Thank you for posting this. This is a topic that I've long been fascinated by but never knew anything about. I'm way in the older end of the bell curve of age distribution of Hacker News readers, so I've personally experienced how pornography has evolved over the past thirty (or so) years, i.e., ever since I became curious about sex and turned on by naked women. And without a doubt the "hardness" and easy availability of pornography today is in a completely different universe to the sort of pornography I was consuming when I was thirteen years old. There's no escaping the fact that pornography must do _something_ to children's and teenagers' minds, in terms of expectations about sex, their own self-esteem, or whatever, and I've often wondered what these effects are.
Moreover, and moving on, now that I'm a new father with a two-year old daughter, I cannot even _look_ at pornography without feeling queasy. The full nastiness of the activities, production, what obviously goes on behind the scenes, etc, hits you in the guts and is truly sickening.
David Foster Wallace had some interesting thoughts on this. From my interpretation he came to the conclusion that you can't blame the pornographers. They're just responding to market demand and the market is demanding more and more deviant and salacious content.
His thoughts on why the market is demanding more demeaning content has to do with the social acceptance of pornography - or at least of porno of the time you're talking about. One of the big allures of pornography is that it is "naughty" and deviant. As it becomes accepted the quest to find content that is not socially OK pushes pornographers to create it. A market gets created. To the point we are an asymptote of snuff films more or less.
So that although groups that would traditionally balk at porn and forced what we'd consider even mild porn into the underground are annoying, they may be providing a service in social health in limiting progression into a darker and darker realm of pure humiliation films, faux rape films, etc.
The article was titled "Big Red Son". Worth reading.
Is there “no escaping” that conclusion? Maybe it’s wrong for the same reason that “violent movies make kids violent” theory was wrong: people know how to distinguish reality from fantasy/entertainment.
I am on day 81 of a 90 day porn reset. It’s been hard at times but my real life sexual experiences seem greatly improved and I plan to continue abstinence from porn after the reset period ends. Seeing that I can modify behavior by setting attainable medium term goals has made me excited to tackle some other personal challenges too.
The site https://www.yourbrainonporn.com is what got me interested in trying to quit. Lots of good information there if you are interested.
My mother is a retired police officer who sometimes worked on homicide investigations.
She once pointed out to me that the way police work is portrayed on TV series is very different from what police officers do when investigating a homicide. And with good reason: If TV showed an accurate version of how murders are solved (or often enough not), it would be really, really boring to watch. On the other hand a real-life murder investigation can be quite harrowing because somebody actually died by the hand of another person. That element is very hard to reproduce, which is why death is portrayed so banally in crime programs.
The relation between porn and real-life sexuality is strikingly similar, is it not?
Honestly, like all addictions, it starts having an impact when you start depending upon it for pleasure and substitute parts of your life with it. That tends to happen when your life in general is not working well, or you're caught in situations of chronic stress and unhappiness. So the real long term strategy here would be to elevate the general quality of our lives and our interrelationships with each other, which would make porn pretty much a mildly amusing curiosity at worst. But when endemic stress predominates in society, good luck trying to prevent people from falling into one addiction or another. It's like plugging a boat made of Swiss cheese.
The insistence of parents to control their children via censorship and other means, as well as view them as some perfect child is more harmful than any porn.
The fact that the article itself and comments to the article talk about kids learning about such things from other kids and websites instead of their parents is pretty much case and point.
There is no downside to talking to your kid about sexuality and other things at, say, 10. Common rebuttals to such an idea is usually centered around the false notion that if the parent doesn't speak of it, then the child will never know. This couldn't be any more false.
"Censorship" here is a big scary word for very basic common sense parenting: recognizing that kids of different ages, personalities, and emotional maturity are not ready to be exposed to some things.
I agree with your assessment that parents should talk to their kids more about difficult topics at all ages, in an age-appropriate way, of course.
But you can take this too far and end up with the idea that parents should be fine with their kids seeing any kind of sexual, violent, or other disturbing content no matter their age or maturity level.
