
What Teenagers Are Learning from Online Porn - mhb
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/magazine/teenagers-learning-online-porn-literacy-sex-education.html
======
peatfreak
Thank you for posting this. This is a topic that I've long been fascinated by
but never knew anything about. I'm way in the older end of the bell curve of
age distribution of Hacker News readers, so I've personally experienced how
pornography has evolved over the past thirty (or so) years, i.e., ever since I
became curious about sex and turned on by naked women. And without a doubt the
"hardness" and easy availability of pornography today is in a completely
different universe to the sort of pornography I was consuming when I was
thirteen years old. There's no escaping the fact that pornography must do
_something_ to children's and teenagers' minds, in terms of expectations about
sex, their own self-esteem, or whatever, and I've often wondered what these
effects are.

Moreover, and moving on, now that I'm a new father with a two-year old
daughter, I cannot even _look_ at pornography without feeling queasy. The full
nastiness of the activities, production, what obviously goes on behind the
scenes, etc, hits you in the guts and is truly sickening.

~~~
rayiner
Is there “no escaping” that conclusion? Maybe it’s wrong for the same reason
that “violent movies make kids violent” theory was wrong: people know how to
distinguish reality from fantasy/entertainment.

~~~
linopolus
> people know how to distinguish reality from fantasy/entertainment

So you think 15-year-olds who never experienced sex know how to distinguish
reality (sex with a real partner) from fantasy (porn). Where would they have
the knowledge how real sex is from?

~~~
MarkMc
From talking to their friends, or older siblings, or parents about their
experience. By watching non-pornographic films where sex scenes are more
realistic. By reading online accounts from other teenagers or adults. By
talking about it in sex ed class. By reading articles in the newspaper such as
"What Teenagers Are learning from Online Porn".

Moreover, the 15-year-old doesn't need to know what real sex is like in order
to suspect that porn is fantasy. "Snakes on a Plane" is not treated as a
documentary by people who have never travelled on a plane.

------
jurassic
I am on day 81 of a 90 day porn reset. It’s been hard at times but my real
life sexual experiences seem greatly improved and I plan to continue
abstinence from porn after the reset period ends. Seeing that I can modify
behavior by setting attainable medium term goals has made me excited to tackle
some other personal challenges too.

The site [https://www.yourbrainonporn.com](https://www.yourbrainonporn.com) is
what got me interested in trying to quit. Lots of good information there if
you are interested.

~~~
bhnmmhmd
I wonder which one is better:

1) Quit Porn 2) Stop Masturbation

Any ideas?

~~~
pornthrow2018
I've tried quitting either for years, very much addicted. Or at least a very
strong coping mechanism.

If you're anything like me, it's more or less impossible to quit one and have
the other. Watching porn will eventually lead to masturbation and vice versa.

I've recently tried taking the half-measure of exclusively audio pornography
(/r/gonewildaudio) - in an effort to see if I notice any changes in my
perception of women or anything. Been on it exclusively for a few weeks now
and I feel the same. If anything, I'm more tired since it takes much longer
without the visual stimulation.

------
krylon
My mother is a retired police officer who sometimes worked on homicide
investigations.

She once pointed out to me that the way police work is portrayed on TV series
is very different from what police officers do when investigating a homicide.
And with good reason: If TV showed an accurate version of how murders are
solved (or often enough not), it would be really, really boring to watch. On
the other hand a real-life murder investigation can be quite harrowing because
somebody actually died by the hand of another person. That element is very
hard to reproduce, which is why death is portrayed so banally in crime
programs.

The relation between porn and real-life sexuality is strikingly similar, is it
not?

~~~
dreen
Yes, and I think that is the most important point about porn: it has very
little to do with actual sex, it's not even supposed to be realistic.

The best way I've seen that explained is car chases in movies. They are made
to look exciting, but they are also very obviously unrealistic.

Once you understand this, you can look at porn as an entertainment product and
nothing more, which I think is the healthy way to approach it.

