We tend to forget the damage that porn causes to young minds.
If this law fails to educate on pornography, at least it'll educate youngsters on DNS. I'm ok with both scenarios.
If this law fails to educate on pornography, at least it'll educate youngsters on DNS. I'm ok with both scenarios.
There's a fair amount to unpack here.
"We tend to forget" seems to indicate this is proven and beyond dispute. I'm not sure that is true.
"damage" is a very strong word that implies permanent harm - almost at the cellular level. Not everyone would accept that "damage" is even the right way to frame this. It's part of a complex social and behavioural pattern that is very hard to pick apart.
"young minds" - how young? Is it dependent on countering with good sex education or is the "damage" something that would resist all countermeasures?
"Additionally, there is meta-analytic evidence to indicate that viewing more pornography and viewing extreme pornography is associated with the sexual objectification of women and more aggressive attitudes (Hald et al., 2010)[0]. Some longitudinal findings link sexual aggression and use of violent pornography, for example, one study of 10-15 year olds in the US found that those who intentionally viewed violent X-rated materials were nearly six times more likely than others to report sexually aggressive behaviour (Ybarra et al. 2011)[1]."[2]
The research on effects of porn is chequered and often has methodological problems, replication problems, and unfortunately assumes one kind of mainstream porn (leaving out, say, erotica, fanfiction overwhelmingly written and read by teens, online erotic roleplaying, etc.) - that said, from my own amateur reading around the topic, there is a strong pointer to substantial negative effects which are usually (though not always) mediated, much in the same way alcohol consumption effects are.
[0] Hald, G.M., Malamuth, N.M., & Yuen, C. (2010). Pornography and attitudes supporting violence against women: Revisiting the relationship in non-experimental studies. Aggressive Behavior.36, 14-20. doi: 10.1002/ab.20328
[1] Ybarra, M.L., Mitchell, K.J., Hamburger, M., Diener-West, M. & Leaf, P.J. (2011). X-rated material and perpetration of sexually aggressive behavior among children and adolescents: Is there a link? Aggressive Behavior, 37, 1–18.
[2] Victoria et al. (2016). Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS. Technical Report. Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
What does your research say about the fixation of that attitude? Is it like, forever and ever? How those effects compare to watching martial arts, war footage from the news, movies etc?
Isn't it just a Pavlovian response training thing? Before the age of 25 people are more susceptible to learn or relearn, and some are just born (and exacerbated by insane upbringing instead of proper diagnosis and meds) with predilections.
> but the effects are more pronounced with violent porn
Sure, and if they had a fist fight behind a school, a kiss, a cigarette, a caffeinated drink and listened to violent music in a short time they'd probably had a heart attack.
Your conclusion reminds of witch-hunt-approving arguments like, violent games make kids violent. Which is moot, Take for example Children's Crusades[1] in 13 century, which was induced by religion and politics. Or, I know some parents who watched a documentary about how a talented musician was raised with beatings, so they took that literally, you know what I mean? Sick ideas find a fertile ground.
Btw did you watch that Black Mirror episode "Arkangel", seems related. Or The Alienist by Caleb Carr, the book and series, about underage male prostitution in 19 century, the plot is based on real life, sort of.
I can see and understand the concern, and some results can fuel moral panics and witchhunts, but they don't need to lead to there necessarily. Finding that porn has effects on attitude and aggression, and long-term, increased, or more violent use can have greater effects does not provide an ought from the is. It can provide some scientific and empirical basis for such an argument (for example, an argument to ban porn), but we shouldn't reject science because of the normative conclusions it might lead us to.
You may be interested in a book[0] from a little while ago which examines the debate quite closely, with lots of empirical data which supports both sides of the argument. From what I've read, behavioural scientists and policy-makers largely do not consider the evidence "against" porn to be all that decisive in supporting a ban.
In other words... the proper strategy should be to get the data, scrutinise the data, and then decide what action we will take (if any) based on the data. The book mentions a comparison with the effects of alcohol, which is quite apt. Many people who would argue for porn to be banned, I imagine, would not have the same opinion on alcohol, especially given the history of the Prohibition.
I understand the difficulty of testing this kind of relationships but the casual link might be totally inverse, kids who have too much testosterone also are predisposed to that type of content rather than it being the content that informs the tendencies.
Regardless of the real reason thats a ton of material to read, so thanks!
For example, male sport teams that win a match has increased testosterone levels afterwards and reduced levels if they loose. Similar, sport spectators mirror this pattern.
If for example two people have fisticuffs at a bar and we measured testosterone before and after, the winner would see an increase in testosterone secretion while the looser would have an reduction.
And then we come to violent content, and indeed there exist some research on this. The result is a bit more complicated. Only people who are already disposed towards aggressive behavior see an increase in testosterone secretion after watching a violent movie.
So what does that mean? There is a theory called the challenge hypothesis. In this theory testosterone acts as a modulator to how much behavior an individual will spend in order to retain status once challenged. If an individual gain status, such when two males compete and one wins and the other losses, testosterone secretion increase in order to encourage more energy use towards defending that possible short term gain in social status until a new social hierarchy has stabilized. The more sudden the gain the more testosterone is secreted, and the more the relationship between testosterone and violent/aggressive behaviours can be observed.
(for some interesting reading I can recommend The Trouble With Testosterone by robert sapolsky or one of his lecture on the topic)
Obviously it would be our preference to delay puberty until after graduate school, but given that we can't, what is it that we'd prefer teenagers do instead?
He even speaks of delaying puberty until after graduate school:
p.71 "Here, too, an inner dishonesty disclosed itself, for the middle-class calendar in no way agreed with that of Nature. As far as society was concerned, a young man did not reach manhood until he had secured a “social position” for himself—that is, hardly before his twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year. And so there was an artificial interval of six, eight, or ten years between actual manhood and manhood as society accepted it ; and in this interval the young man had to take care of his own “affairs” or adventures."
(and, for the pre-Great War predecessors of OnlyFans, see p.122 "...it held no less than twenty-seven pictures of famous dancers and actresses in extreme décolleté, as well as three or four nude photographs..." or p.67 "“Art” and nude photographs in particular were offered to half-grown boys for sale under the table by peddlers in every cafe.")
https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/pagevie...
for even more damaging and unwanted writing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611730