"No porn."
Thanks mom!
I'm mortified for the kid.
Thanks mom!
I'm mortified for the kid.
Our society is set up in such a way that porn is one of the few "safe" ways for young people to figure their junk out. Heaven help us if they do censor the net.
He probably thought he'd get to play Angry Birds under his superman blanket. (Remember reading comics with a flashlight?) Instead he got an obligation and an emasculating letter. "Don't say anything you wouldn't say in public" probably would have sufficed. He can't even throw it under a bus for what it represents, because it isn't his. It's hers, and she's loaned it to him... :\
I disagree with this. By virtue of the market, most porn online is targeted towards men. The majority of pornography thus fulfils masculine desires, which is not necessarily what women want.
One Swedish study (abstract here[1], but you can find the stats I use cited elsewhere in full) of 4,000 high school students found that a much larger proportion of girls described pornography as "sexually off-putting" (it is worth noting that Sweden has an extremely progressive sex education policy in its schools). Pornography re-enforces masculine stereotypes - someone viewing pornography at a young age may take that to be 'how it is done', rather than illustrating a fantasy.
Now that doesn't mean there isn't healthy pornography: as other people have pointed out, there's something for everyone when it comes to porn online. But a 13 year old boy (or girl) looking for porn is almost certainly going to start at the lowest common denominator, and that's porn that's often denigrating to women at best.
Before I'm flamed into oblivion, I am not against pornography: I am merely suggesting that typical porn - the kind that you may run across as a teenager, on the more accessible sites - is not "one of the few 'safe' ways for young people to figure their junk out".
This is why I think if you are a parent it is important not to ban, or discourage, your children from watching pornography, but to make sure they understand that porn fundamentally is about fulfilling fantasies, and is not always an accurate portrayal of reality. Those first encountering porn may not necessarily be aware of that.
[1]: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197110...
By "safe" I mean safer than the alternatives (public indecency, teen pregnancy, unsafe or exploitive real-life situations, etc, etc), not categorically "best," or even necessarily useful for everyone. If girls are statistically put off by porn, that's OK. I want it to be OK to seek what feels right for me too, and I'm glad I was able to at a time when I was high on testosterone; the difference between a sex offender and a nice normal guy can sometimes just be whether or not a person has a "safe" outlet.
Video games provide stress relief and can be seen similarly (girls might not play the same types of video games, even though most FPS games are some of the most common), but as long as people can distinguish fantasy from reality, they can be healthy outlets. Self-moderation is also a learned skill.
I'm not trying to be prescriptive, I just hate to see a nifty tech "gift" become a point of shame (emasculation). As jlgreco said, it's biologically hardwired. IMHO, he's probably still going to look for porn, only now he may feel like it's "bad"... That he's bad. Prohibition is a land-mine of social and psychological problems. Just look at catholic priests.
I agree with your conclusion.
It could go either way I think, but it is a very polarising thing to impose on a young adult.
I'm not exactly an expert at either porn or in-the-flesh sex but... I've always been given to understand that they are quite different.
Both, if seeked out by the teenager, are a subset of a perfectly healthy sex-education (much more so than the very politically correct discourse that passes for sex-ed in the US these days).
The answer is intuition, and even teenagers have intuition.
That's a very narrow perspective. I can honestly say I have never felt like a porn actor (or director) in the bedroom because I watched porn as a teenager (to which I also attribute my ability to draw, FWIW...).
If there were magically a safe partner for everyone at all times, regardless or age or circumstance, I have no doubt there would be less porn. But we don't live in one of those worlds, we live in an emotionally-wrought, often isolating one. Teenagers feel alone, yet it's also a time when the instincts and cravings are the strongest, the most out of control, and the least satiable. The type of flirting and friendships I can take for granted, are not even on the table for them. Teenagers are still cutting their teeth on their communication skills. They don't know how to cope with a lot of things, one being the deeply-rooted drive to procreate. Pursuing those feelings safely can be difficult. Masturbation is one way for them to explore their feelings in the _safety_ of their own room - to take control of their feelings - without resorting to extremely poor decisions (unwanted pregnancies, unhealthy relationships, getting tattoos that claim they will love someone forever when all they really wanted was to see them naked...). Would a real partner be better? Perhaps. Is that always the best option? No, and I think it's harmful to act as though it were. Everyone has genitals and the feelings that go with them, but for better or worse, society pretends young people don't. For lack of a better term, they are screwed; they are on their own: they get to figure things out, hopefully without ruining their life in other ways.
Some forms of experimentation are more dangerous than others, and watching porn is one of the least dangerous options available to young people to explore their feelings. Ignoring that (prohibition, for example) won't help. Assuming we emphasize the difference between fantasy and reality, porn can serve a person well over the years. In that spirit, I would much rather see a "this film is fantasy, and does not necessarily reflect a healthy realtionship" warning on porn, rather than all those copyright threats... It's pretty obvious what our priorities are.
"You must not use this phone to falsely identify yourself as an 18 year old."
I had a lot of freedom, and I made some mistakes, but overall it worked out.