------
Santosh83
Honestly, like all addictions, it starts having an impact when you start
depending upon it for pleasure and substitute parts of your life with it.
_That_ tends to happen when your life in general is not working well, or
you're caught in situations of chronic stress and unhappiness. So the real
long term strategy here would be to elevate the general quality of our lives
and our interrelationships with each other, which would make porn pretty much
a mildly amusing curiosity at worst. But when endemic stress predominates in
society, good luck trying to prevent people from falling into one addiction or
another. It's like plugging a boat made of Swiss cheese.

~~~
dqpb
The article is not about addiction

~~~
madeofpalk
In fact, the article explicitly points out there's no scientific evidence for
"porn addiction" existing in the first place.

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, the article states that the claim advanced by one of its subjects that
there is no such evidence is a fact.

There is, however, considerable evidence that compulsive pornography use and
other compulsive sexual behaviors, at a minimum, have many addiction-like
features, though there is considerable debate about both the criteria to
consider non-substance-use compulsive behavior as addiction and how particular
compulsions fit any proposed criteria. Portraying the state of the science as
“no scientific evidence of pornography addiction” is both strictly false and
substantively misleading.

------
tabeth
The insistence of parents to control their children via censorship and other
means, as well as view them as some perfect child is more harmful than any
porn.

The fact that the article itself and comments to the article talk about kids
learning about such things _from other kids_ and websites instead of their
parents is pretty much case and point.

There is no downside to talking to your kid about sexuality and other things
at, say, 10. Common rebuttals to such an idea is usually centered around the
false notion that if _the parent_ doesn't speak of it, then the child will
never know. This couldn't be any more false.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
"Censorship" here is a big scary word for very basic common sense parenting:
recognizing that kids of different ages, personalities, and emotional maturity
are not ready to be exposed to some things.

I agree with your assessment that parents should talk to their kids more about
difficult topics at all ages, in an age-appropriate way, of course.

But you can take this too far and end up with the idea that parents should be
fine with their kids seeing any kind of sexual, violent, or other disturbing
content no matter their age or maturity level.

~~~
cloverich
But why is that too far to assume a child can be exposed to the same things as
an adult, ask the same questions, etc? There's this concept that if a child is
exposed to something too early it will corrupt their morality or sensibilities
and I just don't see it.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I'm not a child psychologist or mental health professional, so I'm not sure
what to tell you, except that it seems reasonable to me to think that just
_maybe_ exposing kids to certain types of materials before they have the
experience, emotional maturity, etc, to process those things can be incredibly
damaging. And I _really_ doubt that trying to avoid my 3 year old daughter
watching violent pornography is going to harm her, but yeah, I don't have the
data. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.

~~~
JCSato
Your 3 year old daughter is definitely the demographic in danger of her school
mates introducing her to violent pornography, yes.

------
ghostcluster
> Fewer teenagers have early sex than in the past (in a recent study, 24
> percent of American ninth graders had sex; in 1995 about 37 percent had),
> and arrests of teenagers for sexual assault are also down. But you don’t
> have to believe that porn leads to sexual assault or that it’s creating a
> generation of brutal men to wonder how it helps shape how teenagers talk and
> think about sex and, by extension, their ideas about masculinity,
> femininity, intimacy and power.

I am tired of seeing issues framed this way: "Despite the objective evidence,
my ideology drives the view that it must be making men _brutal_ and
compromising women's _power_ "

> For years, Gallop has been a one-woman laboratory witnessing how easy-to-
> access mainstream porn influences sex. Now in her 50s, she has spent more
> than a decade dating 20-something men. She finds them through “cougar”
> dating sites — where older women connect with younger men — and her main
> criterion is that they are “nice.” Even so, she told me, during sex with
> these significantly younger nice men, she repeatedly encounters porn memes:
> facials, “jackhammering” intercourse, more frequent requests for anal sex
> and men who seem less focused on female orgasms than men were when she was
> younger. Gallop takes it upon herself to “re-educate,” as she half-jokingly
> puts it, men raised on porn.

