# How much should we parents worry about our kids seeing internet porn? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 4, 2006, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374 "2006-06-04T13:27:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/41 "2006-06-06T03:56:34Z")
Er, i contradicted myself in a small way. “There is nothing wrong with establishing a culture where everyone has sex the same way.” should read there is nothing significantly wrong. like i said later on, some costs do exist. but there are also many benefits. i will not go into them here, but start with asking the question of why evolution would see to it that us humans would have such a profoundly strong drive toward cohesion of prefernce. why we would have the instincts to take rather pointless things and begin to have very strong moral feelings about them, or also in cases where our feelings aren’t quite moral but are strong nevertheless. culture exists for a reason, and I do not believe that reason has yet been obviated. ---
**Author:** ![Mirror\_Image\_egamI\_rorriM](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e56c9b/32.png) [@Mirror\_Image\_egamI\_rorriM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mirror_Image_egamI_rorriM)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/42 "2006-06-06T06:46:41Z")
> [@iluvurmom](#): > > – 14% have actually met face-to-face with a person they had known only through the Internet (9% of 13- to 15-year-olds and 22% of 16- to 17-year-olds). People I’ve only known on the internet and then met face-to-face: **SkipMagic, auntie em, Baker,** and \*\* sperfur\*\*, among others. I’ve been to two Dopefests, one when I was 16 and one when I was 17. My parents don’t know (I’m 19 now). I’m not sure what my point is except maybe it’s not always bad for older teenagers to meet people off the internet. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/43 "2006-06-06T10:55:01Z")
> [@Lissa](#): > > I have read it. I’ve read many books on the subject, and I don’t base my views off any one particular work. To avoid a hijack, I started [another thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=374556) asking about the nature vs. nurture debate. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/44 "2006-06-06T11:35:52Z")
**Lissa** , again, this will be an area where we will just have to recognize our differences. To me, the concept that it is wrong to gain pleasure, sexual or other otherwise, by degrading others, is a value, and not just a matter of taste. It seems clear to me that someone with the moral framework that some sort of sexual practice, let’s say pedophilia, is wrong, is expressing a value, not just a a matter of preference, and likewise so is someone expresses a moral framework which I disagree with. Just because I (or you) disagree with it does not mean that it is any less of a value to that person. I also must point out to you that finding the rare cultural exceptions hardly addresses the point of whether or not there are biological predispositions in behavior. In fact, the desire to _conform_ to the norms of any particular social structure, is one of those predispositions. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [June 6, 2006, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/45 "2006-06-06T20:18:43Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Without looking up the Nixon study I’d have to say that 1970 porn and 2006 porn are as different as night and day. I don’t want to throw up a straw man but sexually explicit material in the 70’s reflected variations of Playboy-like venues. The predominant example would consist of naked women in various poses. Yes there was other material out there but the majority of it was in publication form. Enter the VCR and all that changed. The “porn industry” took off with the introduction of video. The amount and variation of pornography has grown rapidly because of this. The internet adds a level of accessibility (without cost) and it is not governed in any way by local ordinances. > > If you accept that we are a product of our environment (at least to some degree) then everything we are exposed to adds to our personality in some small way. As adults, we self regulate what we expose ourselves to because we can rationalize what is appropriate behavior. Children have not developed the reasoning skills of adults and that is why we have a parent/child relationship. > > Exposure to nudity, by itself, is different than exposure to sexual acts and that is what becomes a concern when talking about pornography. There is literally nothing that can be conceived of sexually that is not on the internet. Much of it is misogynistic in nature. Women become objects for any and all sexual gratification and there is nothing in any of it to suggest a loving relationship. A parent’s goal should always be to keep their child on a positive road to self-fulfillment. Pornography represents one of many pitfalls that need to be addressed in that role. It was the same as now. Actually they printed the results of the study with photographs. Beastiality and other way off mainstream perversioins were coverered. Nothing new is being invented. