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I think an honest conversation about porn access and how much and what we want available as a society (especially to teenagers) is overdue. The internet comple

I think an honest conversation about porn access and how much and what we want available as a society (especially to teenagers) is overdue. The internet completely firebombed the obscenity regulations for better or worse and we've just been ignoring the consequences, due to various reasons.

gertlex 2y ago
Curious: What are the "obscenity regulations", and which entities are "the internet" doing firebombing, in this case?
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  Obscenity regulations are laws that censor the creation or distribution of creative works considered to be obscene, eg show a woman's ankle, or acknowledge that sex acts exist.
- naming_the_user 2y ago
  Well, as an example, in the UK we had fairly tight control of pornographic material. Soft porn magazines were top shelf only. Movies had age ratings. I'm not that old and I remember the controversy when someone found a sex game in GTA: San Andreas _if you hacked the game_. Nowadays a kid with a smartphone googles and there you are, AI generated hardcore porn with your classmate's face. Different world.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Historically, US pornography has been regulated on the basis of whether or not it is obscene, defined by various Supreme Court tests over the years. If it is not obscene, it's afforded First Amendment protections and allowed. If it is obscene, it can be regulated by various entities, should they choose to do so. Since the mid-70s(?), the Miller test [0] has been used. Parent is pointing out that the Internet effectively obliterated the technical ability of various government entities to impose restrictions of any sort on obscene material, and consequently there's been essentially no regulation of internationally-based pornographic content since the 90s. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
explorigin 2y ago
It feels like honest conversation doesn't happen so much in the public space these days if an issue can be politicized. But what will be very interesting to track would be the rate of change of social vices in the next 15 years.
- fullshark 2y ago
  True. I believe a neo-temperance movement is on the horizon personally, due to opening the vice floodgates re: smartphones.
tensor 2y ago
I'd rather have an honest conversation about teenagers having access to violent media, especially how violence is absolutely normalized in the US. Seeing a boob never killed anyone, but violence kills thousands every year in the US, including many children.
- explorigin 2y ago
  > Seeing a boob never killed anyone This is a straw-man attack. Porn produces a huge dopamine dump. Do some research on how dopamine works in the brain. Regular dopamine dumps can have a huge impact on quality of life leading to depression and building an addiction cycle.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- bhouston 2y ago
  Porn consumption rates are inversely proportional to rapes [1] and likely sex in general (I'm extrapolating, but I think it is reasonable [2]?), which likely then impacts birthrates (again another extrapolation, but again I think reasonable.) So high porn consumption likely reduces birthrates. I wouldn't be surprised if there is literature to back that up. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178909000445 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13591... [2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sexual-intelligence/202208/why-todays-teens-are-having-so-much-less-sex https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sexual-intelligence/...
- lr4444lr 2y ago
  I encourage you to read more into the change of sexual behaviors in men who consume porn who are already in relationships and the effect this has on the women and overall relationship satisfaction. Yeah, maybe seeing a boob never killed someone, but aggressive grabbing, intimidating a partner who doesn't seem "normal", and expecting rougher more extreme sex acts that women are not comfortable with are not harmless.
  - 2y ago
jimt1234 2y ago
Honestly, I think the conversation needs to be more around identity/AuthN systems that can balance trust and privacy. It's not an easy problem to solve, even in "meat space", but I think problems like access to porn go away if proper identity is solved.
dragontamer 2y ago
Airplane is a PG movie where there are literally tities and the finale involves a blowjob joke. We can certainly discuss 1980s vs 2020s and how the Overton window has shifted. Boobs weren't as big of a deal in our past. 80s were also quite violent in our movies/media as well. It seems like everything has been clamped down. I was surprised to see the dick of the David Statue get messed up in the children's movie 'The Goonies' for example. Apparently dicks weren't a big deal either even into the 90s.
- atmavatar 2y ago
  The Andromeda Strain from 1971 is rated G and features a naked woman in a bathtub early in the movie. It's not something I'd really noticed before I had a similar conversation with someone regarding how movie ratings have changed over time vis a vis nudity. That aside, it's a brilliant sci fi movie, and I'd recommend it to everyone here :)
DoingIsLearning 2y ago
> how much and what we want available as a society We as a democratic society should want that everything legal is available. It is up to parents to take care of what is available to their offspring. Much like any other potential risk behaviours. And it is up to other democracies to curb the US's continued attempt at pushing their protestant obsession with sexuality onto everyone else.
- bhouston 2y ago
  > It is up to parents to take care of what is available to their offspring. Much like any other potential risk behaviours. Truly addictive things, e.g. dopamine hijacks, are hard to make widely available. Gambling, dopamine drugs (cocaine, meth, etc.), porn, etc.
NikolaNovak 2y ago
I would agree, though we might (or not:) vehemently disagree with the premises and conclusions. I find Pornography in specific, and sex in general, is something people have very strong basic opinions about. In particular, a lot of people intersect religious morals into the picture, which can make conversations difficult at best, disingenuous more commonly :-(. For example, my own basic approach is "what do you mean 'obscenity regulations'? What kind of silly thing is that amongst adults?". It then tends to get complicated due to numbers - often people promoting such regulations and laws upon other adults are hugely vehement about government over reach and regulation in other areas, so it ends up feeling like hipocrisy or "I want government to ban things I don't like and allow things I do like". But this is hacker news! Nothing stops are from trying to have that honest conversation :-). My honest opinion is that I come from a prudeish culture, and thank goodness teenagers today can have their key questions answered more openly and have access to things I had to sneak and feel guilty about. Access to porn is not in top ten things I worry about for my kids, but I am willing to listen otherwise :-).
- fullshark 2y ago
  I think the status quo post-internet world is better than the world pre-internet. I think good outweighs the bad, a lot of this though is from genuinely informative message boards and websites re: sexuality which you highlight. The hypothetical homosexual teenager in a small town that can now find like minded people and talk to them about their sexuality and make sense of it is a godsend. I'm more thinking about the downsides of the erotic material being available 24/7 to every person in their pocket and inducing addictive behaviors. The teenage boys that have seen explicit pornography before ever even kissing a girl, and how that influences their expectations and behaviors while dating. The incels that don't even attempt to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex but instead indulge in auto-erotic gratification from consuming digital content (hikikomori), soon to be augmented by AI. These people are chasing dopamine hits instead of genuine human connection, something formally driven by lust/sexual desire for better or worse and it's going to have major cultural impacts.
  - Hizonner 2y ago
    I saw explicit pornography before ever kissing a girl. So did everybody I knew well enough to have known whether they had or not. In the 1970s. We did not have an Internet. No, the volume wasn't nearly as high, nor was the technical quality. As for "expectations", non-porn media also have horrible expectations about gender and relationships. In fact, they have more of them and are able to convey them in more detail. And the fact is that today's teenaged boys are a lot more respectful toward their prospective-or-desired partners than my cohort was, porn or no porn.
ben_w 2y ago
> especially to teenagers An honest conversation, sure. Porn is a hyperstimulus, unrealistic and so reality seems bad in comparison. This may be why teens these days are having fewer accidental pregnancies. Those missing accidental teen pregnancies, according to a comment I saw on Hacker News recently and never checked the veracity of, are a big part of why fertility rates are now below replacement levels. The dichotomy that won't be believed: Ban the "adult" content to force the teens to grow up before they need to; or let them be "corrupted" so that they can keep their innocence. (Scare quotes because I remember being a teenager, even if it was the 90s).

