# 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:** 3
**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, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/41 "2016-05-26T16:44:02Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > You haven’t seen the news recently have you? Remind me again who has a shot at being US President? 😛 Somehow, that’d explain everything. Fake sex, Fake reality shows, Fake politicians… ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2016, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/42 "2016-05-27T01:10:42Z")
Something related: I would recommend people interested in this topic watch the documentary Hot Girls Wanted on Netflix. It follows a group of young women who go into the porn business. It’s not titillating but nor is it some kind of complete horror show (for the most part). I found it interesting. ---
**Author:** ![erocked](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f08c70/32.png) [@erocked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erocked)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2016, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/43 "2016-05-27T01:28:28Z")
> [@Quimby](#): > > Something related: I would recommend people interested in this topic watch the documentary Hot Girls Wanted on Netflix. It follows a group of young women who go into the porn business. It’s not titillating but nor is it some kind of complete horror show (for the most part). I found it interesting. I swear I opened this thread and scrolled straight to the bottom to post this exact same thing. Just watched it yesterday. Some parts were pretty disturbing. ---
**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 27, 2016, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/44 "2016-05-27T03:55:26Z")
> [@lazybratsche](#): > > Dan Savage has made the point that a large part of the _paying_ porn market are lonely men that are bitter about their lack of relationship success. Well, yeah. Of course. It doesn’t really take rocket science to figure that one out. That’s pretty self-evident. But I was just assuming that even these men have a somewhat normal sexual fantasy life. They can’t all be weird perverts, or extreme misogynists with bizarre revenge fantasies, can they? Anyway, it’s not all about violence and misogyny. A lot of porn is just… well, bad, stupid, and pointless. That’s all. But clearly done that way on purpose, not by accident. Which is what puzzles me the most. A lot of it actually makes more sense to me as comedy rather than as straight porn. Well, I mean, I don’t find it funny. But I’m honestly wondering if a lot of what I’m seeing could in fact be bad and extremely unfunny parody of bad porn, instead of simply bad porn, and I’m completely missing the joke by assuming that it’s meant to be taken seriously. But then I’m left wondering how there can be a market of customers with a sense of humor that awful. That doesn’t seem to add up, either. So it doesn’t help much. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. After all, 90 percent of \*everything \*is utter crap. No reason to assume that porn should be an exception, I suppose. I mean, Justin Bieber has fans, so why not awful porn? ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2016, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/45 "2016-05-27T04:18:12Z")
I would say to some degree yes. Some of the porn is downright vile. I think the same about gore sites and terrible music as well. How can these inputs into a young mind not have an impact? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2016, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/46 "2016-05-27T04:26:46Z")
My former pastor has done a lot of research into this subject, and some of the things he’s posted on Facebook have had me going :dubious: . Not so much now that I see this thread; he now lives in a big city with a medical school and their infertility specialists are now asking couples who seek their services if they engage in penis-in-vagina intercourse (apparently quite a few do not :eek: ) and if they do, does he ejaculate inside her (apparently quite a few do not do this either). I wasn’t the only person who wondered how people who don’t know something most 8-year-olds should know would wind up at an infertility specialist, that’s for sure. I have also read, from him and elsewhere, that many ER doctors have seen a drastic increase in recent years of young women who have been forcibly anally raped, and didn’t know this was wrong and only sought medical attention because they had become incontinent. Many years ago, I worked with a woman who had 3 young children, and she and her husband showed them porno movies (this was the early VHS era) because they felt it was a good way to teach them about sex. (One of my friends pointed out, “That’s not even the KIND of sex you want your kids to know about!”) I guessed that she had been abused, and I was right; I knew another woman who had gone to high school with her, and she told me that this woman had been molested by a family member and it got in the newspaper; the relative was not her father or brother, and even though her name wasn’t used, everyone could figure out that it was her. I said, “That’s horrible!” and she replied, “Nonsense. It was probably her idea.” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2016, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/47 "2016-05-27T04:35:36Z")
> [@AmanoJ](#): > > 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. I sure hope this youngster is in some heavy-duty therapy. An 8-year-old stealing to look at porn? NOT normal by any stretch of the imagination, on many, many levels. ---
**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 27, 2016, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/48 "2016-05-27T04:59:47Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I sure hope this youngster is in some heavy-duty therapy. An 8-year-old stealing to look at porn? NOT normal by any stretch of the imagination, on many, many levels. Yeah, it makes no sense. 8-year-olds should have tons of free porn to go through before they get to the point where forking over cash should become a potential issue. All the pirated stuff should last them at least until puberty. (I’m joking, I’m joking. Well, it’s true. But I’m joking. Oh, you know what I mean.) Edit: Wait, on re-reading, she wasn’t paying, but using the card to sign up for free trials? Well, that makes more sense. Or, actually, it still makes no flipping sense. That’s still messed up six ways from Sunday. ---
**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 27, 2016, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/49 "2016-05-27T05:54:02Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > I think the same about gore sites and terrible music as well. How can these inputs into a young mind not have an impact? Yeah, make no mistake: My liberal attitude towards pornography notwithstanding, I’m certainly all for banning Justin Bieber out of existence. Someone has to protect the children. ---
**Author:** ![AmanoJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AmanoJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AmanoJ)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2016, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/50 "2016-05-27T06:00:02Z")
She didn’t know that it would show up on my card, or even how it worked. She found it online by accident when looking up cartoons on an unsafe computer. You know those sites, and how they word things. They said free trial, put in your credit card number, no fees, etc etc. Click on a picture and it suddenly prompts you to input a credit card number to see more. She saw the wallet, and thought that just putting in the credit card number would be like an age check, and no one would ever know. She was curious and it was all so easily available. It’s sort of hard to fault her for that part. The decisions she made because of it, though, that’s where the trouble begins. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/51 "2016-05-30T18:35:55Z")