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/46 "2006-06-07T00:05:51Z")
I have to explain to my son how we let a clod like Dubya steal two Presidential elections … explaining porn’s a breeze by comparison. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/2bfe46/32.png) [@John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Carter_of_Mars)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2006, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/47 "2006-06-07T03:48:43Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > I have to explain to my son how we let a clod like Dubya steal two Presidential elections … explaining porn’s a breeze by comparison. Don’t you ever get tired of inserting political crap into non-political threads? I sure do get tired of having to skip over the political comments. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/48 "2006-06-09T00:33:14Z")
> [@Evil Captor](#): > > I have to explain to my son how we let a clod like Dubya steal two Presidential elections … explaining porn’s a breeze by comparison. Yah, you just have to explain Clinton’s firm grip on presidential power. DOH!!! ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/49 "2006-06-09T00:40:05Z")
> [@gonzomax](#): > > It was the same as now. Actually they printed the results of the study with photographs. Beastiality and other way off mainstream perversioins were coverered. Nothing new is being invented. Well they didn’t have 2 liter bottles in Nixon’s day. To clarify my point, pornography has grown exponentially with the onset of video and again with the interent. The sea-change brought about with the internet is the cost involved for kids, zero. And for that infinitely small sum you get an unlimited amount of porn. If I could just get my car to run off the stuff life would be good. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/50 "2006-06-09T02:29:13Z")
> [@John Carter of Mars](#): > > Don’t you ever get tired of inserting political crap into non-political threads? I sure do get tired of having to skip over the political comments. It’s a joke son, a joke. Unlax. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/51 "2006-06-09T03:19:19Z")
> [@Argent Towers](#): > > Frankly I don’t believe in hiding anything from children. The world is a fuckin’ weird, harsh, contradictory, and shocking place. You’re so right! Tell that naive four-year-old that she was adopted because her parents hated her! Tell her that her current parents don’t much care for her either, and that the only reason they adopted her was so they could whore her out later! Tell the little boy that he was sold to them for $100 worth of crystal! Dammit, they have a right to know, “and the more of it you hide from them, the more traumatic it will be when they finally discover it after having lived their childhood in a shielded, coddled manner where everything is fun and games and happiness and “you are special!”” And as for porn, make damn sure you make them watch a lot of morbidly obese geriatrics fucking live human organs or masturbating into the faces of the recently dead! Because, you know, “the more of it you hide from children, the more traumatic it will be when they finally discover it after having lived their childhood in a shielded, coddled manner where everything is fun and games and happiness and “you are special!”” Screw them! Sooner or later he will have to face some nasty shit. > [@Argent Towers](#): > > It’s all bullshit. Nobody is special. A child is just a regular person who hasn’t grown up. Yep, it’s all bullshit. Who cares about the scientific fact that the child’s and adolescent’s brain is substantially different from an adult’s? That it has been strongly argued that the consciousness of a child or adolescent is also different from that of an adult? Besides, what difference should _that_ make? I say, strap 'em down into the Ludovico chair like in _A Clockwork Orange_ and teach 'em the fundamentals of bestiality and necrophilia while there’s still a chance for them not to be “more fucked up … later”! > [@Argent Towers](#): > > I’m against the idea of a world for children and a world for adults, the one for children filled with kiddie games and friendly talking animals and cartoons and TV shows with no connection to the real world. That’s exactly why we should force all of our six-years and older children into medical experiments and into being chimney sweeps. Or, as a recent _Daily Show_ or _Colbert Report_ had it, why not make them into chimneys themselves? ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/52 "2006-06-09T03:47:11Z")
> [@](#): > > The sea-change brought about with the internet is the cost involved for kids, zero. And for that infinitely small sum you get an unlimited amount of porn. amen. porno in the morning porno in the evening porno at dinner time when porno’s on the hard drive your dick will start to wind. it’s the only adverse effect i can think of. in fact, i’m quite upset i was never taught in elementary school to switch off hands. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/53 "2006-06-09T03:55:13Z")
