# Does it harm children to watch pornography? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 25, 2016, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688 "2016-05-25T19:34:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Me\_Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Me\_Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Me_Billy)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/21 "2016-05-25T22:53:01Z")
Actually if it messes up their sex lives, that could solve the over population problem - maybe some good will come from all this? ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2016, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/22 "2016-05-25T23:17:52Z")
The OP is looking for opinions so this is moved to IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/23 "2016-05-26T00:23:50Z")
I wonder what it does to pressure kids that don’t feel ready to have sex. I know when I was a teen the pressure was intense and that was without a world of porn at your finger tips making it seem like the whole world but you was doing it all the time. I honestly don’t know how kids navigate it. ---
**Author:** ![somepumpkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7feea3/32.png) [@somepumpkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/somepumpkin)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/24 "2016-05-26T01:55:44Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Yes, it is wrong. It gives them messed up views on sex and relationships. Simply put, this is it. If all they were looking at was PIV or naked girls, it may not be as big a deal. But they really don’t need to be introduced to all the weird shit out there on the internet. Hell, some of it’s inappropriate for ME to see, and i’m 50. ---
**Author:** ![Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b2d939/32.png) [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/25 "2016-05-26T02:12:53Z")
So, is there any 20-something on the thread? Somebody who grew up with a plethora of porn at their immediate disposal, as opposed to having to stay late on Fridays, waiting for the good bits in a skinemax flick or whatever was the norm for the other generations? ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/26 "2016-05-26T02:35:25Z")
> [@Me\_Billy](#): > > Yes it hurts kids to watch pornography. > > I know a 13 year old who is addicted to porn already. I won’t go into details, but this kids love life is seriously wrecked already. He can’t look at normal looking people and get excited - needs porn. Sad! (Best to keep kids away from it in my opinion.) I’m pretty sure you don’t know whether this 13 year old kid’s love life is seriously wrecked. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/27 "2016-05-26T02:35:48Z")
Nobody has linked to the XKCD of the kid with the Sports Illustrated “Swimsuit Edition”? Small children take everything as being of equal weight - the ‘good’/‘bad’ distinction comes later. We now live in a country in which any/all depictions of sex are viewed as “Obscene”. This does not help. The amateur “Look at Us! We invented Sex!” stuff is not equal “Rape 'em all - they love it!” crap. If the kid is old enough to know good/bad, a quick - ‘these are people being paid to to follow a script and has zero to do with love’. This stuff exists because there are a few people who enjoy it. What if Daddy is one of the creeps who likes the “rape 'em all - they love it” stuff? Idunno ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/28 "2016-05-26T02:53:11Z")
> [@](#): > > What if Daddy is one of the creeps who likes the “rape 'em all - they love it” stuff? maybe he liked that BEFORE he started watching porn? Most people who watch the really strange porn recoil and ask for the brain bleach. Does porn harm adults? Because my lovely gov is also claiming that. My own (obviously limited) personal experience suggests that porn can make inexperienced men develop some rather odd ideas about what women like, which are quickly corrected after encountering a few actual real living women. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/29 "2016-05-26T05:33:20Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > As soon as this generation of kids grows up, we’ll have an answer. If society doesn’t collapse, and they don’t turn out more warped than usual, porn will be in the clear, and we can chill out about this once and for all. It is possible that exposure to massive amounts of pornography at a young age could have negative effects on men, but effects that fall short of causing society to collapse. In response to **spamforbrains’** question, I believe that qualified organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Psychiatric Association have issued statements saying, yes, pornography is bad for children, no, children should not watch it. I don’t have time to search for links right now. [This book](http://www.amazon.com/Big-Disconnect-Protecting-Childhood-Relationships/dp/0062082434/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464240615&sr=1-1&keywords=protecting+family+in+the+digital+age) by a clinical psychologist documents instances of how pornography harms children. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/30 "2016-05-26T05:42:45Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > Nobody has linked to the XKCD of the kid with the Sports Illustrated “Swimsuit Edition”? You could have done us all the public service here. Okay, here it is. [xkcd: Swimsuit Issue](http://xkcd.com/751/) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/31 "2016-05-26T06:51:56Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > In my lovely state, the GOP-led government has decided to move on from regulating women’s sexuality to regulating pornography. Apparently they simply have nothing better to do, such as tackle the pollution problem, figure out how to improve public transportation, how to stop the cops from shooting unarmed civilians, or other mundane, un-important topics; no, they are totally focused on sex this year. Regulating other peoples’ that is. Skipping right over the topic of why the government thinks it has any right to impose a certain set of moral values on the population, let’s go to their big excuse for doing this: > > Watching pornography hurts children. > > Why and how, I don’t know. Apparently it’s ok for children to watch endless amounts of violence, but not ok to watch people make love because it causes what? How do they plan to keep children from watching porn? Ban all of it? Monitor internet use? Station cops in the bedrooms? And are going to do the same for violent movies? Hell, I’m not sure it is a good idea for a 13 year old kid to watch the local news alone. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/32 "2016-05-26T07:08:03Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > As soon as this generation of kids grows up, we’ll have an answer. Why wait? We already have a generation of kids who’ve grown up with internet porn. Youtube was ceated in 2005. Porno sites with video were available (I assume 🙂 ) a little earlier than that. So everybody who is in their early 20’s today has had access to porn non-stop since puberty. And society hasn’t collapsed yet. ---
