4 ms·

Harmful in which way? Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction. High school students with phones at school are showing porn to t

by pyman 1y ago

Harmful in which way? Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction. High school students with phones at school are showing porn to their friends, even younger kids. Some schools have banned phones, but teens aged 12–17 can still access porn sites freely when they get home. In my opinion, gambling sites and porn sites should always verify age, same goes for shops selling tobacco and alcohol.

const_cast 1y ago
> Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction. I've heard this before, but I've never, not even once, gotten an evidence-based approach to if this is true. I've only ever gotten morality-based arguments, which, IMO, aren't arguments at all and aren't worth mine, or anyone else's, time. We cannot just act like pornography being harmful is a foregone conclusion. No, we need to prove it. We should not be legislating things, and giving up our privacy and freedom, before even defining a problem. Intuitively, sure, it makes sense that porn is bad. It depicts sex, and in western puritanical cultures, that's bad. If people are exposed to sex, surely they're at greater risk of teen pregnancy, or STIs, or whatever. But is this actually the case? In the past 20 years, teen pregnancy has fallen off a cliff. Rates of STIs are lower, too. In areas that teach abstinence-only education, they actually have higher teen pregnancy. Taking a more puritanical approach does not guarantee better outcomes, and based off the real-world statistics, it seems to do the opposite. In addition, I have zero reason to believe porn addiction is even real. There's a lot of dispute among psychologists, with most not recognizing it as an addiction. The problem here is that an addiction is not a compulsive action. An addiction needs to impair your everyday life. That's the clinical definition of an addiction. We're not seeing a lot of bad outcomes or impairment from pornography. It is exceedingly rare that someone who is consuming pornography is doing it to a degree where it negatively affects their lives. Sure, it's possible, but for the vast, vast majority of people this just does not appear to be the case. Now, to get ahead of the curve because I've already had this conversation a hundred times - no, I am not addicted to pornography and I very rarely consume it. I have a happy and healthy sex life. I just reject the idea that it's harmful with no evidence provided, and I reject moral arguments in general.
- pyman 1y ago
  Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. What I mean by porn addiction: In 2025, the average person watches around 6 hours per week of pornography. That's from recent industry and survey data. In 2005, the average was roughly 1.7 hours. So porn is clearly becoming more addictive. Sex work has exploded online, especially with webcams and platforms like OnlyFans. In 2020 there were over a million sex workers. Now, there are over 4 million. And that doesn't include the many who are pushed into cam work just to survive. This isn't just about kids spending money to watch their crush undress on a porn site. It's also about the workers, many of whom are exploited because the demand keeps growing. This industry needs regulation, not to censor it, but to make it safe for everyone.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    > Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. You're right - I haven't, because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them. Also, sex work and pornography can't lazily be compared like that. No "demand" for sex work makes people become sex workers. People become sex workers because they enjoy it, or because they're fine with the outcome in exchange for the money. The actual "harm" done by being a sex worker varies based on each person's moral beliefs. Some people don't care about that kind of stuff, so they're fine doing it. And, especially if you do solo work, there's very little real risk. There's only social risk, which again, is a different thing aligned with morality. In terms of actual, real, tangible harm - what is the harm of sitting in front of a webcam and stroking it? Nothing. The answer is nothing. This is moral plight bullshit. I understand you don't like it and you think it's the downfall of the nuclear family or some other equally stupid bullshit - but the reality is nobody actually cares what you think. We care about outcomes. And, right now, I'm not seeing the outcomes which align with this being compared to fucking tabacco. And I used to smoke.
    - 1y ago
Quarrel 1y ago
I don't doubt porn addiction is somewhat harmful to some people (I doubt it is nearly up there with alcohol, which afaik is easily in a class of its own). I've also had a kid in a London school for the last 9 years, so I'm in the parent whatsapp groups etc, and talk to parents about what should be done. For a politician, getting parents to agree to "Should we protect kids from harmful material on the internet?" is an easy statement to make, and an easy one for parents to answer. The next steps are the hard ones, which is why enforcement of this legislation was delayed over and over again. This was first legally mandated in 2017! Then delayed, abandoned, delayed, reintroduced, etc. Why? Because getting the implementation right is very hard, and I do not think that this current system will be effective at stopping much harm to consumers of pornography, but I do think it will lead to terrible privacy breaches.
- pyman 1y ago
  I'm a teacher in a private high school which allows students to have smartphones. Kids have unlimited access to porn and they circulate it during school hours, and there's not much we can do about it. AFAIK, the UK forced the big porn tech giants to hide explicit images and videos from the public unless users verify their age. Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and other companies failed to do that. These US businesses turned a blind eye to porn just to make more money. I think what the UK is doing is a step in the right direction. It's about holding the billionaires behind these apps accountable for what they show to kids. It won't fix everything, but it will force the big players to change their software. And that's the first step toward making things better. In my opinion, this should be a universal law: want to gamble, watch porn, smoke or buy alcohol? Show your ID. Simple as that. > I do not think that this current system will be effective at stopping much harm to consumers of pornography, but I do think it will lead to terrible privacy breaches. You mean the system that verifies age could get hacked and expose all the IDs people uploaded? Yeah, that's the risk. But we already hand over ID for flights, banks, hotels, etc. The real issue isn't showing ID, it's trusting the people behind these porn sites, which we know cannot be trusted.
  - Quarrel 1y ago
    > AFAIK, the UK forced the big porn tech giants to hide explicit images and videos from the public unless users verify their age. Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and other companies failed to do that. These US businesses turned a blind eye to porn just to make more money. Until just now, no, they had not forced them. They had repeatedly delayed and denied, just trying to win electoral points. I think you underestimate how easy these regulations will be to get around. I was once a teenage boy with some tech-nous. This would have been a walk in the park then, and kids these days know a lot more than I did back then, not to mention all the bad-actors that will happily help them. It isn't as simple as "oh no, so IDs will be leaked". Also, if you think you can understand the depth of the people behind the porn sites, you're in for a new awakening. Of course, you can't trust them- but if you could, then there would be new porn sites the next day that you could not. Which sites will implement these changes? Which ones will not? The answer to this is half the battle being faced ..