gertlex 2y ago

Curious: What are the "obscenity regulations", and which entities are "the internet" doing firebombing, in this case?

idle_zealot 2y ago
Obscenity regulations are laws that censor the creation or distribution of creative works considered to be obscene, eg show a woman's ankle, or acknowledge that sex acts exist.
naming_the_user 2y ago
Well, as an example, in the UK we had fairly tight control of pornographic material. Soft porn magazines were top shelf only. Movies had age ratings. I'm not that old and I remember the controversy when someone found a sex game in GTA: San Andreas _if you hacked the game_. Nowadays a kid with a smartphone googles and there you are, AI generated hardcore porn with your classmate's face. Different world.
ethbr1 2y ago
Historically, US pornography has been regulated on the basis of whether or not it is obscene, defined by various Supreme Court tests over the years. If it is not obscene, it's afforded First Amendment protections and allowed. If it is obscene, it can be regulated by various entities, should they choose to do so. Since the mid-70s(?), the Miller test [0] has been used. Parent is pointing out that the Internet effectively obliterated the technical ability of various government entities to impose restrictions of any sort on obscene material, and consequently there's been essentially no regulation of internationally-based pornographic content since the 90s. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

explorigin 2y ago

It feels like honest conversation doesn't happen so much in the public space these days if an issue can be politicized. But what will be very interesting to track would be the rate of change of social vices in the next 15 years.

fullshark 2y ago
True. I believe a neo-temperance movement is on the horizon personally, due to opening the vice floodgates re: smartphones.

tensor 2y ago

I'd rather have an honest conversation about teenagers having access to violent media, especially how violence is absolutely normalized in the US. Seeing a boob never killed anyone, but violence kills thousands every year in the US, including many children.

