Just the fact that pornography is being taken seriously as something that's dangerous for minors is a good thing really.
And does this put a curb on explicit R rated movies that has nudity and acts of sex? Is it just the penetration shots that are "dangerous"? Also, it doesn't even touch on if ultra violent content strewn around, well, EVERYWHERE isn't "dangerous"? Where is the state bans on violence in movies and TV (they've already tried with video games)? But OMFG, if you dare to show a woman's breast, it's "dangerous".
Give me a break.
It's worth noting that the reactionary response to that (e.g. porn is good and totally healthy and everything bad said about it is fake news) is also nonsense.
What's going on exactly? Which countries?
France and Germany have similar laws, and the UK is about to pass one.
It would be nice if this were true, but it's not.
We used to have shame as a societal mechanism to deal with these issues. It was shameful to be an alcoholic, which was how alcoholism was kept in check. The same way it was shameful in ancient Greece to surrender to your carnal urges.
Shame is disappearing. Our societies are going haywire.
This is far too broad, just because something could be used for evil is not enough to ban it for all children. What about TVs? Candy? Stimulating toys? I think all of these can have negative outcomes when abused, but that isn't enough for me to say all children should not access them.
"[Shame and conformation aren't] the only variable, and it's clearly not the determining factor."
We really need to get back to the good old days – you know the ones – where slavery was legal, women didn't have the right to vote, and homosexuality could be punished with forced sterilization.
Also, you say Europe is more open about nudity, implying that is a good thing, but Asia and the middle east are in many cases more prudish than even the US, so why not look to them or use them as an example? Where's your objective measure for which societies we should admire and emulate?
> but the bulk of the public support for these measures isn’t because people want government surveillance
Does not mean the majority of the public supports those measures, though perhaps those who do support those measures do so because of reasons other than explicitly wanting the government to surveil them.
I don't think you are implying that the majority of the public supports those measures but I did want to make it clear that this was still an open question.
The issue is that it's _their_ job to look out for their children.
We don't force all beds to have "walls", and give adults the keys to lower them if they show proof of age. Parents are supposed to buy _cribs_ for their children.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/temecia-rodney-mila-jackson-ret...
It is completely unnecessary to state the child's ethnicity to make this point which is entirely irrelevant to the argument you are attempting to make.
Hacker News is filled with technical people. However, think about all the workers who are not tech workers who have families. The burden of knowledge for these parents to setup home networks and devices that provide content filtering, monitoring, and alerting is way too high.
Access to pornography ends up being an economic negative externality caused by the increased access to the internet, and we haven't really figured out how to handle the cost.
Perhaps, but society seems to be increasingly creating hostile environments for parents and their children. Immediate and constant access to unlimited pornography is the tip of the iceberg. Social media has been shown to be highly toxic to young adults. Most digital content, be it social media, video games, etc is being explicitly designed to addict users, especially children. Education is crumbling. Food is loaded with artificial sweeteners and additives making them addictive and unhealthy. Local communities and support have decayed. And all the while the average income in comparison to inflation has cratered, making it more difficult for parents to actually spend time away from work to actually parent.
The ability of parents to raise healthy, well adjusted children has gotten much more difficult in recent decades, largely due the pursuit of profit over human well-being. You can disagree with individual laws, but you should not simply bury your head in the sand and respond to every attempt to help parents out with “just do your job and parent!”
Phub is also a legitimate business that has commercial advertising interests in the US, so they're incentivized to play nice. There are about a million other websites that aren't based in North America, contain only pirated material, and don't care about what laws are applicable where.
Given how poorly they've behaved so far, I don't agree that they're incentivized to play nice.
All the other sites? Not so much.
The point of the US is to let the states self-regulate things like this.
Porn is absolutely fine for kids to watch as long as the parents properly contextualize it. The issue is that somehow societally accepted that its taboo to talk to your kid about sex at an early age, and plenty of otherwise normal parents are embarrassed to do it.
It works very well in Netherlands, where teens end up having much healthier relationships, fewer sexual partners, and less unwanted pregnancies.
At some point later in the years, the kid will probably stumble onto some hardcore porn, but if you contextualize it properly, he/she will understand that its not how real relationships work.
