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.
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.