**Author:** ![AmanoJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AmanoJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AmanoJ)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/33 "2016-05-26T10:11:48Z")
I’m also pretty liberal, and would be inclined to answer ‘no’ (depending on the age and circumstances, of course), but I really wonder more and more these days. I read that recent [article](http://ktla.com/2016/05/23/parents-stunned-after-girl-has-sex-with-as-many-as-2-dozen-boys-in-school-bathroom/) about a young girl (15?) in Flordia who had sex with upwards of 25 boys in a school bathroom and filmed it all, put it on social media… and I had to wonder. It’s hard to imagine that easy to access pornography did NOT have some impact there, either on the girl and her expectations for others and herself, or the boys and what is considered normal. Not that such a thing could not have happened in years past… I don’t know. My niece, at 8 years old, stole my debit card from my wallet and signed up for some free trials on porn sites when she found a computer that was not website protected. She is 13 now and still gets in trouble by finding ways to view them, claims she is addicted to porn in general. The stuff she was looking for was cartoon sex first, and eventually BDSM and such. This is a girl who has had no other sexual exposure, as far as she has ever said, or anyone has seen evidence of… but where did this all come from? I really feel like it escalated so quickly because of the nature of online pornography. And in that sense, I really do think it harmed her. It’s going to alter her natural course of sexual development over her life, how could it not? It’s a difficult topic, and I don’t envy you parents having to deal with it these days, at all. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/34 "2016-05-26T11:23:37Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > I wonder what it does to pressure kids that don’t feel ready to have sex. I know when I was a teen the pressure was intense and that was without a world of porn at your finger tips making it seem like the whole world but you was doing it all the time. I honestly don’t know how kids navigate it. I’m not sure that movies of plastic-titted blondes being fucked up the ass are more pressure than “girls in [that country]\* do it at 13!!!” strewn across the covers of teen magazines. For some reason the articles always manage to make it seem as if you’re broken if you’ve already turned 13 and haven’t Done The Deed yet. Are they funded by the Durex-Trojan conglomerate or something? - I’ve actually seen it in multiple countries and through multiple decades ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/35 "2016-05-26T11:43:32Z")
Parent of a millennial here. I assumed that it was inevitable my kids would watch some porn. In an awkward and embarrassing conversation with my son, i told him that i didn’t think it was a problem to enjoy some porn, but that it could be problematic if he spent to much time doing it, or if he was watching stuff that would be morally wrong if it happened in real life. The thing i wish I’d said but didn’t is to remind him that it’s all fake, and real sexual encounters don’t usually look like porn. It seems to have worked out okay. He is now in what appears to be a healthy relationship with a young woman. I’m pretty sure my daughter doesn’t watch porn, for a variety of reasons. Her tastes are more towards bad written erotica, like slash fan fiction. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/36 "2016-05-26T12:07:33Z")
> [@racer72](#): > > My wife just completed a tour of jury duty, the case concerned a 13 year old boy charged with raping young girls, the youngest was 6. Where did he learn this? According to the prosecutor, watching porn with his father. I think it’s safe to assume there was more going on than just “watching.” ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/37 "2016-05-26T12:22:44Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > Why wait? > We already have a generation of kids who’ve grown up with internet porn. > > Youtube was ceated in 2005. > Porno sites with video were available (I assume 🙂 ) a little earlier than that. > So everybody who is in their early 20’s today has had access to porn non-stop since puberty. Holy cow. You’re right! :eek: Wow, time flies when you get to be my age. I could swear that 2005 was just last week. I’ve only had time to have a sandwich and scratch my butt a couple of times since then. > [@](#): > > And society hasn’t collapsed yet. Excellent! Well, then, we’re in the clear! Panic over. ---
**Author:** ![Me\_Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Me\_Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Me_Billy)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/38 "2016-05-26T15:25:00Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > I’m pretty sure you don’t know whether this 13 year old kid’s love life is seriously wrecked. I’m pretty sure I do. Hint he is in legal trouble, has been required to take polygraph tests, psychological treatment, etc. I could go on. Anyway don’t make assumptions without knowing the facts. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/39 "2016-05-26T15:56:47Z")
> [@Me\_Billy](#): > > I’m pretty sure I do. Hint he is in legal trouble, has been required to take polygraph tests, psychological treatment, etc. I could go on. > > Anyway don’t make assumptions without knowing the facts. Umm, how did you come to the conclusion that a 13 year old’s love life is seriously wrecked? Do you realize how that sounds? ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2016, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/40 "2016-05-26T16:37:14Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > And society hasn’t collapsed yet. You haven’t seen the news recently have you? Remind me again who has a shot at being US President? 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688.md?page=3)