In the same way, its ok (and probably good) if your teen tries weed/alcohol under your supervision, with the proper education around it, but you aren't going to give your kid like a heroin injection just because he/she is curious. But the fact that you establish trust and educate your kid about drugs that he/she will certainly come across is the more important bit about them staying away from harder drugs. Instead of outright ban, and then kid discovering how good weed makes them feel, and then going out and trying harder drugs.
Like I shouldn't have to explain this basic concepts to people. Really makes me worry about all the parents raising their kids these days.
Well the main article is about PornHub which is a hardcore pornography site, so...
I have no problem with sex-Ed for kids
I'm sure none of my school peers thought bukkake sessions were actually normal behavior even though they would have been aware of them.
In a world where sexual assault is so common I think we need to seriously reconsider what we're consuming and what we're normalising by calling this stuff harmless.
And I don't get what you're suggesting in saying hiding stuff doesn't work. Like, I like to enjoy a bit of LSD sometimes but I definitely keep that out of reach of children.
There are some notable differences though. If I play a violent video game then no one is actually being shot.
If I watch a woman being choked and ejaculated on by 20 men calling her a worthless slut whore in a porno then I'm watching that genuinely happening.
It's more akin to letting children watch videos from actual warzones. Even as an adult I find beheading videos to be disturbing.
Also, your subsequent argument is flawed. For the vast majority of popular porn, an actress in a scene where she is "abused" is doing so consensually. Part of having healthy romantic relationships in life is being able to navigate the aspect of consent. For example, a girl may have different standards for sexual intercourse when it comes to having a one night stand, where she may engage in kink or a fetish, versus a long term relationship where she may not want to do that. If you are unable to contextualize this, this means that your parents did a poor job of educating you about sexuality, which further reinforces my argument.
This absolutely does not equate to ISIS beheading videos, where the people being beheaded are most likely not consenting to it.
If I see an actress in a movie being shot, she's not actually being shot. If I see an actress in a porn movie being choked, she's actually being choked. That's not a question of consent, it's a question of content.
But on that note, have you ever worked a shitty or degrading job and had to do things you found painful because you couldn't afford to say no? I have. It's painful to go through. I can't imagine coupling that with the complex layers of human sexuality.
You're saying it doesn't equate because of consent but that's not the aspect I was equating.
Take a look at the front page of PornHub now. There's a video on there showing a man flashing strangers. Yes, they must be actors, but it's filmed in a way that suggests they're not. There's absolutely nothing there that would promote the idea of consent in the mind of a young viewer.
Yes, maybe parents could watch those videos and explain that it's normal to fantasise and play-act about assault. But I'd hope that at the same time we, as adults, would speak with qualified therapists and try to ascertain the roots of our attraction to forcing our genitals onto unsuspecting women.
Final point: PornHub has only required verification from uploaders since relatively recently, after dozens of women took them to court for hosting their rape videos and after it was widely publicised that there was a good deal of underage rape videos on there. There are still other popular sites such as chatpic.org or videos that happily allow abuse content to circulate without any concern for consent. That's only what's on the open web.
Indeed I would not.
I think it does come down to a moral issue then, which is related both to the core messages communicated and to the audience.
In terms of violent media I can think of 3 ways of categorising it: A) media with a moral message abut the use of violence (self defence, save the innocent) B) purely whimsical (something like Doom) and C) explicitly brutal material.
Of those three only the first two have popular reach. It's easy for children to understand and it provides a structure for parents to use to educate their youngsters.
When I compare that to pornography I feel that the stuff that would fall into category C is what the norm is, what's popular on the major channels. Therfore it takes on a difference socially for me.
We need way way better education on what healthy sex looks like and why respect for women is important. But I honestly believe that we've passed a sort of critical point and do therefore support the introduction of age based restrictions.
It educates one on the depths of human depravity. It is good to ensure the little ones eventually become aware of the shit we have to deal with. Hiding it helps no one.
Do you hide it for their first few years or do you begin as soon as they can grasp the content of the videos?
