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The older kids are often the easy source for the younger kids. At 8 I had already seen a Playboy and knew kids who had seen harder stuff. I could have easily go

The older kids are often the easy source for the younger kids. At 8 I had already seen a Playboy and knew kids who had seen harder stuff. I could have easily gotten a teenager to get me cigarettes (and drugs, but I didn’t know what those were really). I had also already tasted alcohol. Any of this I could have stolen from any number of places. At 16 it was easier, but at 8 it wasn’t hard.

sarchertech 8mo ago
There’s a difference between “saw a playboy once” and having regular or semi regular access to it. Same goes for alcohol and cigarettes. If you had regular access to those things you had parents who didn’t care. It’s also not about kids on the margin. The vast majority of 8 year olds have not tried alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes.
- cgriswald 8mo ago
  There’s also a difference between “saw my first” and “saw a playboy once.” I need you to understand I was a good kid whose parents cared until they divorced some years later. And yet I had multiple sources of access to this stuff without looking for it. Now, as an adult, I can see more ways I could have gotten it if I wanted it.
  - sarchertech 8mo ago
    Again, if you occasionally caught a glimpse of a playboy, that’s not a significant problem. If you were regularly smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and reading porn magazines at 8 yeas, your parents fell down on the job. An 8 year old doesn’t have the wherewithal to hide that from parents who are paying attention. > Now, as an adult, I can see more ways I could have gotten it if I wanted it. Yeah a kid with the mind of an adult could access all kinds of illegal material. Making it illegal to rob a bank doesn’t mean that’s it’s literally impossible. It’s about stopping enough people from trying that society functions. The state of the world before the internet was that it was hard to keep a kid from ever glimpsing a titty, but it was relatively easy to keep a kid from having regular access to hard core porn-much, much easier than it is now. My take is that as a society we need to figure out some way to make this easy enough for parents to do that it becomes the default. Just like drugs, alcohol, and porno mags. Another issue is that online porn and algorithmic brain rot is free (at least enough of it is). With IRL contraband, lack of money is a big limiting factor for kids. The IRL equivalent would be if the local liberal let 8 year olds checkout hard core porn DVDs.
    - cgriswald 8mo ago
      Yeah. Anyway, porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs were very accessible to me despite being a good kid with parents who cared in a world where those were all legally forbidden to me. All this talk of “glimpses” is you trying to read too deep into a single example. I’m not using my adult mind to figure out how I could have gotten this stuff as a kid. I’m using my adult mind to recognize that if I had been motivated as a kid, there are additional ways I. as a kid, would have been able to figure out how to get it. I’m not throwing my hands up in the air and saying this is impossible or that we should just open up access. I’m saying requiring ID for access wasn’t effective before and it won’t be effective in a world with easier access. Yet the cost of that is quite high. Scan these threads for actual ideas, I’m not arguing for any particular one but there are plenty of them and some I think are good.
      - sarchertech 8mo ago
        >Yeah. Anyway, porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs were very accessible to me despite being a good kid with parents who cared in a world where those were all legally forbidden to me. Were they accessible to you, or do you just think they were accessible to you? How many of these teenagers who would let you try a cigarette would have been willing to keep supplying you cigarettes regularly. How many would have been willing to keep buying you alcohol? >All this talk of “glimpses” is you trying to read too deep into a single example. No, it's glimpses, because it's about at the very least semi-regular access, not preventing every single child from having tiny amounts of alcohol. Look at my reply the other poster in this thread. There are dozens of studies that show conclusively that minimum age drinking laws reduce alcohol use among children, and reduce alcoholism later in life. >I’m saying requiring ID for access wasn’t effective before But yes it was effective. Read the studies. Minimum age drinking laws have been shown almost universally to be effective. Not at stopping every child from drinking but at harm reduction. >I’m using my adult mind to recognize that if I had been motivated as a kid, there are additional ways I. as a kid, would have been able to figure out how to get it. The level an effort an 8 year old would have to go through to get regular access to cigarettes and alcohol in the US, would require an enormous level of motivation which almost no 8 year old has, and it would be outright impossible to do without a semi-observant parent noticing. That's the whole point of making it hard to do. It takes much less effort for a kid to walk to the library and check out a hardcore porn DVD than it does for him to convince an 18 year old to buy one for him. Most kids just aren't going to go through the hassle of doing the latter, but they'd do the former in a heartbeat. All things being equal, greater motivation is required to overcome greater obstacles.