This article seems more like activism than inquiry to me. The foot feels
heavily on the scale. I believe the topic deserves better than this.

~~~
tzahola
"I'm not saying that {insert hyperbole here}, but you might wonder how {insert
tangentially related topic here}"

My favorite kind of reasoning!

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Except that's not the reasoning at all. They're saying:

"You might think that A would cause B, but the data doesn't show that.
However, it's reasonable to ask if A does have any effects other than B."

~~~
tzahola
Let me rephrase it for you:

"You might think that {something} would cause {the outcome that fits my, and
the audience's agenda/preconceptions}, but the data doesn't show that.
However, it's reasonable to ask if there's _something_ going on, right? Also,
feel free to quote the first sentence in clickbaity titles and social media
posts! If you repeat it enough times, it will actually become truth :)"

------
mattbierner
I agree with the general sentiment but honestly this is just the worst kind of
article. It’s superficial and yet also felt emotionally exploitative

Sorry but I guess I’m annoyed because I spent a lot of time working through
this specific topic recently and had to wrestle with very some interesting
questions:

What is real and what is fake? Why did we create these fantasies and what
draws us to them? How much of our culture is fantasy? What if the fake is more
“real” than the real? What does that imply for the future? How does
pornography hold up a mirror that reflects us? Why is America so scared of
reality?

But instead all the article gives us is: porn kills intimacy and reinforces
gender roles, plus some weird obsession with facials.

------
peterchon
I think this is an important topic for teens to understand and be able to
openly talk about with their parents or other trusting grownups.

As grownups, I think we start to ignore hoping that kids will be able to
figure out on their own without realizing what lasting effect it will have on
their future relationship

------
neutronicus
The impression I've gotten is actually that women's demand for rough sex (and
"kink" more generally) outstrips the number of men that enjoy it. I don't know
to what degree it's related to porn, but ... if you're worried that porn is
making _men_ too into choking for the real-world sexual climate, I don't think
that's true.

------
aidenn0
I told my wife that our 3rd grader had most likely seen porn at school. It
turns out I was right. She had several friends in the 5th grade, and about 90%
of the fifth graders have smart phones.

My math was simple: if you give 10 twelve-year-olds unfettered internet
access, at least one of them will find porn, and that one will show it to
their friends. If any of them have an older sibling, the odds just go up.

~~~
sexoffender
This is a great reason to avoid giving smartphones to kids, and a big reason
we haven't. It's important for them to not have to deal with things they
aren't mentally, physically, or emotionally ready for yet. They need to be
kids right now.

------
lloydde
> The clips tend to be short, low on production value, free and, though
> Pornhub

True as opened with “tend to be” but such a poor description of Pornhub in an
article meant to help parents understand pornography. For example, the company
behind Pornhub owns many production companies and paid sites. High production
value clips promote those sites as do does the advertising.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Thylmann](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Thylmann)

[http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html](http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html)

------
sexoffender
My oldest son recently developed a porn habit in secret, and the things we saw
in his search history showed a clear progression from googling "boobs" and
"nudity" to "pissing" and "bondage".

Pornography isn't even close to what it was 30 years ago when you for the most
part only saw it in nudie mags that your dad had (or friend had who stole it
from his dad). Today, kids have easy access to a wealth of horrifying and
bastardized hard-core pornography.

But not only that, the ads and search results and images that show up for the
more innocent things will _lead them_ to the more awful things, because
they're just readily visible and accessible right there.

To be honest the only solution we have found is twofold: to change our wifi
password to disable internet on all devices (he was sneaking his Nintendo 3DS
into the bathroom for 2 months to look at porn on it) and to proactively start
teaching them that life is more than a constant quest for more and more
intense pleasure, and that if you allow yourself to give into that base
mentality, you are throwing away a good portion of your future that could be
filled with meaningful real relationships and legitimately joyful times, in
exchange for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain until you die.