> [@](#): > > You’re so right! Tell that naive four-year-old that she was adopted because her parents hated her! Tell her that her current parents don’t much care for her either, and that the only reason they adopted her was so they could whore her out later! Tell the little boy that he was sold to them for $100 worth of crystal! Well, the only thing that’ll actually damage those children is if society presents those acts as evil. If you just state them as facts, why exactly will a kid have a heart attack? I don’t think I’m prepared to write a lengthy post on this, but pretty much everything we think damages children only does so because we tell the kids they ought be damaged. Cultural relativism. Plenty of societies don’t raise their own children. Plenty of societies act stoically to children. > [@](#): > > And as for porn, make damn sure you make them watch a lot of morbidly obese geriatrics fucking live human organs or masturbating into the faces of the recently dead! Because, you know, “the more of it you hide from children, the more traumatic it will be when they finally discover it after having lived their childhood in a shielded, coddled manner where everything is fun and games and happiness and “you are special!”” well yeah… if they watch that from childhood (and everyone around them says it’s normal), they’ll never be traumatized by it. that’s how things work… the only question is whether we do want the members of our society to feel revolted when seeing such things (a question regarding which i was trying to spark discussion before). But if what you care about is the effect on the children themselves, then the sooner you introduce it to them (if it is ever to be introduced), the less they’ll find it shocking. > [@](#): > > Yep, it’s all bullshit. Who cares about the scientific fact that the child’s and adolescent’s brain is substantially different from an adult’s? That it has been strongly argued that the consciousness of a child or adolescent is also different from that of an adult? Besides, what difference should that make? Ha! It is different precisely in the fact that kids aren’t as hung up about things as adults! Their minds are free and receptive of everything. They are receptive of adults telling them that a horrible traumatizing thing happened because someone touched them in their crotch. They are receptive of adults telling them that goatfucking is normal, or that sweeping chimneys is normal. Only an adult, whose mind is set, will always continue to think of those things as grotesque. That’s where the difference lies. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/54 "2006-06-09T07:19:52Z")
Mr. Dubinsky, is it possible that you would benefit from enhancing your education and thereby learn to drop all that obsolete, utterly ridiculous “cultural relativism” crap? May I suggest you read some modern psychology and sociology? Some evolutionary psychology in particular? You’d be surprised how thoroughly your old-fashioned, PC ideas have been debunked! ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/55 "2006-06-09T08:35:59Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > Certainly I can see that having a societal “Do not have sex, there is no sex, and if I catch you at it you’re dead!” could limit the number of children born to teens. For instance, Japan comes in the lowest for teen pregnancies in [this list](http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/03/3/gr030303.html) of various countries, and probably also has the most puritan approach of any. The Netherlands in that same list have even less teenage pregnancies and abortions then the Japanese, and their approach to porn is the opposite of Japan’s puritanical attitude. So that theory doesn’t really hold. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/56 "2006-06-09T08:46:34Z")
No, no, no, i’m not arguing against evolutionary psychology or in support of the blank slate. god no! We, of course, are born with instincts and natural inclinations. Such as keeping kids away from sex, apparently. However, I argue that we still have a lot of flexibility, and that the environment may override our natural attitudes toward most things. In particular, it will override our attitudes regarding things against which we react with shock and disgust, and which we accept as normal. I think most psychologists would agree. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/57 "2006-06-09T08:52:05Z")
Oh, and the strongest emotional reactions are almost always a product of the reenforcing feedback mechanisms of culture (which usually just amplify our natural inclinations, but not always), not a direct product of nature. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/58 "2006-06-09T09:49:22Z")
