Today’s Porn Isn’t The Porn of Your Youth; It’s Far Worse and Children Are Accessing It
[guest post by Dana]
A 16-year old girl discusses having been exposed to pornography at a very early age:
I was ten years old when I watched porn for the first time. I found myself on Pornhub, which I stumbled across by accident and returned to out of curiosity. The website has no age verification, no ID requirement, not even a prompt asking me if I was over 18. The site is easy to find, impossible to avoid, and has become a frequent rite of passage for kids my age.
Where was my mother? In the next room, making sure I was eating nine differently colored fruits and vegetables on the daily. She was attentive, nearly a helicopter parent, but I found online porn anyway. So did my friends.
Today I’m 16, and my peers are suffering from an addiction to what many call “the new drug.” Porn is the disastrous replacement for intimacy among my sexless, anxiety-ridden generation.
Anyone who has made a serious effort to be a “good” parent has likely had to deal with their kids and porn; blocks are installed on home computers, keystroke loggers are used, kids’ histories are checked, and maybe they have their phones confiscated every night before bed. There are any number of safety precautions available today, but it still seems that parents are always running a step behind. The internet provides a seemingly limitless number of pornographic websites that clever and determined kids can eventually access, or they might be like the writer of this piece and accidentally stumble upon them. Whether catching one’s offspring in the act of looking at porn, discovering their internet wanderings via their browsing history, or clicking on an open tab they forgot to close, most kids (I really wish I could just specify teenagers here because that’s more palatable than “kids,” which would include children…) will have viewed some pornography while still living at home with their parents.
And lest you think that today’s porn is the porn of your youth, think again. The young writer takes the time to explain, in painful detail, just how horrifying the porn is that kids are viewing today:
When I talk to adults, I get the strong sense they picture a hot bombshell in lingerie or a half-naked model on a beach. This is not what I stumbled upon back in fourth grade. I saw simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism, and unthinkable physical violence. The porn children view today makes Playboy look like an American Girl doll catalog.
…the preadolescent and adolescent brain doesn’t know it’s all fake. It believes wholeheartedly what it sees. I certainly did.
Just awful, awful stuff.
While some pornographers might claim to be troubled by the knowledge that young kids are viewing their work and thus are influenced by it, suggested remedies are beyond laughable and demonstrate that they actually have no understanding of what’s happening:
Many “sex-positive” pornographers claim they can prevent this by mitigating artifice in their videos. One such personality is porn actress Stoya, who told The New York Times she believes porn can be a good thing.
Although Stoya admits she’s troubled about her work’s influence on young people (it apparently keeps her “awake at night”), her answer is to make her pornography more realistic, more female-centered, and more contextual. For example, Stoya lauds a practice in some BDSM porn (bondage, domination/discipline, sadism, and masochism) that encourages “aftercare,” which is essentially two partners “checking in” after brutalizing each other in bed.
Oh. Okay. Problem solved.
While I would like to believe that the majority of Americans, especially parents, have a problem with children viewing pornography, obviously not everyone does:
Nadine Strossen, the former national president of the ACLU, argue that minors’ access to porn content is a “free speech” issue, noting young people have a constitutional right to information about sexual health.
[Ed. Because incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism, and unthinkable physical violence is all about “sexual health”.]
There is some legislative pushback taking place, however, and one hopes to see more states make similar bipartisan decisions:
…legislators are finally starting to step up. Louisiana state representative Laurie Schlegel was one of the first lawmakers to break ground on this issue. Her bill imposed age verification requirements on sites like Pornhub, and as a result, traffic to that site is down by 80 percent in her state. Other states have now followed suit, with similar protective bills gaining bipartisan support in Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia, and Texas. These age verification bills are progress, and they must be replicated across America.
With that, I am reminded of an article I read a few years ago, wherein the popular performer, Billie Eilish opened up about viewing porn at a young age and the very negative impact it had on her:
“As a woman, I think porn is a disgrace. I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest. I started watching porn when I was like 11,” she said, telling Howard it helped her feel like “one of the guys.” “I think it really destroyed my brain and I feel incredibly devastated that I was exposed to so much porn.”
She frequently watched violent pornography, which she believes contributed to her suffering from sleep paralysis and night terrors. The “abusive” porn also led to problems in the bedroom once she was older and had become sexually active herself.
“I’m so angry that porn is so loved, and I’m so angry at myself for thinking that it was okay,” she continued…
When I was 10 and 11-years old there was no internet. And despite a family implosion (parents divorced), I remained cocooned in the bubble of childhood and knew nothing of the adult world. I didn’t even know what divorce meant! I was still playing with dolls, roller skating on metal skates, reading Nancy Drew mysteries, riding bikes through the neighborhood, and occasionally watching The Beverly Hillbillies or Get Smart. I cannot imagine, not for one second, the devastating impact viewing the pornography described above would have had on me at that tender age, and the impact it would have on any future relationships I had.
Read the entire piece as the writer also provides links to studies showing what happens to developing minds when viewing porn, etc.
–Dana