~~~
meowface
Why do you think you need to prevent your son from watching porn, especially
to the point that you need to completely remove his access to the Internet?

~~~
sexoffender
Once he started doing it, everything in his life declined. He stopped having
healthy relationships with his siblings and his friends at school. He started
to be much more angry and even sometimes violent, and when we examine the
situations in detail, we see that none of it is justified, and he's always the
one saying everyone is out to get him when he is actually the one doing wrong.
He's become a lot more arrogant and a lot more reserved at school and
obnoxious at home. His grades at school declined sharply. He's developing a
narcissistic personality, and won't participate in things that he doesn't
personally see any value or benefit in, even when everyone around him tries to
convince him it's a good or worthwhile activity. Overall he's declining in
mental and emotional health.

~~~
Spellman
First, how are you sure it's correlation and not causation? Perhaps he's being
driven to porn/developing the habit as self-medication?

Also, as to your previous point that it will lead to "harder" stuff, a recent
study says no. Yes, there will be more opportunity and exploration of the
topic, but that's something that will happen eventually to all individuals. It
isn't studied very well, but at least this initial one says we don't naturally
become more tolerant and require "harder" pornography over time.
[https://www.lehmiller.com/blog/2018/2/5/can-you-build-up-
a-t...](https://www.lehmiller.com/blog/2018/2/5/can-you-build-up-a-tolerance-
to-porn)

~~~
sexoffender
There is more to it, and it's hard to pinpoint cause and effect. He did have
issues that existed before the pornography habit. But they worsened
significantly since the month he started looking at pornography regularly. I
do believe that his pornography habit has lowered his mental and emotional
intelligence by a noticeable factor. I also look back at when I was his same
age, and see my own struggles as very similar to his. So I could be mistaken
with some of the internal presumptions I've made about him, but the external
ones match up almost exactly.

~~~
Spellman
OK, fair enough. Hope you guys figure out an appropriate intervention plan
then. Is going to a therapist on the table? Sounds like there's something
deeper going on and just cutting off the porn doesn't usually solve it in my
experience.

------
reader5000
What teenagers are learning from online porn is simply that the behavior of
"shutting myself alone in my room with a computer" leads to (simulated) sexual
satisfaction. This is in contrast to every generation before them which
learned that the behavior of "being sociable / gaining status in society"
leads to (non-simulated) sexual satisfaction. So a million young people
learning to shut themselves away from the outside world, I wonder how that's
going to work out for the West? I say West, because China bans porn.

------
kazinator
> _Like the GIF he saw of a man pushing a woman against a wall with a girl
> commenting: “I want a guy like this.”_

How can you be sure it was a girl commenting? An account with a girly name was
commenting.

------
smalf
Anyone knows where I could find info about the curriculum?

------
mandazi
The availability and ease for this type of content is scary especially when
children are more connected than ever. Pornography kills love (Edit:
[https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-kills-
love/](https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-kills-love/)). Love is extremely
important for human beings and civilizations. It drives art, philosophy,
faith, religion, etc. It is love that produced great works throughout history.

I read some where there was going to be a TLD for porn (.xxx I think). I wish
they did that and all the porn content was only on that TLD. Then browsers can
easily block all porn for underage viewers. I know I would do that for my
children until they are adults and I believe they can make their own
decisions. There is a level of maturity and education one needs before exposed
to this type of content.

Personally I find it repulsive and I try my best to avoid it as best as
possible. Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.

~~~
Tech-Noir
> I read some where there was going to be a TLD for porn (.xxx I think).

There were ideas about that for years, maybe even in the late 1990s, and
eventually about 5-10 years ago it was set up.

Ironically, many in the "porn industry" were strongly against it; I think more
to do with the company running it, though, than the idea of being confined to
an online ghetto.

Most porn still remains on .com or on country TLDs and few people have
probably even heard of .xxx, let alone visited a .xxx site. Now there are
hundreds of new general TLDs, several more are porn related (.sexy, .porn)
that basically nobody uses.

> Sadly it creeps into TV shows and movies nowadays.

I'm not a fan of depictions of simulated sex on TV/movies, since it's often
for shock/viewing figures and/or holds up the plot, but I think irresponsible
gun usage, torture/violence and military propaganda, which occur far more
often than sexual content in TV and movies, are much worse for kids in
particular to be exposed to.

