Over the last two decades we did a huge social experiment where porn availability went from occasional access to highly restricted printed material to every imaginable flavor being anonymously available 24/7 on a handheld device people carry with them every day. If it "causes cancer", so to speak, we should have unquestionable evidence at this point.
The "cancer" would be psychological. There is zero chance, no matter how universal, that we could possibly get unquestionable evidence about that. People still don't believe in ADHD. what makes you think we'd have a snowballs chance in hell that everyone would see mental issues and just nod their head and say "lets ban porn".
We don't even have unquestionable evidence about smoking. Tons of people say things like "I'm more likely to be hit by a car so I'm just going to smoke"
What kind of evidence do you expect to see? I feel like I’ve read about a fair number of problems which this could be related to or even simply aggravate.
There probably hasn’t been enough time for any studies to link a problem straight from widespread porn emergence all the way to damage in childrens’ development, though. Porn wasn’t, like, WIDELY available until maybe 20 years ago. We’ve basically had a single generation to study, and they’re not even done being kids yet for the most part.
Still, the damage seems like an obvious outcome to me.
Everyone I knew in school copied porn images on diskettes downloaded from BBSes. That's a lot longer ago. We copied them like crazy lol. It's not a recent thing.
And it wasn't soft stuff. I remember having pics of the aftermath of bukkake sessions etc. Yet I'm extremely respectful of women especially in bed.
Not that I think porn use is necessarily linked to these things, but rates of people who never marry are on a steep rise, people report dating as being subjectively more difficult, and the WHO considers the loneliness epidemic to be a global health concern. It seems like there's an obvious normalcy bias at play when someone says "X thing can't be bad or we would've noticed during the last n decades".
Same deal when people say plastics can't be that bad of a pollutant because people are fine. Have you looked at people? Half the US is obese.
Plastics and porn or food and sedentary lifestyles and social media might all not be the problem, but "look, things are fine" seems like bad reasoning either way. People are very obviously mentally and physically unwell, the trends there are bad, and the reasons aren't well understood.
Generally I agree. People can live the lives they want if it's not harming others. I tend to think people should be free to buy hard drugs as well despite potential harms (but that we should very harshly punish e.g. needle littering and not give any lenience for harm people cause on those drugs). But I do think those drugs should only be available to adults, and it's sensible to require age verification there. If porn turns out to be harmful, it seems like it's appropriate to restrict it from children in the same way we would for drugs.
That said, that has nothing to do with my point, which was that it's hard to look at trends in things like mental health, physical health, and relationships, and declare that there must not be any problems or we would've noticed by now. I see that argument made about all sorts of speculative problems, and it seems crazy to me.
The choking thing seems like pretty strong evidence to me! I don't want to sound like a prude, but it is in fact risky to choke people, and it doesn't seem like there's a good alternative explanation for how this kink has become so common.
It's usually not actual choking (also called breath play). Usually just a firm grab by the throat. It's pleasurable for me too and most people don't go further than that. Real choking leaves serious bruising. I only know it being practiced by serious BDSM people and only a small subset at that. And always with full consent and safety.
But my point is, what most people call 'choking' isn't choking but just some mild consensual degradation. Which is very pleasurable to people with submissive tendencies, of which there are a lot more than people realise.
