Multiple countries are trying to force porn sites to have an efficient age verification. With frightening numbers like half of 12 year old boys go monthly to porn sites.
Sure for an adult who remember the time where at best one kid would have brought a magazine to school, it feels concerning. However, it’s been easily 20 years that every household has high speed internet which is full of porn. So the kids under 30 (let’s call them Gen-Z) had a massive access to porn while growing up.
Is there any “sociologicial” studies about how it impacted these young adults ? Are they sexually more fucked-up than the millennials ?
The only people this effects is people who don’t know how to operate a torrent client or have a friend that does, e.g the old people that dream up these ineffectual laws. They want to put the genie back in the bottle by making it someone else’s problem and it will fail like the war on drugs has utterly failed.
Meanwhile, back in reality, developing normal sexual relationships is much more complicated than abstaining from porn. It comes from a cohesive society that values education, healthcare, community and compassion for others. How are we still trying to make abstinence only methods work despite their horrible track record? Our politicial class are mendacious morons from a bygone era.
Here’s a long-form interview between a sex researcher and a urologist (MD) about how porn really effects us; both on an individual level; and in aggregate as a society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEqe5dHuQYE
TLDR: Porn is a bit of an over-stimulation on the brain, but the scale of the effect is similar to caffeine or nicotine. Far less impactful than that of any hard drug like cocaine or heroine. And unlike a chemical stimulant, it’s impossible to overdoes. Some people have excessive reactions to watching porn and having it readily available, so things like porn addiction are real and shouldn’t be dismissed. But the frequency of this is low (far lower than nicotine, gambling, or alcohol as comparison points) and the severity of such addictions are often minor (addicts skip other social interactions, but are unlikely to go into debt or lose jobs except in the most extreme cases).
There is no strong evidence that early exposure to porn via the internet has significant adverse effects. There are worse effects from exposure to violent content (including violent porn) than pornography in general.
This makes sense as from an evolutionary standpoint seeing other naked humans is expected. It’s only recently (in evolutionary time frames) that we’d not expect children to see other naked humans regularly or be unexposed to sex at all until an adult age. From a biological standpoint it makes perfect sense that our brain can handle seeing other people engaged in sexual activity.
I’m curious if you’ve seen this TED talk and what you think of it. It’s an interesting argument that while our brains can handle porn, excessive use can cause behavioral changes such as preferring porn over a real partner.
I’ve not seen it before, I’ll check it out. Thanks!
After watching, I think this largely lines up with the impact of porn addiction being real and impactful, which I certainly don’t deny.
Likely the different emphasis is on the prevalence of internet porn addiction. He claims it’s more likely than gambling or other internet-related addictions; I wonder if that is consensus or if it’s maybe changed over time? From a societal level, I’m sure there’s more porn addiction than in the past (as he notes the availability, quality, and variety are significantly different than before the internet). But his talk implies a much larger scale than I would accept without validating the sources. From what I’m familiar with porn addiction isn’t much more or less prevalent than other internet related ones. Here’s one data point putting “cybersex” close to game addiction, but well below social media and smartphone: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35150965/ similar numbers here: https://virtual-addiction.com/technology-addiction-statistics-2024/ “Between 7 and 10% of people who watch online porn are addicted to it.”
Considering the data I’m familiar with: majority of people (in western societies) aren’t suffering the side effects of internet porn addiction and are still able to pursue typical life goals (finding a partner, marriage, children, etc). While we have seen some of these figures declining (marriage and having children). Or, these trends have been in place since before high speed internet (declining birthrates stem from the 60s in the US: https://datacommons.org/explore#q=birth+rate ). Marriage rates similarly declined well before the internet (and have stabilized in the past decade or so): https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/loo-marriage-rate-US-geographic-variation-2022-fp-23-23.html
Specifically he mentions ED as a kind of “ultimate” symptom… unfortunately I don’t see a good timeseries for ED prevalence; even across studies the estimates vary quite a bit, so I’m not sure there’s a standard measurement with a long enough history to use… that’d be an interesting metric to consider if it were available though!
I’d have to go back and check what other studies on porn use used for control groups; as this talk states “there is no control group”… I think that is inaccurate. Even if control groups aren’t available, we can still measure impacts without a control group if we can reliably track quantity in some manner. It need not be just abstinence versus usage to conduct a valid study; we can compare high, medium, and low volumes of usage. We know the volumes at which over consumption of water is harmful even though there are no people who abstain from it!
Thanks again for linking; it had a few other references & citations I’ll continue to pursue. I appreciate the different perspective on the topic!