Just watching, or even enacting (as in violent games), violence doesn't make them violent beings. Why would this other outlet lead to more real-world sexual assault? I understand why one might think it a priori (without having evidence either way), but we do have evidence: the reality we live in where, to my knowledge, it hasn't gotten more common despite porn having become 100x easier to get by, as well as the research on how virtual violence enactment relates to real-world violent behaviour.
There's a world of difference between stimulated violence in a Mortal Kombat movie and a video of Taliban members playing football with a human head.
In terms of increase with the availability of pornography, take a look at this chart: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191137/reported-forcible...
You can see that the number of rape reports have almost doubled since the invention of web pornography.
I think you should consider the possibility that your argument was deficient instead of making assumptions based on tropes. Communities are not monolithic and HN is less monolithic than most. For example, I differ strongly from you in not believing in censorship in the name of protecting youth, but I also differ from a lot of people here in saying that tech companies have massively failed to deal with the distribution of CSAM.
This is the worst case of cherry picking data I've seen in a long time. First, if your supposition is true then why would the number have dropped with the rise of internet pornography from the late 90s all the way through 2012? Second, what's the per-capita rate instead of absolute number? Third, what other confounding factors are there (did the reporting method stay the same)? This chart tells me nothing except that something weird happened after 2012 and that's it.
There's evidence that porn reduces the rate of sexual assaults [0].
[0] Evidence Mounts: More Porn, Less Sexual Assault. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/all-about-sex/2016...
[0] Spurious Correlations. https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
In the same way video games are very addictive because it gives you a sense of accomplishment when you have no mental tools to go out and improve your situation in life.
In the same way weed is addictive when you have no mental tools to face hardships in your life and you would rather escape into a care free state of mind.
Nothing to do with the things at hand, everything to do with mental conditioning from an early age, a.k.a upbringing, a.k.a parenting.
I'm sure some people get addicted but people with talent for it can get addicted to pretty much anything
Personal observation: most people just do fine if they are exposed to porn as kids. In fact they are more well-rounded, and intellectually mature compared to their peers who were never exposed to those things early on, just like all other topics.
It's super effective. Not perfect, but "hiding stuff from kids" has excellent ROI—relatively easy, and damn effective. Ask any parent, we do it all the time, and if it didn't work, we'd stop.
This would be far less onerous since it’s already a feature they have and it protects privacy.
But isn't that all the more reason to research this and educate people in this? So that adults can provide context and background? And to learn which kind of pornography is more dangerous than others in this? So that, with knowledge kids can be shielded from the stuff that's bad from them, and help understand the stuff that isn't?
Such a book would help? Thanks, but I'll pass.
This falls into the common refrain about "what do we do with kids who don't have responsible parents?"
I'm not sure just letting the chips fall where they may when it comes to kids who got a shit roll of the dice when it comes to parents is a great societal solution.
It's just not possible to address this issue without there being an intersection of how adults also access these adult things. A lot of other access controls in society are more reasonable than any proposal that people have come up with in this thread to restrict online pornography access to minors. This is why we place the burden on parents.
I think the danger is people revert to their intuition about what is risky, rather than defining it by an objective measure.
So ultimately, policy judgments with regards to increasing access controls are going to be dependent on intuition, one way or another, and individuals' political philosophies. I personally don't think there's any case where I think legislation like this is appropriate, though. If it were, it would be overwhelmingly obvious that it is. Clearly Utahan legislators think differently.
I’m always a little leery when someone says something like
”I personally don't think there's any case where I think legislation like this is appropriate”
It usually means either someone’s mind is closed to considering new information (I.e., they have a dogmatic position) or their mental model isn’t open to nuance (I.e., they have dichotomous thinking)
This is a contentious issue. There's no consensus on whether or not use of pornography is harmful. Suppose there was consensus. To what degree is it harmful and is it harmful enough to legislate against it?
There's a very low chance that it'd pass that threshold for me, given that I generally prefer people be allowed to make choices over what they do with their body when it doesn't meaningfully harm others.
I think a lot of the lack of consensus is due to an unclear definition of what constitutes "pornography". This makes it easy to muddle the issue.
>given that I generally prefer people be allowed to make choices over what they do with their body when it doesn't meaningfully harm others.