explorigin 2y ago
> Seeing a boob never killed anyone This is a straw-man attack. Porn produces a huge dopamine dump. Do some research on how dopamine works in the brain. Regular dopamine dumps can have a huge impact on quality of life leading to depression and building an addiction cycle.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
bhouston 2y ago
Porn consumption rates are inversely proportional to rapes [1] and likely sex in general (I'm extrapolating, but I think it is reasonable [2]?), which likely then impacts birthrates (again another extrapolation, but again I think reasonable.) So high porn consumption likely reduces birthrates. I wouldn't be surprised if there is literature to back that up. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1359178909000445 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13591... [2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sexual-intelligence/202208/why-todays-teens-are-having-so-much-less-sex https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/sexual-intelligence/...
lr4444lr 2y ago
I encourage you to read more into the change of sexual behaviors in men who consume porn who are already in relationships and the effect this has on the women and overall relationship satisfaction. Yeah, maybe seeing a boob never killed someone, but aggressive grabbing, intimidating a partner who doesn't seem "normal", and expecting rougher more extreme sex acts that women are not comfortable with are not harmless.
- 2y ago

jimt1234 2y ago

Honestly, I think the conversation needs to be more around identity/AuthN systems that can balance trust and privacy. It's not an easy problem to solve, even in "meat space", but I think problems like access to porn go away if proper identity is solved.

dragontamer 2y ago

Airplane is a PG movie where there are literally tities and the finale involves a blowjob joke. We can certainly discuss 1980s vs 2020s and how the Overton window has shifted. Boobs weren't as big of a deal in our past. 80s were also quite violent in our movies/media as well. It seems like everything has been clamped down. I was surprised to see the dick of the David Statue get messed up in the children's movie 'The Goonies' for example. Apparently dicks weren't a big deal either even into the 90s.

atmavatar 2y ago
The Andromeda Strain from 1971 is rated G and features a naked woman in a bathtub early in the movie. It's not something I'd really noticed before I had a similar conversation with someone regarding how movie ratings have changed over time vis a vis nudity. That aside, it's a brilliant sci fi movie, and I'd recommend it to everyone here :)

DoingIsLearning 2y ago

> how much and what we want available as a society We as a democratic society should want that everything legal is available. It is up to parents to take care of what is available to their offspring. Much like any other potential risk behaviours. And it is up to other democracies to curb the US's continued attempt at pushing their protestant obsession with sexuality onto everyone else.

bhouston 2y ago
> It is up to parents to take care of what is available to their offspring. Much like any other potential risk behaviours. Truly addictive things, e.g. dopamine hijacks, are hard to make widely available. Gambling, dopamine drugs (cocaine, meth, etc.), porn, etc.

NikolaNovak 2y ago

I would agree, though we might (or not:) vehemently disagree with the premises and conclusions. I find Pornography in specific, and sex in general, is something people have very strong basic opinions about. In particular, a lot of people intersect religious morals into the picture, which can make conversations difficult at best, disingenuous more commonly :-(. For example, my own basic approach is "what do you mean 'obscenity regulations'? What kind of silly thing is that amongst adults?". It then tends to get complicated due to numbers - often people promoting such regulations and laws upon other adults are hugely vehement about government over reach and regulation in other areas, so it ends up feeling like hipocrisy or "I want government to ban things I don't like and allow things I do like". But this is hacker news! Nothing stops are from trying to have that honest conversation :-). My honest opinion is that I come from a prudeish culture, and thank goodness teenagers today can have their key questions answered more openly and have access to things I had to sneak and feel guilty about. Access to porn is not in top ten things I worry about for my kids, but I am willing to listen otherwise :-).

fullshark 2y ago
I think the status quo post-internet world is better than the world pre-internet. I think good outweighs the bad, a lot of this though is from genuinely informative message boards and websites re: sexuality which you highlight. The hypothetical homosexual teenager in a small town that can now find like minded people and talk to them about their sexuality and make sense of it is a godsend. I'm more thinking about the downsides of the erotic material being available 24/7 to every person in their pocket and inducing addictive behaviors. The teenage boys that have seen explicit pornography before ever even kissing a girl, and how that influences their expectations and behaviors while dating. The incels that don't even attempt to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex but instead indulge in auto-erotic gratification from consuming digital content (hikikomori), soon to be augmented by AI. These people are chasing dopamine hits instead of genuine human connection, something formally driven by lust/sexual desire for better or worse and it's going to have major cultural impacts.
- Hizonner 2y ago
  I saw explicit pornography before ever kissing a girl. So did everybody I knew well enough to have known whether they had or not. In the 1970s. We did not have an Internet. No, the volume wasn't nearly as high, nor was the technical quality. As for "expectations", non-porn media also have horrible expectations about gender and relationships. In fact, they have more of them and are able to convey them in more detail. And the fact is that today's teenaged boys are a lot more respectful toward their prospective-or-desired partners than my cohort was, porn or no porn.

ben_w 2y ago

> especially to teenagers An honest conversation, sure. Porn is a hyperstimulus, unrealistic and so reality seems bad in comparison. This may be why teens these days are having fewer accidental pregnancies. Those missing accidental teen pregnancies, according to a comment I saw on Hacker News recently and never checked the veracity of, are a big part of why fertility rates are now below replacement levels. The dichotomy that won't be believed: Ban the "adult" content to force the teens to grow up before they need to; or let them be "corrupted" so that they can keep their innocence. (Scare quotes because I remember being a teenager, even if it was the 90s).