Sadly, I think I need to start by assuring the reader that I’m not a prude, a Christian, a rabid feminist, or an anti-porn crusader. I enjoy porn as much as the next man. But that’s besides the point. I think the logic in several poster’s submissions hasn’t been thought through well enough. Taken at face value, many of them seem to argue that exposure to certain words or images _cannot_ have a negative impact, even for children. How can such a view even _arise_, let alone be argued for? What kind of thinking could generate such a view? How can it be justified? Or, if you agree that some words or images _can_ have a negative impact on children, on what grounds do you exclude pornography from that category? No one wants to fund **direct** scientific research of the precise effects of hard-core porn on children, so there is little or no **direct** research to rely upon to come to final, absolute conclusions. However, there has been a lot of direct scientific research into the effect of violent imagery on children, and the findings are _extremely_ disturbing. Exposure to violent images is often associated with significant increases in desensitization, anger, hostility, loss of empathy, and imitation. Such imagery can even greatly diminish a child’s emotional response to _actual_, real-world violence going on right in front of them! Furthermore, such images can produce long-term damage, such as “an enduring hostile mental framework” that actually reduces a person’s tendencies to act positively towards others. And all of this just from **pictures!** Shouldn’t we predict that much the same is true for young people and porn until we know differently with confidence? Isn’t that the sanest, most rational, most scientifically and ethically judicious decision? So, what specific harms may come to pass in many or most cases? None of the following will occur in every instance for every individual, of course. However, they will have a greater impact on a child or adolescent than an adult because, among many other things, an adult not only has a substantially different brain and consciousness, but a very different experiential and emotional context as well. To consider a child to be a small adult is as scientifically ignorant and wrong-headed as it is possible to be. Here are some of the actual damages that can be caused by porn: – Habituation, leading to marked loss of desire or need for ever-more extreme images over time. – Distortion of reality. – Absurd expectations. – Distortion of schemas, which strongly influence perception, memory, and interpretation, which are particularly vulnerable in children and adolescents. – Perception of women as objects of sexual violence and the tendency to inculcate the belief that rape is a relatively minor, even excusable crime. – Perception of women (and perhaps men) as objects to be subjugated (other than by violence). – Cognitive dissonance – Desensitization – Conversion of beliefs based on false or misleading visual (or other) evidence, including such ideas as the belief that sexual extremes such as sadomasochism and bestiality are much more common than they really are and that all kids are routinely having sex and that unsafe sex is “safe enough” (witness, for example, the _extreme_ promotion and availability of “bareback” porn). So, should parents worry? **Hell, YES!** There’s genuine harm involved in many, if not most, cases. The general dismissal of the likelihood of this possibility in this thread strikes me as **entirely** unjustified. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/59 "2006-06-09T10:10:22Z")
Also, it must be noted, none of that damage appears to be in any truly significant way enhanced or mitigated by cultural norms or cultural relativism, contra the extreme relativistic views of **Lissa** and **Alex\_Dubinsky**. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2006, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374/60 "2006-06-09T12:19:51Z")
**ambushed** , your point about the fairly well documented effects of repeated exposure to violence is well made. If such is true for violence then such may be true for degrading violent sex as depicted in some pornography. It does however raise a comment about our culture: as a society we seem to have little problem letting our children see many violent images from early cartoons to live-action often vividly and realistically portrayed from very early on, despite the moderately well documented negative effects of repeated exposure to violence. Sexual explicitness, in all forms, we have more of a problem with, despite the relative lack of direct evidence. And while I am sure that **Alex** can defend himself, it does seem to me that you misunderstand his POV. He acknowledges the possiblity of harm of some porn from the position that an individual must exist within a particular society. Even with an extreme moral relativist position, the values that are useful to have, that are “right” (in that intentional small “r” sense) are those of the society that one exists in. If goat anus licking is abnormal in a society then one had better learn that, if kissing your wife’s cheek in public is forbidden in a particular society and that is the one you must exist in, then you had better learn that. Therefore it does not _practically_ matter if those behaviors are “Right” in any absolute sense or not. You are harmed in function by learning values discordant to the world in which you live. It is an open question if exposure to porn is sufficient to do that however in the context of recieving adequate primary socialization by family and immediate society. But the possibility is not dismissed out of hand. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-should-we-parents-worry-about-our-kids-seeing-internet-porn/359374.md?page=4)