I generally agree when it comes to adults, but the crux of this discussion is risk to children. Do you extend this same logic to minors? If your stance is that it's up to the parents, do you think there should be safeguards for kids with "bad" parents? If so, what would that look like to you?
How do you propose we do that ethically?
There are many researches done and still being done on how addictive drugs are, or on the negative (or positive) effects of drugs. Eventhough they are both illegal and often rather dangerous. You don't need to feed a healthy 15 year/old a daily near overdose of cocaïne to learn about the effects of cocaïne on a young persons' brains.
> I feel like in our society we're always beta testing everything before researching its effects, shouldn't we research the effects of internet pornography in kids before allowing them unlimited access to it?
Problem with self selection (identify kids who decided to watch porn in the past, and compare with those that didn't) probably will not be that huge, when the people are only outraged about "kids" self selecting to watch porn.
Is that a rhethorical question? People of all ages capable of using it already have mostly unlimited access to the internet (and thus to porn). Sans parents understanding the internet more these days, and trying to set limits and failing.
Question should be whether somebody should do research before trying to limit access state/country wide in various ways. Ie. bigotry vs some informed decision making.
In my own anecdotal experience I’d say it definitely can be dangerous and depends on a variety of factors, a key one IMO being what kind of pornography we’re even talking about.
In my youth we discovered a friends dad nudie mag stash. Lots of glamour photography of topless women, some full nudity too but always pretty tame all things considered. I don’t think it had a negative effect on me. But the kind of porn available (and popular) on the internet is not that. From talking to a friends much younger brother I know they all have access to it and it’s led to some weird perceptions about what sex is, should be, etc. It’s rough, it’s often degrading, it’s almost exclusively focused on male satisfaction. It’s much more about one person’s power over another then snore any kind of intimacy.
The solution to all of this is, as always, parental and school sex education to ensure kids are learning the right things. But as a society we’re kind of terrified of that.
I highly doubt this, because it's both important and relevant. 16y/o will consume pornography. I know I did, and I was 16 way before internet. Young adults will have had exposure before engaging in actual sex. This is important because it might be problematic. Because it changes behavior. But also because the right nudges, education and context probably make the difference between this growing into problematic behavior or healthy, normal, human behavior.
I know this is a difference between Europe and the US. Where the US (or any society under pressure of religious extremists, really) tries to simply forbid such research or knowledge. And hope (and pray) that by not knowing how this is shaping generations, it might simply go away. I'm pretty sure it won't just go away by praying hard and forbidding research. I'm pretty sure academics in this area know this very well too.
Medical ethics practices in the U.S. are actually very advanced and restrictive. I cannot imagine an IRB ever approving showing minors pornography especially given that there is a reasonable expectation of harm and essentially no expectation of benefit.
Beyond how strict IRB/REB boards are in general, there are also additional federal requirements that must be satisfied when submitting a study proposal on children including surveys and not just interventions. In the US these are the pathways:
Section 404 requires that research poses no more than minimal risk. As the intervention itself is a federal crime this is not satisfied.
Section 405 allows for more than minimal risk if the anticipated benefit for the study subject justifies the risk. There is no individual benefit to the minor for watching pornography.
Section 406 requires that the risk is "commensurate with the subjects expected or actual psychological and social situations" which is hard to argue is expected when it is illegal to begin with. It also requires that the intervention is "likely to yield generalizable knowledge about the subjects’ disorder or condition which is of vital importance for the understanding or amelioration of the subjects’ disorder or condition", hard to argue that answering whether children viewing obscenity is addictive provides knowledge that is vitally important when there is no clear reason why children should be exposed to pornography.
If an IRB cannot satisfy sections 404-406 the only other way to get such a study approved is section 407 which requires direct approval from the Secretary of Health and Human Services if the "research presents a reasonable opportunity to understand, prevent, or alleviate a serious problem affecting children’s health or welfare, and, in addition, determines that the research will be conducted in accordance with sound ethical principles and that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of children and permission of their parents or guardians". It is impossible that this would be satisfied as children NOT watching pornography (the alternative treatment/status quo) is hardly a problem let alone a serious one.
