But is pornography dangerous for minors? Has it been researched? What "dangers" are there? Do these apply to all age groups of "minors"?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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