by pyman 1y ago

const_cast 1y ago

> Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction. I've heard this before, but I've never, not even once, gotten an evidence-based approach to if this is true. I've only ever gotten morality-based arguments, which, IMO, aren't arguments at all and aren't worth mine, or anyone else's, time. We cannot just act like pornography being harmful is a foregone conclusion. No, we need to prove it. We should not be legislating things, and giving up our privacy and freedom, before even defining a problem. Intuitively, sure, it makes sense that porn is bad. It depicts sex, and in western puritanical cultures, that's bad. If people are exposed to sex, surely they're at greater risk of teen pregnancy, or STIs, or whatever. But is this actually the case? In the past 20 years, teen pregnancy has fallen off a cliff. Rates of STIs are lower, too. In areas that teach abstinence-only education, they actually have higher teen pregnancy. Taking a more puritanical approach does not guarantee better outcomes, and based off the real-world statistics, it seems to do the opposite. In addition, I have zero reason to believe porn addiction is even real. There's a lot of dispute among psychologists, with most not recognizing it as an addiction. The problem here is that an addiction is not a compulsive action. An addiction needs to impair your everyday life. That's the clinical definition of an addiction. We're not seeing a lot of bad outcomes or impairment from pornography. It is exceedingly rare that someone who is consuming pornography is doing it to a degree where it negatively affects their lives. Sure, it's possible, but for the vast, vast majority of people this just does not appear to be the case. Now, to get ahead of the curve because I've already had this conversation a hundred times - no, I am not addicted to pornography and I very rarely consume it. I have a happy and healthy sex life. I just reject the idea that it's harmful with no evidence provided, and I reject moral arguments in general.