Gen Z here. Watched quite a lot of gay porn since around age 11.5-12. The only thing I remember confusing me was why penises “looked like that”. In the sense, that they had a pink head, had a weird pyramid like spongy rubber-ey top and why they were so big.
Turns out, I was looking at cut cocks, and our school had removed all sex ed. The new syllabus just taught, “penis go in vagina -> woohooo congratulations -> babyyyyy”. Oh also, on an unrelated note, our textbooks also said that cell phones make people selfish and autistic lmao (Science 2 textbook, SSC Maharashtra, 2020).
Anyway, I don’t prefer video porn anymore cuz I find it very shallow. It’s good, but feels like eating candy. Written smut on the other hand has a lot more depth. It’s like eating a super rich fruit salad.
So do I think porn negatively affected me? I don’t think so.
Anyway, I don’t prefer video porn anymore cuz I find it very shallow. It’s good, but feels like eating candy. Written smut on the other hand has a lot more depth. It’s like eating a super rich fruit salad.
very well said, very well indeed
They have significantly less sex than previous generations did at comparable ages. It’s been well established by multiple sources at this point, although I don’t think causality is understood yet so it could be unrelated, or more likely porn accessibility is only one factor in the decline.
Shame really.
Sex is so much fun, and being open and comfortable with it and kink in general is incredibly freeing.
It’s a form of play that doesn’t get treated like a form of play by society.
Are you talking about America or Europe? In America, sex is for the devil and casual sex sends you straight to the 9th circle. But in seriousness, youre right. Much of America is taught abstinence and shame, so its not as free and open as I wish it would be.
We may have been taught abstinence and shame, but, that didn’t stop us from having sex.
What it did do was make us stupid and have unprotected sex, which lead to all sorts of harm, simply because we didn’t know better.
I mean, kinda does. The grand majority of people are largely unfamiliar and uncomfortable with sex or sex-adjacent play as a casual thing.
Your link doesn’t address my assertion?
Better sex ed reduces teen births. I’m not refuting that or even referring to that.
I mean, kinda does. The grand majority of people are largely unfamiliar and uncomfortable with sex or sex-adjacent play as a casual thing.
Emphasis mine. It does prevent ^* us from having sex, just at a more abstract level. Only a subset of society is comfortable with sex and sex adjacent activities as a form of casual play.
^* Prevent, not stop. Words are important…
Sorry. Wrong pub med out of the hundreds of studies on what kind of sex ed works. Here. Have some more.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3194801/
https://news.uga.edu/abstinence-only-sex-education-study/
https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/sex-education
I’m not sure how you can do any kind of search on this and conclude that abstinence-only sex ed works. It doesn’t. We know that.
We know that kids are going to fuck. The only real difference is if they’re comfortable telling adults when something goes wrong; and also know if something is going wrong.
Shame and guilt doesn’t stop behavior- it causes people to hide it.
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I have a few friends that were exposed at like 7 and have CSAM floating around of them, but that’s more so ADULTS causing the harm and not a natural cause of it being easy to find. Other than that, is say almost no damage.
I would say living in Florida where education is piss poor, there should be more sex ed about how to stay safe. Most harm could have been EASILY prevented by having a conversation young.
instead we tiptoe around the subject where you draw a few diagrams of the vagina and watch a birthing video. that was ALL of my sex ed in Florida.Not all parents talk about it (I won’t go into details about my parents) and it should be a requirement to keep people educated and safe. Most men know nothing about women’s bodies and it’s sad to see it never be talked about.
This TED talk discusses basically that topic
Also if you think you are alone in having problems with pornography, Terry Crews admitted it almost destroyed his marriage
I struggled with it for years and finally was able to quit watching it. I think porn is fine for most people and masterbation is normal, but I personally had problems controlling myself. I still wank it, but do so to my own imagination.
Same way as usual, pearl-clutchers latch onto it as a way to incite moral panic.
Generations before had the same access, no?
Im a late millennial and yes, it was easily accessible and available
That’s hardly a generation before
Gen Y by definition is the generation before gen Z…
The fuck are you on about
Yeah but there isn’t much difference there
What a bizarre sub-thread.
OC says generations (plural) before had the same access as Gen Z. Presuming that to mean as kids, that’s clearly not true.
Someone steps in to write that people on the border of Gen Z and the generation (singular) before it had similar access. Useful to learn, but not groundbreaking.
Commenter points out that that’s not very different and gets insulted.
When young? No. Unless you count the Sears catalog.
Mom: Timmy, why is the entire bathing suit section missing again???
