I've had the internet for twenty years (since I was 8) and computer access since I was 3. Most of my friends had access since they were 10 or 11. We turned out fine. Some kids who have poor role models are going to ask for oral sex from boys or girls that like them. This was true 3000 years ago. It is true today. It will be true twenty years from now regardless of what silly idea the person who made the documentary has. "Part regulation, part cultural shift." Please. I'm not taking any more "think of the children" arguments for laws.
Also, I'm sick and tired of "child porn" including 14-18 year olds. It isn't child porn. They arn't children. They are teenagers. Some of them have been having sex for years. It should be a different offence to posses and it should not be an offence to posses if you were in a loving relationship (and similar in age, a 14 year old and a 16 or 17 year old, not a 40 year old and a 14 year old).
You know those dirty letters you got from your sweetheart when you were 17? Sexting is the same damn thing.
I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers are definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from predators. Just because they are old enough to have children of their own doesn't make them adults. Is not OK for sites or individuals to be collecting sexual images of children and distributing them.
Also, to all you folks on here saying that this is all fear mongering to take away or rights, you're missing the larger point here which is that the recent cultural shift with the prevalence of handheld computing has a lot of negative side effects and we need to rethink the norms. It is very rude to sit at the dinner table with people and be interacting with your mobile device rather than your real life companions. It wouldn't have been OK for a parent to sit at the dinner table having a phone call with colleagues back then and just because mobile Internet makes it silent it's still not OK.
That is just one example in a long list of things related to mobile computing that are considered OK but are actually rude or unhealthy.
I think part of the problem is this binary label of children | not-children, which then gives rise to infantilizing treatment.
The post you're responding to was splitting the spectrum into at least three parts, children | teenagers | adults, while you're arguing for children | adults - or at least that's how it looks. But I think you're on the wrong track there. Something that is closer to modelling a spectrum is better than a binary distinction, and is less likely to give rise to asinine laws / enforcement, like prosecuting teenagers for self-production of child porn.
There's a lot of room in the justice system for discretion at various levels. The law isn't absolute like that in practice.
I'm more complaining about people - allegedly human - making black and white distinctions. Actually, what I'm more upset about is people working from this self-serving system of "logic":
[general problem] -> [label]+ -> [general action]
For example, saying that casual sharing of media is copyright violation, which is theft, theft is bad and should be punished harshly, thus casual sharing of media should be punished harshly.
It bottle-necks the ambiguity of the real world through a single specific label - ideally one stuck at one end of the spectrum - and thereafter applying a consequence from that label. It's a corrupt mode of thought to my mind.
Regulatory policy tends not to involve "vague undefined gradients", but the trend of replacing the common law process, which evaluates each case on its own particulars, with static, top-down rules and regulations, is itself a bit of a recent novelty, and really hasn't worked out well.
> the recent cultural shift with the prevalence of handheld computing has a lot of negative side effects and we need to rethink the norms
One possible rethinking of the norms would be to worry less about teenagers, letting them sext if that's their thing, and advising them to not let societal abuse (e.g. bullying) get to them.
Scenario: a teenager sends a nude picture to a friend and the picture becomes public.
Possible solutions:
1. We keep teenagers from sexting, and people from seeing pictures that teenagers sexted.
2. We learn to not abuse teenagers who sexted and had their pictures leaked.
The latter is harder, but it's better long term. You can force people to not do what might harm them somehow, but you should look at the fundamentals: why do people suffer consequences when they sext? Is it because of the sexting itself, or the reaction people have to it?
> I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers are definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from predators. Just because they are old enough to have children of their own doesn't make them adults. Is not OK for sites or individuals to be collecting sexual images of children and distributing them.
Age is a spectrum. A better definition of, say, a 16 year old would be "not quite an adult, not quite a child". They're closer to adulthood than to childhood, but still don't have some of the baggage of adulthood. Talk to a 16 year old and you'll find out that they don't want that lack of baggage to keep them from enjoying the benefits of being treated like adults. I doubt having a line drawn that says you're not an adult until you're 18 years old, and until then you're still a child will keep working in this century. It worked when social dynamics between teenagers and adults were different.