> Fewer teenagers have early sex than in the past (in a recent study, 24 percent of American ninth graders had sex; in 1995 about 37 percent had), and arrests of teenagers for sexual assault are also down. But you don’t have to believe that porn leads to sexual assault or that it’s creating a generation of brutal men to wonder how it helps shape how teenagers talk and think about sex and, by extension, their ideas about masculinity, femininity, intimacy and power.
I am tired of seeing issues framed this way: "Despite the objective evidence, my ideology drives the view that it must be making men brutal and compromising women's power"
> For years, Gallop has been a one-woman laboratory witnessing how easy-to-access mainstream porn influences sex. Now in her 50s, she has spent more than a decade dating 20-something men. She finds them through “cougar” dating sites — where older women connect with younger men — and her main criterion is that they are “nice.” Even so, she told me, during sex with these significantly younger nice men, she repeatedly encounters porn memes: facials, “jackhammering” intercourse, more frequent requests for anal sex and men who seem less focused on female orgasms than men were when she was younger. Gallop takes it upon herself to “re-educate,” as she half-jokingly puts it, men raised on porn.
This article seems more like activism than inquiry to me. The foot feels heavily on the scale. I believe the topic deserves better than this.
>I am tired of seeing issues framed this way: "Despite all objective evidence, my ideology drives the view that it must be making men brutal and compromising women's power"
The paragraph you quoted is literally saying "although evidence suggests porn does not increase assault, no matter what you believe about it it helps shape the views of people who watch it on sex and gender" which is the most obvious, tepid, noncontroversial statement that is devoid of any framing at all. You are literally complaining about an example the author uses of an opinion she does not have. The primary complaint you should have about this paragraph is how contentless it is, not some weird claim about how the statement that media effects culture is somehow malicious framing.
>Seriously, NYTimes? This is activism, not inquiry. I'm disappointed.
Yes, how dare someone who writes about a topic have actual experience with it that informs their opinions. I think it's actually far worse to have a "detached, impartial observer" (which of course does not exist) writing about a topic on which they have zero relevant experience. Which is pretty much standard operating procedure with NYT. How many articles are there in NYT from media elites pretending they understand the poor? Countless. This article is a refreshing positive change.
So the men you meet on a hookup site (and particularly, a hookup site for people you’re unlikely to choose to build a life with) are less romantic than the men you met organically?
It's specifically saying that the evidence is that it doesn't do the things you mentioned but that one still might "wonder how it helps shape how teenagers talk and think." It doesn't seem to be the author whose ideology is driving their view here.
I agree with the general sentiment but honestly this is just the worst kind of article. It’s superficial and yet also felt emotionally exploitative
Sorry but I guess I’m annoyed because I spent a lot of time working through this specific topic recently and had to wrestle with very some interesting questions:
What is real and what is fake? Why did we create these fantasies and what draws us to them? How much of our culture is fantasy? What if the fake is more “real” than the real? What does that imply for the future? How does pornography hold up a mirror that reflects us? Why is America so scared of reality?
But instead all the article gives us is: porn kills intimacy and reinforces gender roles, plus some weird obsession with facials.
I think this is an important topic for teens to understand and be able to openly talk about with their parents or other trusting grownups.
As grownups, I think we start to ignore hoping that kids will be able to figure out on their own without realizing what lasting effect it will have on their future relationship
The impression I've gotten is actually that women's demand for rough sex (and "kink" more generally) outstrips the number of men that enjoy it. I don't know to what degree it's related to porn, but ... if you're worried that porn is making men too into choking for the real-world sexual climate, I don't think that's true.
I told my wife that our 3rd grader had most likely seen porn at school. It turns out I was right. She had several friends in the 5th grade, and about 90% of the fifth graders have smart phones.
My math was simple: if you give 10 twelve-year-olds unfettered internet access, at least one of them will find porn, and that one will show it to their friends. If any of them have an older sibling, the odds just go up.
This is a great reason to avoid giving smartphones to kids, and a big reason we haven't. It's important for them to not have to deal with things they aren't mentally, physically, or emotionally ready for yet. They need to be kids right now.
> The clips tend to be short, low on production value, free and, though Pornhub
True as opened with “tend to be” but such a poor description of Pornhub in an article meant to help parents understand pornography. For example, the company behind Pornhub owns many production companies and paid sites. High production value clips promote those sites as do does the advertising.
