum really well and she takes any criticism (for lack of a better word) of her children extremely personally. She'll be extremely defensive and upset about being seen as a mum whose kids have accessed pornography. She's very conscious of how she appears to other people. Happy to hear other people's thoughts, but this was more a story than a question! Thanks for reading IMs, hope you're all having a great week :)