
Does Porn Hurt Children? - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/sunday-review/does-porn-hurt-children.html
======
cstross
Minor nit wrt. the first paragraph: the UK's mandatory "family-friendly
filters" only apply to consumer internet accounts. It's possible to get a BT
Infinity business account without any company letterhead or ID -- it just
costs a bit more (and a provides a better quality of service, with no net
nanny in the way because your IT department is supposed to do that for you).
And there are ISPs (Andrews and Arnold --
[http://www.aa.net.uk/](http://www.aa.net.uk/) \-- spring to mind) whose
approach to government-mandated family-friendly filtering is robust and
principled:

[http://www.aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html](http://www.aa.net.uk/kb-
broadband-realinternet.html)

(I'll probably be moving there when my BT contract is up).

(Also, Tunnelbear is my friend.)

 _However_ : regardless of whether porn harms children (disclosure: everything
I've read, from the Meese Commission report onwards, says that it doesn't),
the problem with the net.nanny filters is that they're indiscriminate and
over-block important material that is not the ostensible target of the block.
Want to find out about breast cancer? Good luck with that -- breasts are of
course _only ever_ of interest in an erotic context. Teenagers wanting to
explore non-mainstream aspects of their sexuality are SOL; LGBT content is
commonly blocked. And so on. This shouldn't be a problem for sensible parents
-- who will opt out, and discuss the issues face-to-face with their kids --
but is storing up lots of trouble down the line. Not to mention providing a
temptation for politicians who might want to follow that nice Mr Erdogan's
example and censor viewpoints hostile to them.

And meanwhile, Page Three of the Sun remains on display in every newsagent and
supermarket in the UK.

~~~
DanBC
I agree that internet filtering is a broken idea.

But there are people who think that porn does change behaviour. They might.
Have a point - hairlessness seems to have come from porn.

While it's weird that breasts are displayed in a national newspaper (not
because they're breasts, but because that paper is so judgemental about s lot
of things. See also Daily Mail "all grown up" while shreKing about
paedophiles) unclothed breats are not the "problem" that filters should be
addressing.

1) it easy to find extreme, graphic, porn for free.

2) some parents find it difficult to filter that porn.

3) we don't want health or sexuality etc information to be filtered.

These are hard problems to solve and it is immensely frustrating that
Government ignores all the expert advice they get about the difficulties. I
tend to welcome a "can do" attitude ("you're Google! You can do this!") it
should be realistic.

I have a child and I honestly have no idea how I am going to talk to them
about porn.

~~~
aaronem
> hairlessness seems to have come from porn

I've seen a lot of just-so stories on this subject. Has anyone got any
evidence to show?

~~~
DanBC
I'd like to see evidence.

"Shaved" used to be a niche fetish in porn. Now "hairy" is the niche.

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aaronem
Only if it falls on them. Stack your DVDs and magazines carefully, folks.

More substantively: When divided into "pro-impact" and "no-impact" groups for
the "improvised debate" mentioned in the article, the former camp is described
as having essentially parroted all the various arguments their elders make for
pornography being bad for teenagers, while the latter camp had no such
arguments for the position they were assigned to defend. Segal is (somewhat)
careful to avoid explicitly drawing any inferences from that, but the obvious
implication is that the "pro-impact" camp is correct ("Given that pornography
is emotionally charged, it would be shocking if it had no impact.") Leaving
aside the question of what a small cohort of randomly selected 16-to-18-year-
olds, an age not generally noted for its keen introspective abilities, can be
expected to know about much of anything, I'd be curious to find out whether
the cohort which produced this result had had anything like equal exposure to
both sides of the debate, or whether instead the "pro-impact" kids drubbed the
"no-impact" ones because only the former had been fed lines beforehand.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> "Given that pornography is emotionally charged, it would be shocking if it
> had no impact."

I realize you're not making that argument yourself, but it strikes me as
exceptionally weak. The "obvious" response is that it's been extremely
difficult to document _any_ experiences as having measurable impacts on
children (starvation is a big exception, but hopefully it's not too difficult
to see what might make that different...). So the baseline expectation should
be a fairly strong confidence that no matter what it is that you're showing
children, the effect is likely too small to measure.

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adnam
_" It turns out that the research suggesting that teenagers and pornography
are a hazardous mix is far from definitive."_

[Devil's advocate] If you had children, would you need peer-reviewed
literature to inform your decision to allow them access to pornhub? And
similarly, if you were a politician elected by people with children?