My oldest son recently developed a porn habit in secret, and the things we saw in his search history showed a clear progression from googling "boobs" and "nudity" to "pissing" and "bondage".
Pornography isn't even close to what it was 30 years ago when you for the most part only saw it in nudie mags that your dad had (or friend had who stole it from his dad). Today, kids have easy access to a wealth of horrifying and bastardized hard-core pornography.
But not only that, the ads and search results and images that show up for the more innocent things will lead them to the more awful things, because they're just readily visible and accessible right there.
To be honest the only solution we have found is twofold: to change our wifi password to disable internet on all devices (he was sneaking his Nintendo 3DS into the bathroom for 2 months to look at porn on it) and to proactively start teaching them that life is more than a constant quest for more and more intense pleasure, and that if you allow yourself to give into that base mentality, you are throwing away a good portion of your future that could be filled with meaningful real relationships and legitimately joyful times, in exchange for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain until you die.
I'm sure it's a difficult position as a parent, although I have no experience in that department.
That said, have you wondered why you find those things "horrifying"? I might be a bit concerned if it was rape porn, but besides that I am unconvinced that there'such harm to come from children seeing porn, either at an individual or social level.
As I've noted before, if a child is looking at porn, that means they have a desire for it, which I think is difficult for parents to come to terms with. I certainly wouldn't want porn foisted on children, but if they are seeking it out through their own volition, there really isn't much you can do about it; a parent's treatment of a child viewing porn probably has more potential for a negative outcome than the porn itself since it is ultimately blaming human beings for their innate instinct. As if there is something wrong with naked adults having consentual sex, or practicing paraphilias.
I discovered porn when I was 10 through AltaVista image search. Just type in a female name and presto! By this time, there wasn't a whole lot my parents could do because I was going to look at porn one way or another. As with violent video games, parents have no governance over what their kids have access to at their friends' houses. In that case, establishing trust with your children will go a lot further than making them fear something that they innately understand to be practically harmless.
By the way, parents could actually talk to their kids about sex and, yes, even porn. If you're a good parent, your words will likely have an impact even if your kids continue to get their hands on porn.
You watch an action movie because it's exciting, it's thrilling, and things explode. Basically, everything is carefully managed or faked to give you the feeling that everything is amazingly awesome.
Porn is just like an action movie, only it's about sex instead of guns and martial arts. It's fun, but it usually has very little to do with real sex.
If I was a kid who's parents were actively monitoring my search activity, cutting off my access to the internet as a whole because of porn, and were trying to equate me watching porn because I'm going through puberty (presumably) with throwing away meaningful relationships in my future. . .what that teaches me is to never, ever go to my parents for any problems I have remotely related to sex, because their draconian. And that's bad. If I'm not going to my parents with those, who am I going to?
There's merit to what you're saying, yes, there's an unhealthy push for hardcore stuff in the modern porn landscape. Yes, in excess it's bad (as is everything else, by definition, but this more than many other things). But mostly I just feel bad for your kid. I get if he's like 13 or whatever you don't want him immersing himself in violent rape porn, but I feel like there's better ways to solve that than "no internet for you, and internet you do have is Being Watched".
Also unimportant, but does anyone develop a porn habit not in secret?
Why do you think you need to prevent your son from watching porn, especially to the point that you need to completely remove his access to the Internet?
What teenagers are learning from online porn is simply that the behavior of "shutting myself alone in my room with a computer" leads to (simulated) sexual satisfaction. This is in contrast to every generation before them which learned that the behavior of "being sociable / gaining status in society" leads to (non-simulated) sexual satisfaction. So a million young people learning to shut themselves away from the outside world, I wonder how that's going to work out for the West? I say West, because China bans porn.
The availability and ease for this type of content is scary especially when children are more connected than ever. Pornography kills love (Edit: https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-kills-love/). Love is extremely important for human beings and civilizations. It drives art, philosophy, faith, religion, etc. It is love that produced great works throughout history.
I read some where there was going to be a TLD for porn (.xxx I think). I wish they did that and all the porn content was only on that TLD. Then browsers can easily block all porn for underage viewers. I know I would do that for my children until they are adults and I believe they can make their own decisions. There is a level of maturity and education one needs before exposed to this type of content.