This has nothing to do with religious justifications but is due to very reasonable and heightened ethics requirements when conducting research on children, be it pornography or a new medication. Canada is essentially the same and I can't speak to Europe but I imagine most countries have similar requirements regarding to needing to demonstrate likely benefit to research subjects or contribute to understanding of a disease (which is nonexistent in paediatrics).
Every researcher thinks their question is relevant and important and that's why we have these rules in place.
https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/regulations/...
Rather I think you'd take a large sample of adults at a given age range, interview them as to the earliest age they recall consuming pornography, and compare it with their life outcomes: income, alcohol addiction, educational achievement, etc. Of course you're only measuring a correlation, but at least you'll be able to get your study funded. And naturally such studies have been done, although I suspect many are agenda driven:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6571756/
https://wchh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tre.79...
(Many many more results in a casual web search)
This is why random assignment is the gold standard. With a large enough sample size random assignment will account for all confounds. Here, we can only measure likely confounds and attempt to 'account for' them with statistics. All of these introduces more noise and generally reduces the validity of the study.
In general, I dismiss all scientific studies with these looking back questionnaires as little more than well documented hunches.
I was, however, questioning whether minors consuming pornography is (always, and/or provably) bad.
No, I think there are things young minds should be shielded from some things to avoid future mental developmental consequences.
You know how movie directors make a movie and in their mind a given movie is supposed to be propaganda against something, but for people lacking this cultivated framework it's a celebration of doing the wrong thing? Take a movie about how being a gangster is bad --but for many moviegoers it's an invitation to the "glamorous" life or power, respect and success...
GP: is X actually harmful?
You: a specific subset of X is, as well as entirely unrelated topic Y, don't you think? Clearly this should be prohibited
I think he was asking (and rightly so) what the scientific evidence says, not what someone's opinion is.
turning in to a pathetic, obese lech who sits at home alone blowing another paycheck on Onlyfans, clinging to the misguided notion that women want anal on the first date?
and even worse, when real life doesn't line up with six-minute videos, the even worse outcome of woman-hating manifests
The question then becomes what should be classified as pornography. Justice Stewart famously said "I know it when I see it". My definition is close: "pornography is that which harms my soul". That means that what is porn will differ for different people and probably by age as well.
I believe they were asking for research or something measurable, not platitudes.
It creates a space for people to explore and normalise their distressing sexual interests without questioning the root causes.
Producers will often intentionally seek out vulnerable young women and groom them with promises of fame and riches, only for them to become reliant on painkillers and other drugs to cope with the reality of it.
It creates a market for the abuse of trafficking victims. Most sites don't require verification of consent and most users don't care.
It teaches men to objectify their partners and to see them as something to be shared. There is a huge market now for non consensual revenge pornography. Reddit has seen multiple subreddiys dedicated to non-consensual intimate media.
It provides a safe space for people to express racist, misogynistic and otherwise antisocial viewpoints.
PornHub in its front page today has videos of stimulated assaults and incest. For young viewers it gives them the idea that it's normal to be sexually interested in these things.
I'm not religious. I'm sex positive and believe in being open with children about the realities of life. Pornography stole years of my life, warped my views of relationships and prevented me from reflecting seriously on my own traumas.
What point are you making in relation to the topic at hand?
Are cars or guns regulated because of addiction? No. So GP compared porn to sugar, which is considered addictive and has probably more concrete evidence of self-harm than porn. I think the comparison is apt? Certainly fairer than comparing porn to driving a car or gun possession, which is sort of absurd.
But in terms of addiction potential alone Utah already has precedent in legislating for that. Example: Utah doesn't allow minors to purchase alcohol because of its addictive nature.
Some of the aspects of the porn market are not great, but they should be investigated by the relevant authorities. Hiding them from only certain people won't make them go away.
The reward of lotto tickets is a function of cost with the current approach, but that’s the wrong point to get wrapped around the axle. Consider instead that if the lotto reward is funded by taxes. The point is the risk/reward profile gets skewed.
As an aside, I’m pretty sure you can find evidence that excessive gambling is a net negative.
Lastly, I’m not sure you made any case that pornography is relatively safe.
I assume no - it's just a ban on sinful behavior.
Citation needed. Porn addiction doesn't exist [0].
