What age did you first see porn?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I was a really quiet kid. My parents would regularly take me out to restaurants, and I bring a backpack full of comics and sit there reading them while eating.

So, one night, I’m six or seven, and my parents take me out to dinner. They’re enjoying their meal, I’m sitting there reading my comics, and neither of them are paying much attention to me, until my mom notices that the other diners are giving their table weird looks. She looks over at me to make sure I’m okay, and that’s when she notices that, instead of a Tin Tin book, I’d found my dad’s stash of Zap! comics, which were chock-full of all sorts of explicit sexual imagery, hardcore violence, and so forth. After that, the Zap! comics went in a box in the attic, and my parents were a little more vigilant about exactly what I was stuffing into my backpack before we went out.

In terms of photographic porn, it’s a little harder to say. My dad had Playboys lying around when I was a kid, and I remember going over to my cousin’s place and seeing some of his more hard-core stuff, but I don’t recall a moment where I ever thought, “Wow! Those people are having sex! I’ve never seen THAT before!” So I’m guessing it first happened when I was pretty young.

42

Not just the US: the porn fairy visited the woods near my house in Hampshire, 1976, with a biscuit tin of BDSM mags when I was 9.

43

I was fifteen. My girlfriend and I found a very old (circa 1930s) porn pamphlet in the glovebox of her boyfriend’s car.

I was revolted by the attitude toward the women and the crude terms. And I remember wondering what that meant in regards to what the guys we were dating were thinking about us.

Since then I notice that pornographic material can be habit-forming. I. just. have. to. see. what. that. looks. like. But there’s never any novelty for me. Same-old, same-old. Still there’s that draw just in case. A hook!

The reaction quickly becomes a feeling of being cheated followed by the thought of “maybe next time.” There’s something about that combination of feelings that I don’t want any part of so I don’t seek it out.

I doubt that I could be shocked anymore but my reaction is sometimes sadness regarding the human condition.

44

I grew up at just the right time to be exposed to online porn in a gradual, age-appropriate fashion. At age 12 I was on a BBS where there was a list with descriptions of nudie pics. You picked one, and then waited a few minutes as it loaded line by line. By the time I was 18, I had high-speed Internet and material on every conceivable fetish was widely available.

45

I really can’t remember. I guess it didn’t make much of an impression on me.

46

I was introduced to the soft stuff in 8th grade (age 13 - Playboy, old 60’s B&W cheesy photos of topless women) through a friend from school. He clued me into a bookstore up the road that sold Playboys to anyone - so that was my staple, for a while. Once in a while I’d see something a little harder from Hustler or Penthouse, but I was again blown away by a copy of Puritan another friend found. Penthouse letters came along when I was about 15. First video was at a house where I was babysitting (~16), and found several tapes. I only had time to see about 30 minute’s worth, but it was a real revelation. Harder stuff really came later when I was in college, as in the annual Deep Throat fundraiser for Dodds House, Teeter Quad, IU Bloomington or one of two peep show/bookstores in town at that time.

47

I voted 12-13, because I was thinking magazines, but if written erotica counts I was younger than that. Maybe 10.

I think the effect on the child is dependent on what sort of porn it is. Playboy is not Penthouse; Penthouse is not Gag Factor.

48

12-13 with magazines and softcore videos. The first porno I encountered was actually a Penthouse Letters magazine. I still remember a story about a guy running into a girl named Kristine on a canoeing trip. He sure never thought that would happen to him!

49

To my knowledge, there was never any porn in my parents’ house.

I was 21, renting a room in a house with a bunch of other non-conformists, and one of the guys there figured out how to rig the TV so it would unscramble the Playboy Channel.

I did find a couple of strip poker games on a BBS when I was ~17 but that’s not exactly “porn”.

50

Female here - I found some “woods porn” with a friend of mine when we were around 8 or so. Nothing hardcore or disturbing, but it definitely wasn’t ‘soft lighting and careful primping’ by any means. We also found some in the sleeping area of her dad’s semi; he was a long-distance truck driver and we were checking out the cab one day when he was home.

51

My parents had a copy of the Joy of Sex that I’d squirrel away when I got the chance at age 8 or 9. Filled with pencil drawings of hairy 70’s people having sex.

When I was 11 or 12, I found a copy of “Pandora’s Mirror” on VHS that my folks must have rented. That was my first “real” porn. At least I started with a classic.

52

I was at my neighbor’s house when I was six or seven year’s old when his older brother and his cousin (they were ten or eleven) showed us an issue of Playboy. This was 1967 or 1968. Nothing particularly shocking to me, it was just pretty girls with no clothes on.

I was around twelve, and at a different friend’s house (sometime in 1973) when I first saw pictures of people performing sexual acts. It was, once again, the classical, stereotypical “older brother initiating younger brother and friend into the wonderful world of human sexuality by showing them a bunch of dirty pictures cut out of magazines” scenario. I was a little more disgusted by these pics, and not turned on at all; it just seemed cheap and tawdry. It did not help matters much that the women in the pics were just not very attractive! Most of the pics were in black-and-white, but a few were in color.

I would have been a lot more turned on by the pics if it had been attractive girls, naked or, better yet, almost naked, acting out knockout scenes from comic books.
But that’s just me – I figured out at an early age that I am just wired a bit differently than most folks!

