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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> cannot imagine how a parent can keep their children safe today

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.

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My daughter has a girlfriend who was watching hardcore porn at age 7 or 8 and telling my daughter all about it. That is not healthy for that kid. They are going to get the wrong impression of how to interact with boys and it is pretty clear something is off with that kid now.

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?

> 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.

Raising barriers to access works. Kids generally do not drink alcohol, drive, vote or smoke. There are exceptions but it makes it a lot harder and does reduce access. And when they do drink and smoke it is generally when they are close in age to the end of the ban.

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.

Porn, a digital good, is easier to circumvent access controls to than alcohol. And we’re crap at keeping our kids from drinking before they’re even fifteen [1].

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...

I'm not sure this statistic tells us much. It'd be more interesting to compare something like teen alcoholism rates vs legal drinking age. For all we know an age requirement may very well lower alcohol abuse rates. Besides, I really don't see a reason not to restrict it - should we just legalize alcohol for all ages? I think not, because what we have right now most likely does not hurt. Same logic for porn.

If the goal of the 21 year old drinking age is to prevent addiction, its not working

The United States has one of the highest rates of alcohol addiction in the world.

https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/alcoholism-by-country...

No controlled trial means we don't know if it's helping or not. Nobody is saying that the legal drinking age is the sole determinant of addiction rates.

It's a bit of a leap to assume that not wanting or allowing your 11-year-old to watch pornography means that such topics (presumably, sex) are completely "taboo" in the home.

It's quite a leap to assume that the parent had in mind exactly two scenarios and wasn't mentioning specifics from their life experience.

The difference is that my comment didn't suggest anyone had an unhealthy home environment based on their opinion on this topic. The parent comment did.

When I was a kid - it was not possible to access hardcore porn with one click. Even adults could not do it back then.

Kind of a weird statement since we are anon here. It is entirely possible that when you were a kid, computers didn't even display graphics.

My whole childhood - the 90s - was computer-free. Pornhub didn't exist back then.

A leg up in what? In having more mental health problems?

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.

There's growing evidence that it's social media in its entirety which is the problem for kids - as a vehicle for unrealistic expectations, distorted self-image, and bullying. But the social media platforms mostly ban porn.

It's the constant easily obtained dopamine hits that are the problem. Porn and social media are exactly the same in that regard.

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.

> 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.

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