Personally I find it repulsive and I try my best to avoid it as best as possible. Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.
> I read some where there was going to be a TLD for porn (.xxx I think).
There were ideas about that for years, maybe even in the late 1990s, and eventually about 5-10 years ago it was set up.
Ironically, many in the "porn industry" were strongly against it; I think more to do with the company running it, though, than the idea of being confined to an online ghetto.
Most porn still remains on .com or on country TLDs and few people have probably even heard of .xxx, let alone visited a .xxx site. Now there are hundreds of new general TLDs, several more are porn related (.sexy, .porn) that basically nobody uses.
> Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.
I'm not a fan of depictions of simulated sex on TV/movies, since it's often for shock/viewing figures and/or holds up the plot, but I think irresponsible gun usage, torture/violence and military propaganda, which occur far more often than sexual content in TV and movies, are much worse for kids in particular to be exposed to.
how does calling it a drug make it bad? people take drugs all the damn time. i'm drinking a stimulant that my work bought for me right now! almost everyone at the office drinks one or more a day.
i actually used to live down the street from one of the "fight the new drug" offices in SLC. the problem in Utah, imo, is the seriously weak sex ed that they provide in schools here and the shit cultural attitudes towards sex.
the problem isn't porn, the problem is that parents are allowing porn to replace them as educators in this space. obviously that's going to lead to fucked up attitudes unless the young person happens upon some of the more healthy sexy spots on the internet.
if you want censorship, go ahead, but nobody has to make it easy for you. education is going to do a lot more for you tho. my parents tried to censor my access to porn when i was a teenager so i made an isolinux disk (ubuntu + tor) and used it to avoid their keylogging and filtering software.
i was/am mostly into erotic literature and sex positive forums vs other types of pornographic content, but that isn't thanks to my parents. i value intimacy, but finding sexual online places that share my values is difficult. i suppose the economics don't work out for that type of content. i know people who have had issues with porn interfering with their ability to be intimate, but it has never been a problem for me personally.
TL;DR don't be a fucking baby and talk to your kids about sex and physical intimacy. you can't "protect" anyone from pornography, but you can influence your children's attitudes towards these important topics.
> I wish they did that and all the porn content was only on that TLD. Then browsers can easily block all porn for underage viewers.
This is about as practical as the evil bit[1].
> I know I would do that for my children until they are adults and I believe they can make their own decisions.
"and"?
This implies that you want to control the media consumption of your adult children if you don't believe that they "can make their own decisions." Is that what you intended to say?
Most of this resonates. Just as the article points out, porn is one of the most accessible ways of getting mostly servicable, if greatly skewed sex education, in the sense of being able to consume it from the privacy of your own home, away from adults and peers, and be exposed to a variety of actual situations that depict sex acts. This makes abstract lessons about condoms and bananas -- but maybe not periods and pregnancy -- more concrete, especially as you're at the age when you're trying to figure out what you want emotionally. And that's even if you got a school lesson about condoms and bananas at all.
As for just how skewed porn is, and how much it influences tastes and posturing of its impressionable consumers, is something worthy of more study. While one must be careful to suggest that adult human societies are still shaped by primitive patterns descendant from ancient, hypercompetitive eras lest we erase many years of social progress, societies of adolescents -- especially captive environments like school, camp, and social networks -- show less nuance, and more base urges that are products of either nature or nurture.
Notably, school is a captive social environment in which social competition can develop, and the proliferation of social networks extends this captive environment outside of school hours and into the middle of the night. The youth experience largely consists of top-down busywork about school-selected abstract topics vaguely about adult life, while being exposed to a shifting social landscape in which real events happen with real impact on their immediate surroundings. Sex is one such event, and everyone's still figuring things out.
When you're not actually sure what you want, because lots of things appeal in theory, but you're not sure if that appeal will translate into practice, a confident partner is compelling in ways that go beyond their gratifying presence in porn. They can be your guide and encourage you to engage in the things you want to do, while easing around the ones you don't. Older, attractive, sociable people, who often have more sexual experience (by virtue of their attributes) can project this confidence and match younger partners, despite in many places laws against the contrary. If the relationship remains mutually beneficial, the resulting experiences will allow the bottom partner to gain confidence of their own to apply with future partners, and enables them to explore their preferences.
