You can keep your kids safe by educating them about what is out there, and by troubleshooting what they can do when confronted with it, as well as having on-going discussions about whatever the topic is and providing safe, non-judgmental escape chutes for when they need it.
And even then, you just have to hope for the best.
My two cents, for what that's worth. I have no research to back this up, just my own experience with my kids.
Is there evidence such prohibition keeps kids safe? It’s the environment I grew up in. But the kids who had healthy home environments where such topics weren’t taboo seemed to have a leg up.
We limit alcohol, driving, tobacco, voting for minors because we judge them not smart enough to make good decisions. Why do you feel we should not exclude hardcore porn?
I don’t think kids should watch porn. I do think banning it will be as successful as we’ve been with alcohol, with the same blowback that comes from surrounding something in mystery and black markets.
To say that some will get around it doesn’t mean we should not do what is best for that group as a whole.
Unlimited and early extensive use of social media and hardcore porn is not healthy for kids. It will screw up their worldview. We should ban and limit them smartly if we want to support healthy kids.
So I agree with the goal: less porn in front of children. But I disagree with the method: trying to ban it.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/725020/age-of-first-alco...
The United States has one of the highest rates of alcohol addiction in the world.
https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country...
The majority of kids now have pretty much unlimited internet access and mental health issues have risen exponentially. Statistics don't seem to support your stance here.
I would also disagree that social media does a good job of banning porn. There's also sorts of nasty stuff that gets shown to kids on social media, not just porn but violence as well.
I remember writing much the same in a letter to the editor back in the late 90s, while I was still at school[0].
Only difference is, I was pointing out how weird it was that 16-year-old-me was banned by law from seeing acts that I was allowed to perform[0] while at the same time outright homicide was a thing that sometimes got included in cartoons specifically deemed suitable for young children.
[0] the UK age of consent is 16 but the age to go into adult shops or see adult films is 18… or at least it was when I was 16 myself, I've had no reason to check if it still is or not.
The belief seems to be that ideological content is necessarily always entirely harmless, whereas nudity is magically harmful?
Not to mention widespread book-banning on the mere mention of LGBT people, which are deemed "not suitable for children" despite not actually having sexual content?
How do we actually determine harm here, and avoid being buffeted by propaganda? There's a long history of banning all sorts of things on think-of-the-children grounds. Things like "access to information about contraception" have previously been considered obscene. How do we avoid going round this discourse treadmill forever?