53

Oops, I voted 12-13 thinking about the first time I did a web search for some kind of porn, but then I remembered that my sister and I found our stepdad’s Playboy magazines a year or two before then. They were in his room, in his desk drawer, and I used to watch TV in there sometimes so I’d sneak a look at them.

The funny thing is that my sister and I thought it was a huge scandal that he had them. We considered writing an “anonymous” note to our mom to tell her they existed, but never ended up doing it. A few years after that, my mom mentioned something about him selling a stack of old Playboys at their garage sale, and I realized she did know and didn’t care.

54

Age 8-ish: Grandpa’s outhouse had a stash of 1960’s nudist magazines. Bro and I spent too much time out there. Picked up lots of volleyball tips.

Age 10-ish: Older cousin had a stack of Playboy’s in his closet. Bro and I used to go in there to read his old ‘Mad’ magazines. Yeah, right.

Age 12-ish: Found an early-morning delivery stack of porn in front of a drug store with a friend. Heisted stack. Perused stack with friend. Abandoned stack (possibly in woods, details fuzzy).

Age 16: Went to sister’s fiance’s bachelor party, watched some 8 mm smokers. Sat next to Dad. Awkward.

mmm

55

Lets see about 10. My Dad had a Playboy in his nightstand drawer. I still remember the centerfold a brunette holding a croquet mallet.:slight_smile: When I was 14 or so I found a stash of his magazines in the bedroom, much harder stuff, Hustler, Mayfair, High Society and a few of those raunchy newsprint black & white jobs.

I have to say Hustler was a real eye opener for me because until then I really had no clue about what women really possessed “down there.” Larry Flint gave me my first look at a real vulva and my first reaction was What the hell is That!

My first porno was again my Dad’s VHS at age 17 with our first VCR the Film was Tangerine from the Lewis Brothers of Detroit. Not very impressed, I was very turned on for 5 minutes then It was like watching two people go to the bathroom. No romance or the pretense of love or even passion. I spent a great deal of money in my youth trying to find a “sexy” prom film, it never happened.

56

You really have to define what “porn” is, and of course there’s the matter of how graphic or extreme the material is.

I know I saw nudie mags by the time I was 8 years old, either my dad’s or my friends’ dads. Playboy or Penthouse magazine type stuff. Women in various stages of undress and provocative expressions and poses. While those were… stimulating, I have to say reading the Penthouse Letters were a LOT more “educational” :eek:

I didn’t see any porn video until a friend of mine got cable TV and figured out some weird trick to temporarily unscramble HBO for up to 30 seconds at a time using some combination of remote control buttons held down together at the same time. We stayed up late and saw various softcore porn stuff that to my 13 year old mind was an order of magnitude more… stimulating… than even the PH Letters.

Around the age of 15 a friend of mine inherited (from some older cousin I think) a stash of hardcore mags, with titles like Seventeen or Swedish Erotica. These were yet another level up to me. And within a year, I discovered I could get easily similar hardcore porn mags, and even videos, in Times Square, which was almost on my way home from high school (Being as I had a 90 minute subway plus bus commute). Along with the fake ID necessary to show I was 18 or older. Oh my. Very Corrupting. But even for the videos I managed to get my sticky-palmed hands on, I had to find “alone time” with the family VCR and a place to stash them in my room at home with my parents, which limited both the amount of material I could keep around and my windows of opportunity to appreciate them.

That was with me growing up in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Nowadays I would guess most kids are able to skip all those transitions through solo mag shots, softcore, hardcore mags, etc., or hurdles like visiting shady parts of town or getting a fake ID, and simply find hardcore pr0n on the Internet. Sure, getting hold of an adult’s credit card means you can get an…y…thing, but USENET is now basically comprised of MP3, movie or porn binaries getting posted, and is easily accessed with any web browser and access to an NNTP server that comes with most ISPs. Or Bit Torrent. And the digital aspect of it means it’s much easier to stockpile TONS of it, and hide it, and view it pretty much any time, anywhere.

That kind of disturbs me. I don’t mind my own kids dealing with softcore porn at young ages but an 8 year old having access to, say, some kind of gangbang video is a whole different bag of chips.

57

What the hell is “light” porn? “The DVD was a light girl/girl porn” - If you’re calling it porn then there is nothing light about it. Do you think that because it’s two females then that makes it not as XXX rated or not as hardcore? Porn is porn! Anything lighter than porn is R rated but calling porn “light” is a very LAX attitude to have when you’re talking about children viewing it. If i knew someone who thought like that i wouldnt want them around my kids. Thats a bit red flaggish to me.

58

Hi @Andi76. Welcome to the Dope.

I agree with you.

I don’t necessarily know the difference in degrees of pornography.

But, children shouldn’t be exposed to it, for as long as possible.

Not always easy, in this day.

You hafta do what you have to do, to prevent exposure.

Believe me when I tell you, it’s detrimental to their mental health.

ANYONE, adult, is free to do what they want. I just want them to secure it away from children, as best they can.

Anywhoo, @Andi76 this thread is a zombie. Read the more up to date threads. For funzies and giggles. We’re usually a happy group. :grin:

59

For the OP, what kind of porn? In middle school I saw a Hustler my dad got of an “Angel in the Centerfold” he worked with (she got fired) and in high school I was buying Playboys to paper my closet. But before that, and not coincidently right after home VHSs became common, I would watch “The Tapes” my parents would rent from the Blockbuster Back Room™.

60

Porn?
Never actually.