Meanwhile, adolescents seeking close-in-age partners are faced with a conundrum: project confidence, or admit that they're unsure? The latter, for many, is untenable. A tactic that has developed to project carefree nonchalance instead, to mask deeper conflicts with plausible deniability and a dose of youth-transcending nihilism. This has made "chill" a socially acceptable byword for winging it. This is the territory of mindgames, of unspoken consent (or lack thereof), and a lowkey desire to impress the other -- behaviors that many will retain into adulthood and create more problems then.
It's imperfect choices all around: either have real experience from prior encounters to project confidence, lean on porn and hearsay muster up artificial know-how, engage in a vague slow-motion game where one effectively becomes a recipient to a series of events and one-thing-led-to-anothers, or admit all of this is making your head swirl but watch as the person you like makes headway with someone who was sure a few weeks later?
It always boils down to information and communication. Porn is information where alternatives are not nearly as illustrative, and it enables a vocabulary of communication in a world where talk with adults is a both-ways taboo, talk with peers is a social risk, so most communication isn't verbal. Porn enables vernacular literacy in these matters, while other instruments don't. Of course, it's produced for a different audience, but porn and other artifacts of intimacy produced for (and by) a more relatable audience is illegal, so it's the next best thing.
Why is it so common to see people draw parallels from porn to behavior, but then not do the same for other form of video. It was only ~20 years ago that video nasty was a major concern and people thought that TV and film was a major caused for crime and violence, only to be categorized later as mostly pseudo science and moral hysteria.
If porn teaches kids about masculinity and femininity, should we not claim the same thing about romantic drama or comedies? What make porn so special that teenagers can't determine what is real or false, but a romantic drama where every character has exaggerated gender behavior and roles is perfectly clear that it is fake and where naturally no teenager will be effected?
[+] [-] peatfreak|8 years ago|reply
Moreover, and moving on, now that I'm a new father with a two-year old daughter, I cannot even _look_ at pornography without feeling queasy. The full nastiness of the activities, production, what obviously goes on behind the scenes, etc, hits you in the guts and is truly sickening.
[+] [-] nemo44x|8 years ago|reply
His thoughts on why the market is demanding more demeaning content has to do with the social acceptance of pornography - or at least of porno of the time you're talking about. One of the big allures of pornography is that it is "naughty" and deviant. As it becomes accepted the quest to find content that is not socially OK pushes pornographers to create it. A market gets created. To the point we are an asymptote of snuff films more or less.
So that although groups that would traditionally balk at porn and forced what we'd consider even mild porn into the underground are annoying, they may be providing a service in social health in limiting progression into a darker and darker realm of pure humiliation films, faux rape films, etc.
The article was titled "Big Red Son". Worth reading.
[+] [-] rayiner|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jurassic|8 years ago|reply
The site https://www.yourbrainonporn.com is what got me interested in trying to quit. Lots of good information there if you are interested.
[+] [-] bhnmmhmd|8 years ago|reply
1) Quit Porn 2) Stop Masturbation
Any ideas?
[+] [-] krylon|8 years ago|reply
She once pointed out to me that the way police work is portrayed on TV series is very different from what police officers do when investigating a homicide. And with good reason: If TV showed an accurate version of how murders are solved (or often enough not), it would be really, really boring to watch. On the other hand a real-life murder investigation can be quite harrowing because somebody actually died by the hand of another person. That element is very hard to reproduce, which is why death is portrayed so banally in crime programs.
The relation between porn and real-life sexuality is strikingly similar, is it not?
[+] [-] dreen|8 years ago|reply
The best way I've seen that explained is car chases in movies. They are made to look exciting, but they are also very obviously unrealistic.
Once you understand this, you can look at porn as an entertainment product and nothing more, which I think is the healthy way to approach it.
[+] [-] Santosh83|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dqpb|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _m8fo|8 years ago|reply
The fact that the article itself and comments to the article talk about kids learning about such things from other kids and websites instead of their parents is pretty much case and point.