> I doubt having a line drawn that says you're not an adult until you're 18 years old, and until then you're still a child will keep working in this century. It worked when social dynamics between teenagers and adults were different.
I'm not sure it ever really "worked", and seems to be an idea that is less than 100 years old. If it's failing already, I'm not sure we can count the couple generations it happened to it "working".
On the other getting abused when a nude pic is leaked can be seen as a defense from our societies, which are completely schizophrenic: sexual behavior is everywhere (like in this new ass dance) and the body is cleansed from any sign of naturality (e.g. removing pubic hair). It's like with death: a lot of blood in games and movies, but no more blood in real.
Parent isn't saying it's OK to distribute sexual images of young teenagers - he's saying it should be a different offence to child porn.
I agree with your point about a shifting culture requiring adjustment. But you should recognise that rudeness is just a cultural norm that shifts with geography and time - what you consider rude (phone at the table) is perfectly acceptable in my family. In fact we almost never ate at the table, and rarely all together, but we're a very closely bonded family. To assert your version of politeness as a requirement is arrogance.
I think teenagers still make mistakes and I do not support photos of them being in general circulation in any form. I am upset at a boyfriend getting charged with CP possession when his girlfriends parents find out that they are sexting.
I also am against photos of teenagers getting distributed, but some teenagers look for teenage porn, and it shouldn't be as big of an offence as actual CP.
>It is very rude to sit at the dinner table with people and be interacting with your mobile device rather than your real life companions.
1) Not a teenager-specific problem. I'll quickly and unobtrusively answer texts only if they're related to plans for later in the evening. If my mom gets a call from her mother or sister, she'll take it at the dinner table and talk for over an hour while expecting the rest of the family to immediately cease our conversations so she can hear clearly. But it's me who shouldn't be allowed to have a phone?
2) That's pretty easily addressed by parents setting expectations for dinner as a sacred time. Don't want to put your phone down, don't eat. This is not a reason for regulation, changes on the part of manufacturers, or for teenagers not to have phones at all.
I'm very upset that this is the top comment on here. 14 year old teenagers are definitely children and they do need to be protected by law from predators.
Everybody should be protected by law from predators. Including you. The claim was that what isn't needed is "protection" by law from recording activities that people willfully perform anyway.
14 year olds are not children they're teenagers and trying to protect them will never work they're young immature and incredibly horny and because talking about sexuality is taboo in our culture completely lost and misguided. Their only source of information being the internet are you surprised?
This has nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with parenting they use their phone at the diner table because their allowed it's up to their parents to teach their children manners , respect, values and everything they think would help them in adult life.
This is the result of parents ignoring their children period.
The internet is not a play ground but the same way we don't build a fenced walk way from our house to the school our children attend we shouldn't be fencing off the internet.
It's not going to protect them, anybody can jump over a fence to abduct a child and the same way anybody can bypass a porn filter.
Teenagers are not children, they are idiots. Puberty makes idiots of those going through it and it doesn't really stop until one is about 25. The average ten year old has a better appreciation of risk than their 14 year old self but one is a child and the other is not. Infantilisation does not help anyone grow up.
I appreciate your point about the social effects of ubiquitous handheld computing but frankly I grew up constantly being told to go outside or talk to people when I preferred to read. Being present in body only is not a new thing.
Your children will be different, your grandchildren moreso, their children will be as different from you as you are from the median Saudi. We're living in the future and assuming trends continue our descendants will be libertine aliens.
The idea that there is any significant difference between someone the day before and after there 18th birthday is clearly rediculus. However, current law makes a massive distinction between them dispite bing willing to try 15 year olds as adults. And yes it's an easy problem to fix, just add a gradient to sentencing. From misdemeanor with fine for someone close to 18 up to long ter jail for hard core preteen porn. With an exception for voluntary transactions, aka if your 17 year old friend sends you a picture of his boys as a joke that's ok.
I don't believe he was addressing sites collecting child pornography, rather stating that teenagers shouldn't be going to prison for sending each other images of themselves.
I fail to see why I should take your feeling driven anecdote backed position over your interlocutor's feeling driven anecdote backed position.