~~~
gkya
I would actually prefer a world where the TLD in a domain name had actual
semantical value, but except .gov, .edu and a couple others that opportunity
is lost.

------
temp-dude-87844
Most of this resonates. Just as the article points out, porn is one of the
most accessible ways of getting mostly servicable, if greatly skewed sex
education, in the sense of being able to consume it from the privacy of your
own home, away from adults and peers, and be exposed to a variety of actual
situations that depict sex acts. This makes abstract lessons about condoms and
bananas -- but maybe not periods and pregnancy -- more concrete, especially as
you're at the age when you're trying to figure out what you want emotionally.
And that's even if you got a school lesson about condoms and bananas at all.

As for just how skewed porn is, and how much it influences tastes and
posturing of its impressionable consumers, is something worthy of more study.
While one must be careful to suggest that adult human societies are still
shaped by primitive patterns descendant from ancient, hypercompetitive eras
lest we erase many years of social progress, societies of adolescents --
especially captive environments like school, camp, and social networks -- show
less nuance, and more base urges that are products of either nature or
nurture.

Notably, school is a captive social environment in which social competition
can develop, and the proliferation of social networks extends this captive
environment outside of school hours and into the middle of the night. The
youth experience largely consists of top-down busywork about school-selected
abstract topics vaguely about adult life, while being exposed to a shifting
social landscape in which real events happen with real impact on their
immediate surroundings. Sex is one such event, and everyone's still figuring
things out.

When you're not actually sure what you want, because lots of things appeal in
theory, but you're not sure if that appeal will translate into practice, a
confident partner is compelling in ways that go beyond their gratifying
presence in porn. They can be your guide and encourage you to engage in the
things you want to do, while easing around the ones you don't. Older,
attractive, sociable people, who often have more sexual experience (by virtue
of their attributes) can project this confidence and match younger partners,
despite in many places laws against the contrary. If the relationship remains
mutually beneficial, the resulting experiences will allow the bottom partner
to gain confidence of their own to apply with future partners, and enables
them to explore their preferences.

Meanwhile, adolescents seeking close-in-age partners are faced with a
conundrum: project confidence, or admit that they're unsure? The latter, for
many, is untenable. A tactic that has developed to project carefree
nonchalance instead, to mask deeper conflicts with plausible deniability and a
dose of youth-transcending nihilism. This has made "chill" a socially
acceptable byword for winging it. This is the territory of mindgames, of
unspoken consent (or lack thereof), and a lowkey desire to impress the other
-- behaviors that many will retain into adulthood and create more problems
then.

It's imperfect choices all around: either have real experience from prior
encounters to project confidence, lean on porn and hearsay muster up
artificial know-how, engage in a vague slow-motion game where one effectively
becomes a recipient to a series of events and one-thing-led-to-anothers, or
admit all of this is making your head swirl but watch as the person you like
makes headway with someone who was sure a few weeks later?

It always boils down to information and communication. Porn is information
where alternatives are not nearly as illustrative, and it enables a vocabulary
of communication in a world where talk with adults is a both-ways taboo, talk
with peers is a social risk, so most communication isn't verbal. Porn enables
vernacular literacy in these matters, while other instruments don't. Of
course, it's produced for a different audience, but porn and other artifacts
of intimacy produced for (and by) a more relatable audience is illegal, so
it's the next best thing.

------
artur_makly
moderators please make an exception and unflag this. its a very important
social topic to discuss here.

------
jlebrech
that it takes 10 minutes to get a plumber round?

~~~
youdontknowtho
Comedy gold. Nice.

------
BlancheDavid
Why is it so common to see people draw parallels from porn to behavior, but
then not do the same for other form of video. It was only ~20 years ago that
video nasty was a major concern and people thought that TV and film was a
major caused for crime and violence, only to be categorized later as mostly
pseudo science and moral hysteria.

If porn teaches kids about masculinity and femininity, should we not claim the
same thing about romantic drama or comedies? What make porn so special that
teenagers can't determine what is real or false, but a romantic drama where
every character has exaggerated gender behavior and roles is perfectly clear
that it is fake and where naturally no teenager will be effected?