There is no downside to talking to your kid about sexuality and other things at, say, 10. Common rebuttals to such an idea is usually centered around the false notion that if the parent doesn't speak of it, then the child will never know. This couldn't be any more false.
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|8 years ago|reply
I agree with your assessment that parents should talk to their kids more about difficult topics at all ages, in an age-appropriate way, of course.
But you can take this too far and end up with the idea that parents should be fine with their kids seeing any kind of sexual, violent, or other disturbing content no matter their age or maturity level.
[+] [-] ghostcluster|8 years ago|reply
I am tired of seeing issues framed this way: "Despite the objective evidence, my ideology drives the view that it must be making men brutal and compromising women's power"
> For years, Gallop has been a one-woman laboratory witnessing how easy-to-access mainstream porn influences sex. Now in her 50s, she has spent more than a decade dating 20-something men. She finds them through “cougar” dating sites — where older women connect with younger men — and her main criterion is that they are “nice.” Even so, she told me, during sex with these significantly younger nice men, she repeatedly encounters porn memes: facials, “jackhammering” intercourse, more frequent requests for anal sex and men who seem less focused on female orgasms than men were when she was younger. Gallop takes it upon herself to “re-educate,” as she half-jokingly puts it, men raised on porn.
This article seems more like activism than inquiry to me. The foot feels heavily on the scale. I believe the topic deserves better than this.
[+] [-] wfo|8 years ago|reply
The paragraph you quoted is literally saying "although evidence suggests porn does not increase assault, no matter what you believe about it it helps shape the views of people who watch it on sex and gender" which is the most obvious, tepid, noncontroversial statement that is devoid of any framing at all. You are literally complaining about an example the author uses of an opinion she does not have. The primary complaint you should have about this paragraph is how contentless it is, not some weird claim about how the statement that media effects culture is somehow malicious framing.
>Seriously, NYTimes? This is activism, not inquiry. I'm disappointed.
Yes, how dare someone who writes about a topic have actual experience with it that informs their opinions. I think it's actually far worse to have a "detached, impartial observer" (which of course does not exist) writing about a topic on which they have zero relevant experience. Which is pretty much standard operating procedure with NYT. How many articles are there in NYT from media elites pretending they understand the poor? Countless. This article is a refreshing positive change.
[+] [-] wheresmypwd|8 years ago|reply
Color me shocked!
[+] [-] glhaynes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattbierner|8 years ago|reply
Sorry but I guess I’m annoyed because I spent a lot of time working through this specific topic recently and had to wrestle with very some interesting questions:
What is real and what is fake? Why did we create these fantasies and what draws us to them? How much of our culture is fantasy? What if the fake is more “real” than the real? What does that imply for the future? How does pornography hold up a mirror that reflects us? Why is America so scared of reality?
But instead all the article gives us is: porn kills intimacy and reinforces gender roles, plus some weird obsession with facials.
[+] [-] peterchon|8 years ago|reply
As grownups, I think we start to ignore hoping that kids will be able to figure out on their own without realizing what lasting effect it will have on their future relationship
[+] [-] neutronicus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aidenn0|8 years ago|reply
My math was simple: if you give 10 twelve-year-olds unfettered internet access, at least one of them will find porn, and that one will show it to their friends. If any of them have an older sibling, the odds just go up.
[+] [-] sexoffender|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloydde|8 years ago|reply
True as opened with “tend to be” but such a poor description of Pornhub in an article meant to help parents understand pornography. For example, the company behind Pornhub owns many production companies and paid sites. High production value clips promote those sites as do does the advertising.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Thylmann
http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html
[+] [-] sexoffender|8 years ago|reply
Pornography isn't even close to what it was 30 years ago when you for the most part only saw it in nudie mags that your dad had (or friend had who stole it from his dad). Today, kids have easy access to a wealth of horrifying and bastardized hard-core pornography.
But not only that, the ads and search results and images that show up for the more innocent things will lead them to the more awful things, because they're just readily visible and accessible right there.
To be honest the only solution we have found is twofold: to change our wifi password to disable internet on all devices (he was sneaking his Nintendo 3DS into the bathroom for 2 months to look at porn on it) and to proactively start teaching them that life is more than a constant quest for more and more intense pleasure, and that if you allow yourself to give into that base mentality, you are throwing away a good portion of your future that could be filled with meaningful real relationships and legitimately joyful times, in exchange for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain until you die.