[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/porn-addiction
Pornography Addiction as a unique pathology is still not recognised but the issue is still young. We can see that it's an issue in that more than half of US divorce cases mention compulsive pornography usage. [2]
You can read more about Pornography Addiction and what I mean by that over at Wikipedia. [3]
You can see support groups for self-identifying addicts in places like Reddit. [4][5]
Furthermore, mutual support groups for partners of addicts. [6]
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_sexual_behaviour_...
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10
2: https://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2010/pdf/ManningTST.pdf
3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_addiction
4: https://old.reddit.com/r/PornAddiction/
[5] Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You Should, Too. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2018...
The issue with defining it as an addiction is more of a question of separating from other compulsive issues than not recognising the compulsive issues of the thing itself.
Yes, I understand there's a difference between compulsion and addiction but I'd expect the users of Hacker News to understand enough about how the dopamine system works to see the relationship between the two.
With all due respect, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that you destroyed a large part of your life? It seems like you're blaming porn, as if everyone who is exposed to it becomes addicted. Is it like heroin? Or is it more like alcohol, where many people consume it without becoming addicted, but a few people ruin their lives over it?
It's more like a TV addiction or a video game addiction where the over consumption is a coping mechanism for other things that are wrong in your life.
Hence 'porn addiction' not really existing.
Behavioral addictions are acknowledged in DSM-5 although this does not extend to compulsive sexual behavior at this time due to insufficient (yet growing) evidence to suggest similar neurophysiological mechanisms for a clinical textbook to label it as 'addiction' [0][2].
A recent review article breaks down the differences from gambling which is considered a behavioral addiction in DSM-5[1] and had not been in prior editions.
Whether or not CSB/hypersexuality is an 'addiction' in the medical sense is controversial amongst medical experts and essentially interchangeable with what a layperson considers to be an addiction and it is therefore very reasonable especially noting the overlap of salience, conflict and relapse[1].
Although there is insufficient evidence at this time to conclude either way whether diminished satisfaction has a similar mechanism to tolerance or lack of control has a similar mechanism to withdrawal there is also no strong evidence to support the argument that CSB is not an addiction and consequently they are currently treated as separate entities.
The pertinence of this is to not conflate conflicting/controversial expert opinion with generally regarded truth and therefore stating that parent is 'wrong' for believing it is addiction when many experts share the same opinion[3].
[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/add.13297
[1] https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/11/2/article-p166....
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4677151/
[3] https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/11/2/article-p210....
Porn addiction has not been classified as an addiction in and of itself because researchers are unsure that it is its own addiction, or a subset of other sexual related addictions and disorders. So it is highly likely that porn is addictive, but medical professionals are hesitant to declare "porn addiction" as a diagnosis without seeing if it is separated from other problematic sexual behaviors.
> researchers are unsure that it is its own addiction
Yes. Indeed, this is the reason experts object to the term “porn addiction”. Some “addicts” might be consuming a lot of porn, but that doesn't mean that porn is addictive --- just like how alcoholics use bottles a lot, but bottles are not addictive.
I've been addicted to pornography myself and spoken with many men who say the same, as well as many women who have had their relationships and mental health destroyed by being partnered with people like myself.
The current state of research and recognition is not always reflective of reality. I'd hope that anyone familiar with the history of science could accept that.
I'll take peer reviewed research over anecdotal data any day of the week.
Notably this study predated the addition of compulsive sexual behavior disorder to ICD-11 and was neither validated nor accepted as the correct model (hence excessive use of 'proposed' and 'preliminary'). You may also notice there are seven separate commentaries in response to this study with an eighth by the original authors in which they acknowledge the several limitations of their proposed model[1] and make the following statement:
"Rather than present an argument against CSBD, it is our intention and belief that our model of PPMI adds needed nuance to ensure the accurate use of the CSBD diagnosis."
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1248-x
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1406-9
Opiates are insanely physically addictive and you can easily accidentally become addicted to them using them as prescribed, hence all the lawsuits.
Well lucky for you, I didn't make that claim!
I began with personal opinion and then removed everything I felt wouldn't stand to scrutiny, even if I do still believe it.