~~~
barry-cotter
No. My (currently hypothetical) children will grow up with as few barriers to
consuming unsavoury weirdness as I did. I'll be doing it deliberately though.

~~~
DanBC
So long as you're aware that some people (not me) will see that as abuse, and
will report you to child protective services.

The line "i don't have any evidence of harm" will be weak, because laws exist
to prevent children under 18 from having access to porn.

~~~
barry-cotter
Yeah, fuck 'em. If reading Stephen King and Stephen Donaldson as a teenager
didn't do me any damage porn certainly wasn't going to.

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d0ugie
Perhaps the instinct of adults to shield children from the likes of
pornography, and even the Catcher in the Rye itself, is akin to Holden
Caulfield's desire the children from becoming "phonies" like the adults who
had been exposed to whatever in life he saw as the catalyst of said phoniness.

Only now after so many years from having read the Cliffs Notes do I realize
that Holden was "catching" the children from the Rye that was pornography -
more specifically to what J. D. Salinger had in mind, bittorrent clients and
Kazaa. :)

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throw-away4
Personally I started watchin porn on the internet at age of 7 and more
actively at age of 10. I have not noticed any sign of it negatively affecting
me.

E: “If we start teaching kids about equality and respect when they are 5 or 6
years old --" And what does this BS SJW propaganda have to do with porn? It's
just a way for people to get off.

~~~
agumonkey
How is your social life ? I'd be worried for people who only see sexual
relationships, and somehow all relationships through cheaply crafted
pornography.

~~~
throw-away4
My social life is just like I'd want it to be. I got few close friends that I
can trust and that's all I asked for.

If someone only sees sexual relationships it's probably not caused by
pornography at young age but some other mental problems. You mustn't mix up
porn and relationships because frankly they don't have anything to do with
eachother.

~~~
vertex-four
And how do we give kids the mental tools to understand the difference between
porn and real relationships/sex, and at roughly what stage of development?
That's what I want to see research on, personally. Blocking porn isn't going
to help; learning how to teach kids to successfully maintain a concrete
barrier between porn and the real world is.

~~~
aaronem
Every kid (ideally) learns the difference between "real" and "not real", and,
more subtly, the difference between "valid example" and "don't trust this, it
lies" (e.g., most television, which is exaggerated for effect).

I've seen plenty of assertions that porn is a special case for which the
general lesson doesn't suffice, but never yet run across a supporting argument
which didn't reduce to "well, because genitals are involved." Which, I mean, I
understand why that would seem to an ape like a sensible thing to say, if an
ape could talk, which we can. But I'm curious to know whether anyone has a
genuinely novel argument to make in defense of the proposition.

~~~
vertex-four
I'd disagree that most people can successfully differentiate between most TV
and the real world. If they could, we wouldn't be in the mess we are where
mainstream media gets to define political discourse, as people would take what
the TV and newspapers say with a grain of salt.

In any case, porn has the issue in that it's "secret", and not discussed with
adults with experience in the subject like most things are. It's also usually
discovered well before any experiences with actual sex.

I posit that because it's not discussed with adults with a more experience
mindset, kids do not have a framework to understand how it relates to the real
world; they don't usually even know what sex in the real world _is_ from an
emotional standpoint (and usually not really from a technical standpoint
either).

That is, I posit that the way we understand things, and the way they affect
us, depends heavily on how we discuss them, and past experience. If we don't
discuss sex, and we have no past experience of sex, then how are we supposed
to process something which appears to be a depiction of sex?

~~~
aaronem
News is a special case; it implicitly claims to be factual. That it often
fails to live up to that claim doesn't put news in the same category as
entertainment programming, which makes no such claim to begin with.

> ...how are we supposed to process something which appears to be a depiction
> of sex?

I grant the result of such processing isn't likely to be all that accurate to
reality. I do _not_ grant that the result of such processing is immutable even
in the face of compelling new experience.

Between lack of information and a natural tendency to confabulate, young
children often form bizarre ideas about how copulation actually works, to the
extent they think about it at all, which they rarely do because their glands
aren't yet giving them a reason to take an interest. When, years later,
copulation becomes a pressing concern, they seek out whatever information is
available, on which basis they revise their understanding of the subject. The
result is a gradually increasing congruence between the understanding and the
reality, which in most cases culminates in a successful first sexual
experience.

Sure, in the intermediate, i.e., pre-experiential, stages of this
investigation, porn probably does give a kid some bogus ideas about how things
work. On the other hand, so could a kid's best friend who lives next door,
who's picked up a farrago of half-understood bogosity from his older brother
in college. In either case, once the matter proceeds from the theoretical
stage to the practical, everything that's gone before tends to get revised in
a hurry. I've yet to see anyone posit a way in which pornography is somehow
magically exempt from that process.