[+] [-] ravenstine|8 years ago|reply
That said, have you wondered why you find those things "horrifying"? I might be a bit concerned if it was rape porn, but besides that I am unconvinced that there'such harm to come from children seeing porn, either at an individual or social level.
As I've noted before, if a child is looking at porn, that means they have a desire for it, which I think is difficult for parents to come to terms with. I certainly wouldn't want porn foisted on children, but if they are seeking it out through their own volition, there really isn't much you can do about it; a parent's treatment of a child viewing porn probably has more potential for a negative outcome than the porn itself since it is ultimately blaming human beings for their innate instinct. As if there is something wrong with naked adults having consentual sex, or practicing paraphilias.
I discovered porn when I was 10 through AltaVista image search. Just type in a female name and presto! By this time, there wasn't a whole lot my parents could do because I was going to look at porn one way or another. As with violent video games, parents have no governance over what their kids have access to at their friends' houses. In that case, establishing trust with your children will go a lot further than making them fear something that they innately understand to be practically harmless.
By the way, parents could actually talk to their kids about sex and, yes, even porn. If you're a good parent, your words will likely have an impact even if your kids continue to get their hands on porn.
[+] [-] dsr_|8 years ago|reply
You watch an action movie because it's exciting, it's thrilling, and things explode. Basically, everything is carefully managed or faked to give you the feeling that everything is amazingly awesome.
Porn is just like an action movie, only it's about sex instead of guns and martial arts. It's fun, but it usually has very little to do with real sex.
[+] [-] JCSato|8 years ago|reply
There's merit to what you're saying, yes, there's an unhealthy push for hardcore stuff in the modern porn landscape. Yes, in excess it's bad (as is everything else, by definition, but this more than many other things). But mostly I just feel bad for your kid. I get if he's like 13 or whatever you don't want him immersing himself in violent rape porn, but I feel like there's better ways to solve that than "no internet for you, and internet you do have is Being Watched".
Also unimportant, but does anyone develop a porn habit not in secret?
[+] [-] meowface|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnaccy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sizzle|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gr3yh47|8 years ago|reply
for many, it's not. We are designed to seek pleasure, so many make that their highest goal.
But nothing in this world can provide true and lasting pleasure, only God can.
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
psalm 16:11
[+] [-] reader5000|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|8 years ago|reply
How can you be sure it was a girl commenting? An account with a girly name was commenting.
[+] [-] smalf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mandazi|8 years ago|reply
I read some where there was going to be a TLD for porn (.xxx I think). I wish they did that and all the porn content was only on that TLD. Then browsers can easily block all porn for underage viewers. I know I would do that for my children until they are adults and I believe they can make their own decisions. There is a level of maturity and education one needs before exposed to this type of content.
Personally I find it repulsive and I try my best to avoid it as best as possible. Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.
[+] [-] Tech-Noir|8 years ago|reply
There were ideas about that for years, maybe even in the late 1990s, and eventually about 5-10 years ago it was set up.
Ironically, many in the "porn industry" were strongly against it; I think more to do with the company running it, though, than the idea of being confined to an online ghetto.
Most porn still remains on .com or on country TLDs and few people have probably even heard of .xxx, let alone visited a .xxx site. Now there are hundreds of new general TLDs, several more are porn related (.sexy, .porn) that basically nobody uses.
> Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.
I'm not a fan of depictions of simulated sex on TV/movies, since it's often for shock/viewing figures and/or holds up the plot, but I think irresponsible gun usage, torture/violence and military propaganda, which occur far more often than sexual content in TV and movies, are much worse for kids in particular to be exposed to.