I chose not to include sources immediately because that would have required a great deal of upfront effort on my behalf, which I wasn't willing to spend since this is also a place where I come to find relaxation as well as intellectual stimulation.
If there are any particular points you're interested in discussing I'll be glad to share the basis for my belief and go into discussion.
If it's all of them then that still goes but it may be a week before I get back to you.
What about a gentle and loving uncle molesting a child in a way not much different from playful wrestling? Wrestling is fine, but we all recognize the molestation is incredibly harmful, even in this situation (because the harm isn’t the violence of it, it’s the actual sex itself).
This is just common sense. Of course sexualizing (sexually activating) children (which porn does) at a young age is harmful. It’s probably very harmful to adults too in large doses like porn addiction.
I think you have not seen the average porn online these days. Its way, way more extreme than this.
Whenever I see people argue that porn is just like sex they always turn out to be minors or young adults who have only ever experienced porn and not intimate relationships.
After being to strip clubs just twice in my life, and with both of those being very different experiences, I have to agree with you. Comparing it to porn (let alone an actual intimate relationship) is like comparing watching fast & furious movies to average driving experiences. While F&F movies are technically more wild, the real life experience of actual driving (even if it is technically waaay more mild than in the movies) is way more stressful/impactful/etc, to the point where even making the comparison feels ridiculous.
That manifested in unexpected ways for men recovering from porn-induced ED. The older men - those who hadn't grown up with high-speed internet porn - recovered significantly faster than the younger men.
My school also showed us Holocaust documentary footage around the same age. People getting shot in the head, piles and piles of dead bodies, etc. That plus gory movies like Hostel and scenes where people are chopped up and stuffed into a suitcase fucked me up WAY more than any of the porn I happened to come across at that age.
(Anyway, I'm not for the internet wide parental lock. Just noting that things are different than in the past, with ease and breadth of access.)
It has been proven, scientifically, that making a distinction between soft- and harddrugs help in fighting drug abuse, death and misery. It's, for example, what the Dutch policy is based on.
By making a clear distinction, and decriminalizing it, you can educate people on it. You can say "this is very bad, that is dangerous and that there is merely unhealthy".
I'm sure a lesson can be drawn tlfor porn there too. By criminalizing, or forbidding it all, blanket, you loose all opportunity to teach about what is normal and what isn't. You just get one big pile, where disturbing and terrible stuff is just as (in) accessible as the stuff that's fun, pleasant or even educational.
The Left has been increasingly concerned about the abusive acts becoming common in pornography and the seemingly pervasive use of underage or barely-of-age women with consent extremely sketchy or not present at all.
The Right has been increasingly concerned about how the pervasive presence of pornography encourages people to focus on that for their needs rather than pursuing real-life relationships and obsess over extreme acts that very few real partners are actually willing to do.
This is all exacerbated by internet startup tendencies, where maximizing "engagement" at all costs is the priority. It's in their incentives to maximize most of the bad effects that everyone is concerned about.
It's not clear exactly how bad everything is or that this particular thing is the right way to address it. But clearly enough people are concerned about it and aren't willing to accept endless delaying tactics around insisting that you can't do any particular thing about it because it can't be proved to be perfect.
In short…I’m not getting the kind of perspective expanding value I often find on HN from this discussion. Just a lot of back and forth from people exchanging the opinions they already had before opening the parent article.
I would instinctively agree that it's unhealthy for minors to have unchecked access to pornography but on the other hand I don't see how we could effectively address that problem societally without any kind of objective understanding of it. Has the exchange of unqualified personal opinions ever resulted in effective political policy, especially policy meant to manage a vice? That didn't work well for Prohibition or the War on Drugs.
Having said that, I am deeply suspicious of any move to "protect the children" because it's always used as a cover for a move toward authoritarianism.
Call me old fashioned.
Call me small minded.
But watching a woman getting chocked while DPed in her anus while a half dozen men ejaculate on her is not the type of extra-curricular activity [1] I want my soon to be teenaged daughters' boyfriends interested in.
Im just... overprotective I guess.
[1] If anyone calls me out for knowing what's on the front page of all of these smut sites, guess what? We all know what's on those sites!
The problem isn’t the sex. The problem is the violence.