------
return0
How can there ever be evidence for physical (psychophysical) harm to children
who watch adults have sex? We 're like the only species who copulate in
private, so it seems hugely presumptuous to argue that it is harmful. I think
the greater harm is done by the continuous brainwashing with messaging that
suggests that sex is the ultimate reward and is somehow connected to your
value as a person, and is a thing you can trade.

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leaveyou
my suspicion is that governments don't really care that much about teenagers
(maybe a little about children, but parents still care more). porn is just an
addictive product like alcohol and tobacco and governments want to tax it
(more), and they can't if it's so plentiful and easily accessible on the
internet. maybe these are just first small steps towards restricting supply
and imposing taxes.

~~~
robobro
Addiction to alcohol leads to cancers and withdrawals can lead to death.
Psychologically, addiction can make folks violent or take unnecessary risks.
Cigarettes cause cancers not only in you but in those around you. They smell
to high hell too. Porn is not physically addictive and is not physically
harmful. It's just as addictive as video games, television, or any other form
of entertainment. If your argument against it's that it can help form
unnecessary habits, we may as well ban free speech so that we can block all
forms of entertainment that offend you.

~~~
meric
"Porn is not physically addictive." Oh but it can be _addictive_.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_addiction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_addiction)

~~~
aaronem
Anything that provokes a dopamine dump can be addictive. What's your point?

~~~
meric
It's disingenuous to suggest it's "not physically addictive", it makes it
sound like there's no danger of addiction, yet there is actually a significant
portion of the population who when consuming porn regularly do get addicted,
just like cigarettes.

------
morgante
Citing Betteridge's law of headlines, I'm going to say no.

Scientists are having a hard time proving that porn even has an impact, let
alone that the impact is negative. What are they even looking for? That
children will somehow start practicing BDSM after stumbling on porn? That
their "precious minds" are tainted by the Real World?

~~~
rmc
What's wrong with BDSM? You say it like "practicing BDSM" is a bad thing.

~~~
leaveyou
because BDSM hurts ? (I really don't know, I only guess that's why the OP used
BDSM as an example)

~~~
zxcdw
But is that a bad thing if it is something one enjoys?

I find it saddening that people should be ashamed of their fetishes and
whatnot, like it's a taboo. Why couldn't we just express our sexuality openly
and the way we want to without social stigma surrounding it?

If there's something I think which needs disruption in our Western societies,
it is human sexuality. What's holding us back and with what arguments?

~~~
nyrina
As long as every party is consenting and of adult human intelligence, I have
no problem with it.

If you start playing with children, real rape and animals, I'm going to be the
first person to call the police.

------
einhverfr
One of the huge problems you have in this debate is the question of cause and
effect.

Does porn cause harm? That it does is indisputable. There are many cases where
men report decreased sexual performance as a result of watching too much porn
(that is a harm particularly if it interferes with close intimate
relationships). If nothing else, that is a harm. Does it cause harm on the
balance? That, however, is unknowable.

But the harms which are readily documented don't match the harms which are
posited. The harms which are posited are also readily observed but a causal
connection is impossible to draw. Our culture has for the better part of a
century (since probably the 1920's or at least 1930's) slowly been decoupling
sexuality, marriage, and reproduction. Pornography may be seen as a
consequence of that separation, but it certainly cannot be seen as the primary
cause given the timing. Whether it furthers and further entrenches a pattern
of hedonistic sex may indeed not matter -- it is only one small piece of a
much larger cultural pattern.

So in the end, I don't know if it causes the harms portrayed. What is clear is
that a failure to deal with the context rather than the technology is a much
larger problem.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
> Does porn cause harm? That it does is indisputable.

Isn't the whole point of this thread, and the whole international debate, that
it is disputable?

~~~
aaronem
It would appear so:

> Does porn cause harm? That it does is indisputable.

> So in the end, I don't know if it causes the harms portrayed.

But, hey, what's a little internal inconsistency when you're urging everyone
forward into the past?

~~~
einhverfr
What's wrong with trying to preserve or even revive the social institutions of
the past? I am of the opinion that as energy prices continue to rise, we are
going to find that retirement with the kids comes back (this is already
starting). If that become the norm, the implications for marriage and
sexuality are quite significant.

But the point of my downvoted post is that you can't take an element of
culture and assume that it is responsible for other elements. These things
form tangled webs, not linear chains of cause and effect.

------
mariuolo
I read once that it's very difficult to assess any harm due to the near
impossibility of creating control groups (that is, people who have never been
exposed to porn).

