IMHO it's not porn that is the problem, it's parents.
What minors are exposed to, and educated about, is the parents primary responsibility to deal with.
Minors will somehow get access to porn and nudies, age verification will not stop them.
What minors are exposed to, and educated about, is the parents primary responsibility to deal with.
Minors will somehow get access to porn and nudies, age verification will not stop them.
Yes and no. We're sharing this responsibility in half with the government, due to public education requirement.
The moment a kid starts attending an educational institution - which can be as early as 1yo (daycare) or 3 yo(kindergarten), and usually no later than 7yo (where mandatory education usually kicks in), the parents lose control over what their kids "are exposed to, and educated about". But the problem isn't the educational institutions either (though they sometimes contribute).
The problem is other kids.
Minors will get access to porn and nudes in their teenage years, and there's fuck parents and teachers can do about it. There's always going to be a kid that somehow gets their hand on this stuff and bring it to the school. It takes just one for it to spread like wildfire.
To those who think a good parent should be able to protect their teens from exposure to porn: first demonstrate how one can stop a preschooler from contracting acute Paw Patrol or Frozen infection within first two weeks of kindergarten, and then we can talk.
And yes extreme types were already thing then too. Bukkake, gangbangs, all my friends in school saw these things. I'm pretty sure most of them have never done those practices in their lives. They're all pretty boring family men now. And they are respectful to women. Society is doing fine.
Good parenting combined with societal guardrails lead to the best chance outcomes.
The ISP verifies your age when you buy internet access. The clerk verifies your age when you buy wine.
The clerk doesn't follow you home and make sure you don't give your kid wine. And, symmetrically, the ISP doesn't make sure you don't allow your kids access to porn. Once the transaction is done, it's in the parent's hands.
The difference is that parent's aren't very keen to give their kids alcohol... usually. Although it is explicitly legal in a lot of places. But for the internet, they are very keen so it's normalized and nobody cares.
I see similar arguments for food, drugs, safety, social media, etc. Patents aren’t super heros with infinite time to purify across all these dimensions.