Porn, being a fantasy, rarely shows the prep-work required to do something properly. This is what I personally worry about when it comes to setting the wrong expectations in kids who haven't had that whole "this isn't representative of real sex" context properly set, leaving them thinking they can reproduce what's happening on-screen without realizing the background work required...
Yet Shibari is viewed as an art form because it's much more stylish.
But people really into this kind of stuff are also very much into consent and safe practices. Is there really a wave of accidental chokings?
School shootings on the other hand... Maybe we should look at violent movies first?
All this content was available when I was a teenager and my friends watched it. Those who actually follow through with having group activities quickly find out that it's way different than porn and not really all that enjoyable anyway.
And the ones that do are really and truly into it. Yes it happens, it's not my kind of thing either but I know some people that love it.
What helps more is real sex ed. Explaining what sex is about, how to respect a partner, about safety. Rather than really easily circumventable bans. I got good sex ed when I was young in the Netherlands and I turned out fine and very respectful to women just like my peers despite having access to porn. The problem are religious schools not wanting to do serious sex ed. So the kids only have porn to go by.
Download the latest dating app - Feeld - and peruse for yourself what women explicitly state that they are looking for when the shame for stating so is removed/reduced.
So, assuming porn has any effect at all, it's possible highly available internet porn is decreasing the amount of sex kids are having.
The sexual violence trend on page 56 is concerning however it looks like the CDC has not been tracking that question as long either (only 4 year trend instead of 10+ like other categories).
Another concerning thing to me is the decreasing condom use, especially with current abortion trends. If we think porn drives behavior, maybe porn actors should be mandated to use condoms.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/yrbs_data-sum... [Page 14 (17 pdf)]
If this is consensual, it actually sounds rather fun. But it's interesting that the example is simply an amalgamation of relatively common things:
* Choking is a common kink * Anal sex is a common sex act * Group sex is at least a common fantasy; I don't know how common double anal penetration is outside porn though * Providing and receiving facials is also quite common as an alternative to spitting.
All of the acts are relatively innocuous on their own, but the combination is portrayed to be almost demonic :)
What is dangerous is social media, which should be banned < 21.
I'm sex positive and I believe in being open with children about the realities of life but the dangers of pornography are real.
This is a strong claim - please provide a source. I think it may be true, but is it?
And YourBrainOnPorn gathered together some of the literature about escalation: https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/nl/relevant-research-and-art...
> Pornography addiction is the popular but unscientific[5] application of an addiction model to the use of pornography.
[5] Science Stopped Believing in Porn Addiction. You Should, Too. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2018...
See this comment about the difficulty of getting pornography addiction recognised in the DSM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35790536
It's more of an issue of classifying it separately from other sexual disorders than recognising the addictive potential of pornography itself.
I myself have been addicted to pornography so I understand the reality of it intimately. I have been in groups with other men who are distraught with their lack of control. I have spoken to countless women whose relationships have been destroyed by this.
I can point you towards some large support groups online if you'd like to inform the men who are suffering that their issue is not scientifically recognised.
By the way, did you have anything to say about the other point I made? It wasn't clear which point the grandparent was finding questionable.
If someone says "water is extremely common in the solar system", I'd expect maybe two in three planets to have it. Half at minimum.
Makes me think about gambling. Most people either don't do any or do it in normal proportions. For those that do have trouble, as this argument is about addiction after all, there's a self-imposed timeout mechanism that gets centrally registered so that any gambling place will enforce the timeout on this person. I don't know how much it helps, and it also goes into having to identify users to avoid circumventing even a self-imposed safeguard, but it might be an industry to compare against and draw research from (I haven't seen it mentioned yet in the greater thread).
But just like binge-drinking and narcotics, parents and kids should have conversations and work together to build healthy ideas of sexuality. It shouldn't be a government decree thing, because that seemingly takes the responsibility off parents. But we all know a decree won't work, kids will find a way, so it will return to being the parents' problem.
I don't know how the US handles this, but online gambling is a pretty good model for this. You need to be of a certain age, verified with a government ID (here in Denmark at least) and if you have a gambling problem, you can add yourself to a list the ensures that you're blocked on all gambling sites (and casinos).