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Idk man I’m too mucy of a whimp
Access to porn when a person is at a stage of development where they’re exploring sexuality on their own anyway is not a problem. That age varies for each person because puberty varies for each person. And because some people are more or less interested in sex than others naturally.
Making adolescents fend for themselves with no education or support and shaming them for the physical changes and impulses that all humans go through and have always gone through forever when they reach puberty is a problem.
Porn has always existed and will always exist. Adolescents masturbate themselves and fuck each other, always have, and always will. The only choice we have in the matter is whether we choose teach them to be safe, responsible, and respectful with their and others’ sexuality or we choose to abuse them by instilling fear, guilt, and aggression into them about sex.
Your post is an example of the latter. Change your fucking perspective.
Your comment gave me an idea:
Can you imagine if a government, instead of mandating the stupid age verification system, would not bar “minors” from accessing the sites. But rather they would force the sites to implement a “tutorial on sex, sexuality and consent”, similar to the shitty corpo-mandated tutorials on topics like harassment, racism, security and GDPR. Heck, doesn’t even have to be as lengthy every time. Just simply play back a 30 second segment when opening the website and then have the individual answer a set of multiple choice questions to verify they have paid attention.
The government could sell it as “Teach the Children!” instead of “Protect the Children”. But here’s the biggest benefit of the former compared to the latter:
- It teaches children
- It’d also teach adults indiscriminately, who then may or may not really learn something (“Wait what? No really means no? I have a clitoris? How is babby formed?”
- It’d also eschew implementation of e-id and state monitoring
I can report having access to porn did not cause me harm; if anything it made me calmer and less agitated.
I think that the difficult thing about sexuality is that it’s illegal. Having essential and normal parts of yourself criminalized is the problem and causes all bad side-effects. Having easy access to porn breaks that barrier and allows people to accept themselves.
I’m not gen-z nor against porn broadly speaking but I’m in the 5% of people who develop addiction/compulsion to it and it completely destroyed my sex drive to the point that I’d rather watch porn than have sex. Personally I don’t mind but it makes having a romantic relationship quite difficult and it has now cost me two of them.
I don’t feel like early access to it is the problem here however. It’s excessive consuption thorought my entire life.
10 days clean now. Wish me luck.
Good luck!
Good luck!
They probably never had to beat it to scrambled softcore cable porn. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide if that’s better, worse, or neutral.
I feel so seen. :D
Also, username checks out!
Early access to porn is nowhere near a new thing. As a millennial, I was exposed to sexual content at a very young age thanks to the internet being largely unregulated. I turned out fine. GenZ and Gen Alpha will be fine too.
I’m not sure about gen z, but I worry about gen alpha. My wife works in a hospital for behavioral health and she sees an alarming number of kids (as young as 6 or 7) who are acting out sexually, and most of them consume a considerable amount of online porn. Many of them are there because they’ve sexually abused a sibling.
This is anecdotal, and of course in a behavioral health hospital my wife is going to see only the children who are acting out the most, and those children are by no means representative of the average child. It is also likely that some children have always acted out sexually, for various reasons, long before Internet porn. But the number of children they see for sexual predation is very concerning.
Isn’t a child acting sexually often a sign they were sexually abused? Maybe the problem isn’t gen alpha watching porn, but either more sexual abuse by their parents, or simply more awareness. Sometimes a problem appears new/rising when it was always there, just invisible.
Yes. A child acting sexually is a red flag, kind a weird that a health professional didn’t pick it up and just assumed a whole generation …
Wait, was the story fake? Kmao
I never said that the health professionals didn’t consider the possibility that these children were themselves sexually abused. Of course they did. I never said that the health professionals asked only about porn consumption but not about past sexual abuse. They make both inquiries. I wasn’t even necessarily making a causal argument, only pointing out the strong correlation. I can’t tell you, because I don’t know, how many of the children who consume pornography have also been sexually abused. I don’t have access to that information, I don’t work there. All I do know is that significant porn consumption (including kids being caught watching porn in school) is very common among these kids.
It’s not fake, I’m telling you what I know, you can choose to believe it or not, I don’t give a shit.
Edit: I would also like to point out that sexual abuse often involves porn. A sexual abuser will often use porn as a way to groom a child for sexual abuse. The two things are not mutually exclusive, the porn consumption can very much be a part of the sexual abuse.
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Isn’t a child acting sexually often a sign they were sexually abused? Maybe the problem isn’t gen alpha watching porn, but either more sexual abuse by their parents
The two things are not mutually exclusive. One of the ways a parent can sexually abuse a child is showing them porn. Porn is often involved in child sexual abuse.