sarchertech 8mo ago

There’s a difference between “saw a playboy once” and having regular or semi regular access to it. Same goes for alcohol and cigarettes. If you had regular access to those things you had parents who didn’t care. It’s also not about kids on the margin. The vast majority of 8 year olds have not tried alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes.

cgriswald 8mo ago
There’s also a difference between “saw my first” and “saw a playboy once.” I need you to understand I was a good kid whose parents cared until they divorced some years later. And yet I had multiple sources of access to this stuff without looking for it. Now, as an adult, I can see more ways I could have gotten it if I wanted it.
- sarchertech 8mo ago
  Again, if you occasionally caught a glimpse of a playboy, that’s not a significant problem. If you were regularly smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and reading porn magazines at 8 yeas, your parents fell down on the job. An 8 year old doesn’t have the wherewithal to hide that from parents who are paying attention. > Now, as an adult, I can see more ways I could have gotten it if I wanted it. Yeah a kid with the mind of an adult could access all kinds of illegal material. Making it illegal to rob a bank doesn’t mean that’s it’s literally impossible. It’s about stopping enough people from trying that society functions. The state of the world before the internet was that it was hard to keep a kid from ever glimpsing a titty, but it was relatively easy to keep a kid from having regular access to hard core porn-much, much easier than it is now. My take is that as a society we need to figure out some way to make this easy enough for parents to do that it becomes the default. Just like drugs, alcohol, and porno mags. Another issue is that online porn and algorithmic brain rot is free (at least enough of it is). With IRL contraband, lack of money is a big limiting factor for kids. The IRL equivalent would be if the local liberal let 8 year olds checkout hard core porn DVDs.
  - cgriswald 8mo ago
    Yeah. Anyway, porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs were very accessible to me despite being a good kid with parents who cared in a world where those were all legally forbidden to me. All this talk of “glimpses” is you trying to read too deep into a single example. I’m not using my adult mind to figure out how I could have gotten this stuff as a kid. I’m using my adult mind to recognize that if I had been motivated as a kid, there are additional ways I. as a kid, would have been able to figure out how to get it. I’m not throwing my hands up in the air and saying this is impossible or that we should just open up access. I’m saying requiring ID for access wasn’t effective before and it won’t be effective in a world with easier access. Yet the cost of that is quite high. Scan these threads for actual ideas, I’m not arguing for any particular one but there are plenty of them and some I think are good.
    - sarchertech 8mo ago
      >Yeah. Anyway, porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs were very accessible to me despite being a good kid with parents who cared in a world where those were all legally forbidden to me. Were they accessible to you, or do you just think they were accessible to you? How many of these teenagers who would let you try a cigarette would have been willing to keep supplying you cigarettes regularly. How many would have been willing to keep buying you alcohol? >All this talk of “glimpses” is you trying to read too deep into a single example. No, it's glimpses, because it's about at the very least semi-regular access, not preventing every single child from having tiny amounts of alcohol. Look at my reply the other poster in this thread. There are dozens of studies that show conclusively that minimum age drinking laws reduce alcohol use among children, and reduce alcoholism later in life. >I’m saying requiring ID for access wasn’t effective before But yes it was effective. Read the studies. Minimum age drinking laws have been shown almost universally to be effective. Not at stopping every child from drinking but at harm reduction. >I’m using my adult mind to recognize that if I had been motivated as a kid, there are additional ways I. as a kid, would have been able to figure out how to get it. The level an effort an 8 year old would have to go through to get regular access to cigarettes and alcohol in the US, would require an enormous level of motivation which almost no 8 year old has, and it would be outright impossible to do without a semi-observant parent noticing. That's the whole point of making it hard to do. It takes much less effort for a kid to walk to the library and check out a hardcore porn DVD than it does for him to convince an 18 year old to buy one for him. Most kids just aren't going to go through the hassle of doing the latter, but they'd do the former in a heartbeat. All things being equal, greater motivation is required to overcome greater obstacles.