[+] [-] xj9|8 years ago|reply
i actually used to live down the street from one of the "fight the new drug" offices in SLC. the problem in Utah, imo, is the seriously weak sex ed that they provide in schools here and the shit cultural attitudes towards sex.
the problem isn't porn, the problem is that parents are allowing porn to replace them as educators in this space. obviously that's going to lead to fucked up attitudes unless the young person happens upon some of the more healthy sexy spots on the internet.
if you want censorship, go ahead, but nobody has to make it easy for you. education is going to do a lot more for you tho. my parents tried to censor my access to porn when i was a teenager so i made an isolinux disk (ubuntu + tor) and used it to avoid their keylogging and filtering software.
i was/am mostly into erotic literature and sex positive forums vs other types of pornographic content, but that isn't thanks to my parents. i value intimacy, but finding sexual online places that share my values is difficult. i suppose the economics don't work out for that type of content. i know people who have had issues with porn interfering with their ability to be intimate, but it has never been a problem for me personally.
TL;DR don't be a fucking baby and talk to your kids about sex and physical intimacy. you can't "protect" anyone from pornography, but you can influence your children's attitudes towards these important topics.
[+] [-] LyndsySimon|8 years ago|reply
This is about as practical as the evil bit[1].
> I know I would do that for my children until they are adults and I believe they can make their own decisions.
"and"?
This implies that you want to control the media consumption of your adult children if you don't believe that they "can make their own decisions." Is that what you intended to say?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit
[+] [-] soared|8 years ago|reply
Source, explanation, anything to back this?
[+] [-] gameswithgo|8 years ago|reply
Can you expound on this further? What exactly does it mean and what evidence is there to support it?
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] temp-dude-87844|8 years ago|reply
As for just how skewed porn is, and how much it influences tastes and posturing of its impressionable consumers, is something worthy of more study. While one must be careful to suggest that adult human societies are still shaped by primitive patterns descendant from ancient, hypercompetitive eras lest we erase many years of social progress, societies of adolescents -- especially captive environments like school, camp, and social networks -- show less nuance, and more base urges that are products of either nature or nurture.
Notably, school is a captive social environment in which social competition can develop, and the proliferation of social networks extends this captive environment outside of school hours and into the middle of the night. The youth experience largely consists of top-down busywork about school-selected abstract topics vaguely about adult life, while being exposed to a shifting social landscape in which real events happen with real impact on their immediate surroundings. Sex is one such event, and everyone's still figuring things out.
When you're not actually sure what you want, because lots of things appeal in theory, but you're not sure if that appeal will translate into practice, a confident partner is compelling in ways that go beyond their gratifying presence in porn. They can be your guide and encourage you to engage in the things you want to do, while easing around the ones you don't. Older, attractive, sociable people, who often have more sexual experience (by virtue of their attributes) can project this confidence and match younger partners, despite in many places laws against the contrary. If the relationship remains mutually beneficial, the resulting experiences will allow the bottom partner to gain confidence of their own to apply with future partners, and enables them to explore their preferences.
Meanwhile, adolescents seeking close-in-age partners are faced with a conundrum: project confidence, or admit that they're unsure? The latter, for many, is untenable. A tactic that has developed to project carefree nonchalance instead, to mask deeper conflicts with plausible deniability and a dose of youth-transcending nihilism. This has made "chill" a socially acceptable byword for winging it. This is the territory of mindgames, of unspoken consent (or lack thereof), and a lowkey desire to impress the other -- behaviors that many will retain into adulthood and create more problems then.
It's imperfect choices all around: either have real experience from prior encounters to project confidence, lean on porn and hearsay muster up artificial know-how, engage in a vague slow-motion game where one effectively becomes a recipient to a series of events and one-thing-led-to-anothers, or admit all of this is making your head swirl but watch as the person you like makes headway with someone who was sure a few weeks later?
It always boils down to information and communication. Porn is information where alternatives are not nearly as illustrative, and it enables a vocabulary of communication in a world where talk with adults is a both-ways taboo, talk with peers is a social risk, so most communication isn't verbal. Porn enables vernacular literacy in these matters, while other instruments don't. Of course, it's produced for a different audience, but porn and other artifacts of intimacy produced for (and by) a more relatable audience is illegal, so it's the next best thing.
[+] [-] artur_makly|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlebrech|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] youdontknowtho|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlancheDavid|8 years ago|reply
If porn teaches kids about masculinity and femininity, should we not claim the same thing about romantic drama or comedies? What make porn so special that teenagers can't determine what is real or false, but a romantic drama where every character has exaggerated gender behavior and roles is perfectly clear that it is fake and where naturally no teenager will be effected?