pyman 1y ago
Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. What I mean by porn addiction: In 2025, the average person watches around 6 hours per week of pornography. That's from recent industry and survey data. In 2005, the average was roughly 1.7 hours. So porn is clearly becoming more addictive. Sex work has exploded online, especially with webcams and platforms like OnlyFans. In 2020 there were over a million sex workers. Now, there are over 4 million. And that doesn't include the many who are pushed into cam work just to survive. This isn't just about kids spending money to watch their crush undress on a porn site. It's also about the workers, many of whom are exploited because the demand keeps growing. This industry needs regulation, not to censor it, but to make it safe for everyone.
- const_cast 1y ago
  > Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. You're right - I haven't, because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them. Also, sex work and pornography can't lazily be compared like that. No "demand" for sex work makes people become sex workers. People become sex workers because they enjoy it, or because they're fine with the outcome in exchange for the money. The actual "harm" done by being a sex worker varies based on each person's moral beliefs. Some people don't care about that kind of stuff, so they're fine doing it. And, especially if you do solo work, there's very little real risk. There's only social risk, which again, is a different thing aligned with morality. In terms of actual, real, tangible harm - what is the harm of sitting in front of a webcam and stroking it? Nothing. The answer is nothing. This is moral plight bullshit. I understand you don't like it and you think it's the downfall of the nuclear family or some other equally stupid bullshit - but the reality is nobody actually cares what you think. We care about outcomes. And, right now, I'm not seeing the outcomes which align with this being compared to fucking tabacco. And I used to smoke.
  - 1y ago

Quarrel 1y ago

I don't doubt porn addiction is somewhat harmful to some people (I doubt it is nearly up there with alcohol, which afaik is easily in a class of its own). I've also had a kid in a London school for the last 9 years, so I'm in the parent whatsapp groups etc, and talk to parents about what should be done. For a politician, getting parents to agree to "Should we protect kids from harmful material on the internet?" is an easy statement to make, and an easy one for parents to answer. The next steps are the hard ones, which is why enforcement of this legislation was delayed over and over again. This was first legally mandated in 2017! Then delayed, abandoned, delayed, reintroduced, etc. Why? Because getting the implementation right is very hard, and I do not think that this current system will be effective at stopping much harm to consumers of pornography, but I do think it will lead to terrible privacy breaches.

pyman 1y ago
I'm a teacher in a private high school which allows students to have smartphones. Kids have unlimited access to porn and they circulate it during school hours, and there's not much we can do about it. AFAIK, the UK forced the big porn tech giants to hide explicit images and videos from the public unless users verify their age. Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and other companies failed to do that. These US businesses turned a blind eye to porn just to make more money. I think what the UK is doing is a step in the right direction. It's about holding the billionaires behind these apps accountable for what they show to kids. It won't fix everything, but it will force the big players to change their software. And that's the first step toward making things better. In my opinion, this should be a universal law: want to gamble, watch porn, smoke or buy alcohol? Show your ID. Simple as that. > I do not think that this current system will be effective at stopping much harm to consumers of pornography, but I do think it will lead to terrible privacy breaches. You mean the system that verifies age could get hacked and expose all the IDs people uploaded? Yeah, that's the risk. But we already hand over ID for flights, banks, hotels, etc. The real issue isn't showing ID, it's trusting the people behind these porn sites, which we know cannot be trusted.
- Quarrel 1y ago
  > AFAIK, the UK forced the big porn tech giants to hide explicit images and videos from the public unless users verify their age. Twitter, Telegram, WhatsApp, Reddit and other companies failed to do that. These US businesses turned a blind eye to porn just to make more money. Until just now, no, they had not forced them. They had repeatedly delayed and denied, just trying to win electoral points. I think you underestimate how easy these regulations will be to get around. I was once a teenage boy with some tech-nous. This would have been a walk in the park then, and kids these days know a lot more than I did back then, not to mention all the bad-actors that will happily help them. It isn't as simple as "oh no, so IDs will be leaked". Also, if you think you can understand the depth of the people behind the porn sites, you're in for a new awakening. Of course, you can't trust them- but if you could, then there would be new porn sites the next day that you could not. Which sites will implement these changes? Which ones will not? The answer to this is half the battle being faced ..