People seem to like porn when its some nameless stranger but what if it was some person you knew and loved? So would you want your mother, son, daughter, or niece doing those things? I hope not. But the thing is they are somebodies loved one. Now on the other hand their are some videos out there which show married couples having sex. Thats it. They are designed to be marital aids and to teach couples how to pleasure each other. The couples talk about what they are doing before and after. I’m ok with those. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/52 "2016-05-30T19:20:50Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Now on the other hand their are some videos out there which show married couples having sex. Thats it. They are designed to be marital aids and to teach couples how to pleasure each other. The couples talk about what they are doing before and after. I’m ok with those. And I personally do not consider that pornography. Book like “The Joy of Sex” aren’t pornography either, although none of this should be watched by children. My sister had to take Human Sexuality for her major (psychology and social work; nursing and physical therapy students had to take it too and it was an elective for everyone else). On the first day of class, the professor walked in and said, “If you signed up for this class because you think you’re going to get credit for watching porno movies, you are wasting your time and mine” and the class was considerably smaller the next day. 😛 ETA: There’s a website called retroraunch dot com that is vintage pornography (I spelled it that way on purpose) and and it has a disclaimer saying, in effect, “We assume no liability for the trauma you experienced from seeing your grandparents having sex.” LOL ---
**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 30, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/53 "2016-05-30T19:51:48Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > So would you want your mother, son, daughter, or niece doing those things? I hope not. I wouldn’t watch any of it (although you didn’t mention “sister”… no, I’m kidding, I’m kidding), but, depending on the artistic quality and integrity of the product, I wouldn’t think any less of them for doing it. As long as the choice was theirs and they knew what they were doing. I certainly have nothing against pornographic performers, or less “respect” for them as human beings or professionals, any more than in the case of surgeons, truck drivers or accountants. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/54 "2016-06-04T00:03:36Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > 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. That’s actually the most important thing you could have said. I’ve also heard that gay male porn is very popular among teenage girls, whether the girls wish to admit it or not. Anyone else have any insight into this? I’ll admit that having once been a teenage girl, I could see why - lots of, ahem, action, and not having to look at women at the same time. Never mind that most men don’t look like the guys in those clips either. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/56 "2016-06-04T09:36:52Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > …Apparently it’s ok for children to watch endless amounts of violence, but not ok to watch people make love because it causes what? Pornography usually exceeds what is allowed in an R rated movie. If you’re talking about violence that is comparable then it would be some things that aren’t allowed in an R rated movie… though I’m not sure if there is any violence that is too bad to not be allowed in an R rated movie. Even people being chainsawed or skinned alive. Well I think violent explicit rape would count though that is kind of pornographic. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/57 "2016-06-04T15:26:27Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > Pornography usually exceeds what is allowed in an R rated movie. If you’re talking about violence that is comparable then it would be some things that aren’t allowed in an R rated movie… though I’m not sure if there is any violence that is too bad to not be allowed in an R rated movie. Even people being chainsawed or skinned alive. As is often pointed out in threads comparing on-screen sex and violence: you’re not going to see anyone _really_ being chainsawed or skinned alive, or even just wounded, in an R-rated movie. The violence is all simulated via special effects, and anyone who’s old enough to watch it is going to know that. If you want a fair comparison, you’d have to compare the harm done by watching _real_, as opposed to simulated, violence. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/58 "2016-06-04T23:23:34Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > As is often pointed out in threads comparing on-screen sex and violence: you’re not going to see anyone _really_ being chainsawed or skinned alive, or even just wounded, in an R-rated movie. The violence is all simulated via special effects, and anyone who’s old enough to watch it is going to know that. If you want a fair comparison, you’d have to compare the harm done by watching _real_, as opposed to simulated, violence. I remember all the brouhaha about “Faces of Death” in the mid to late 1980s, when VCRs were first taking off. It died down when people in the know said that 99% of it was staged. :dubious: ---
**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:** [June 4, 2016, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/59 "2016-06-04T23:50:28Z")
There’s something of a discrepancy here. On the one hand, the problem with porn is that it’s fake: > [@puzzlegal](#): > > […] it’s all fake, and real sexual encounters don’t usually look like porn. I could find a better quote, but I don’t have to. You hear that all the time. Right? But, on the other hand, the problem is that it’s real: > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > If you want a fair comparison, you’d have to compare the harm done by watching _real_, as opposed to simulated, violence. So, which is it? Honest question. It hadn’t occurred to me until just now. ---
**Author:** ![JohnClay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c37758/32.png) [@JohnClay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnClay)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/60 "2016-06-05T01:26:56Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > …If you want a fair comparison, you’d have to compare the harm done by watching _real_, as opposed to simulated, violence. Ok then if the OP thinks it is ok for children to watch pornography they should also be able to watch violence banned in R rated movies - perhaps terrorists beheading people, etc, or rotten dot com. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688/61 "2023-03-26T20:18:54Z")
I never realized that Michelangelo was an early pornographer… > **[Florida principal resigns after parents decry Michelangelo’s David as...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/25/florida-principal-resigns-michelangelo-david)** > > Tallahassee Classical school’s governing board heard complaints after sixth-graders were shown classical sculpture [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-it-harm-children-to-watch-pornography/755688.md?page=4)