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What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

nytimes.com

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Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#71

Post by LyndsySimon »

mandazi wrote: post #4

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 por…

> 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?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_bit

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#72

Post by gr3yh47 »

sexoffender wrote: post #37

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…

>life is more than a constant quest for more and more intense pleasure

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

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#73

Post by ravenstine »

sexoffender wrote: post #37

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…

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.

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#74

Post by aidenn0 »

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.

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#75

Post by mintplant »

sosuke wrote: post #54
mintplant wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're doing that HN thing where someone cherry-picks a couple of segments from the article, wraps them in a bit of leading commentary, and pastes it at the top of the comments for everyone who skipped reading the piece to attach their agreement to.

I didn't think it was possible to choose a position for a comment appear in. I do learn new easter eggs about HN from time to time like formatting. Most of my comments start in the middle or bottom from my questionable memory.

New comments actually start at the top and fall down over time, or not if they pick up votes quickly enough.

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#76

Post by JCSato »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #33
cloverich wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is that too far to assume a child can be exposed to the same things as an adult, ask the same questions, etc? There's this concept that if a child is exposed to something too early it will corrupt their morality or sensibilities and I just don't see it.

I'm not a child psychologist or mental health professional, so I'm not sure what to tell you, except that it seems reasonable to me to think that just maybe exposing kids to certain types of materials before they have the experience, emotional maturity, etc, to process those things can be incredibly damaging. And I really doubt that trying to avoid my 3 year old daughter watching violent pornography is going to harm…

Your 3 year old daughter is definitely the demographic in danger of her school mates introducing her to violent pornography, yes.

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#77

Post by Tech-Noir »

mandazi wrote: post #4

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 por…

> 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.

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#78

Post by ravenstine »

sexoffender wrote: post #46
meowface wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Once he started doing it, everything in his life declined. He stopped having healthy relationships with his siblings and his friends at school. He started to be much more angry and even sometimes violent, and when we examine the situations in detail, we see that none of it is justified, and he's always the one saying everyone is out to get him when he is actually the one doing wrong. He's become a lot more arrogant a…

How do you know that this isn't correlation as opposed to causation? Addictive practices are common avoidance strategies.

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#79

Post by DanBC »

mintplant wrote: post #75
sosuke wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think it was possible to choose a position for a comment appear in. I do learn new easter eggs about HN from time to time like formatting. Most of my comments start in the middle or bottom from my questionable memory.

New comments actually start at the top and fall down over time, or not if they pick up votes quickly enough.

That's an incomplete description.

Re: What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn

#80

Post by ameister14 »

sexoffender wrote: post #46
meowface wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Once he started doing it, everything in his life declined. He stopped having healthy relationships with his siblings and his friends at school. He started to be much more angry and even sometimes violent, and when we examine the situations in detail, we see that none of it is justified, and he's always the one saying everyone is out to get him when he is actually the one doing wrong. He's become a lot more arrogant a…

Is he anywhere between 13 and 17? Because that behavior sounds like about 60% of boys between those ages. Testosterone makes people quick to anger, often unjustifiably, and until they learn to control it they aren't fun to be around.

Teenagers are also famously self-absorbed, and this age is also marked with a shift from reliance on parents for guidance to outside sources like peers.

This was all the case before the internet, before video, before printed media. Porn isn't the cause.

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