I watched all the porn I could get my hands on and turned out fine is evidence. It's not conclusive or anything but you wouldn't see it in a world where porn was the devil. The below articles certainly don't support demonisation of porn.
I don't think your point's valid either. Driving is operating heavy machinery, plain and simple. Driving without a seatbelt is totally different than using Facebook, or eBay, or Craigslist, unrestricted. They really couldn't be more dissimilar.
Just like being in the real world. Make smart decisions to the best of your ability and you'll be alright. There's nothing inherently wrong with the internet. Some people have things inherently wrong with them, and some of those people use the internet. Nothing to see here.
Wow... I had only ever used Craig's List for buying and selling goods. I had no idea there were people raping and murdering each other on there. You'd think that the admins would try to put a stop to that.
Normally that's a valid complaint but it's pretty obvious in this case that by fine he means "not so addicted to his 'phone or porn that it has a negative effect on his life".
Free and unlimited access to hardcore pornography of any type when you are in your early teens is relatively new. No generation has been exposed to such a stream of heavily sexualized content before, both online and offline.
I mean the porn of 50 years ago seems tame by todays standards. Exposing children to such adult themes before they have even fully developed can't be a good thing.
My biggest concern is that it shows many things as normal and healthy that aren't. Warning - intimate details lie ahead.
As an example - in recent years, this has become increasingly common: women fellating until they gag, almost vomit, drool mucousy streams of saliva all over their partner's genitals, and then slurp it all back up. Most of them look truly miserable while they're doing it.
The guys look like they think it's awesome - never mind the discomfort they allow to be caused to their partner, regardless of how good it might feel.
I can't rule out that it's possible there are women who do enjoy almost tossing their cookies during sex acts. But I am pretty comfortable in believing that most don't. You and I know that. Most people not raised on this variety of porn know that.
Yet now we'll have a generation of kids being shown that women should do this, and they'll be seeing this before they even reach puberty. We're not talking fringe stuff that someone will find, make a decision about, and either look for more of it or not. This is in 'mainstream' porn. Showing young kids that it's normal and expected. And because most people don't do much talking about sex with their offspring, there won't be anybody who tells them differently.
Besides, from ghastly^H^H^H^H^H^H^H sultry smiles on the faces of the women after the fact, it's clear that they really must have enjoyed it.
Whether or not we should worry about it hinges on a lot of uncertainties, including:
- Whether some women really do enjoy it. Granted, it's unlikely that most do. Given that some people really do enjoy extreme BDSM, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that some - even many - women enjoy deepthroating. People can consent to whatever sexual activity they want.
- Whether children do really form an image of what people 'should' do from porn. Staged sex acts are fantasy fulfilment. Most people are capable, even as young teenagers, of keeping fantasy and reality separate. Just as most teenagers don't act out fantasy situations they find in other media, they don't expect to act out porn fantasies. Everyone has intrusive thoughts, and the vast majority don't act on them. It's arguable that those who do would do so without the media stimulation.
On the first point, sure - I conceded in writing that there is likely to be a subset of women who do enjoy it. But I think we can agree that the physical discomfort of it will be a turnoff to most.
As to your second point - yes, certainly teenagers can distinguish fantasy from reality. But the major difference here is that it's not portrayed as fantasy. In a movie, everybody knows that the actors get up and walk away at the end of the day - nobody is really getting shot.
On the contrary when it comes to porn, there's no doubt that the acts are really being performed, and by real people. So while a young person's ability to distinguish fantasy from reality shouldn't be underestimated in the context of movies, video games, etc -- we have something of a different beast here.
You're right that it is an uncertainty, but certainly a logical case could be constructed for at minimum further study of this idea. Unfortunately, we as a society won't do that, because we have to pretend that our teenage children aren't sexual creatures.
What's left, then, is to make best guesses based on logic.
It's a poor substitute for science but in this area it's as close as we're going to get.
Tastes (yes, including sexual) are in part culturally-shaped as well as from experience.
For example, I'd bet that a far greater percentage of people of either sex enjoy giving oral 10 years after they started having sex than the first year they had sex. (That is, unless they got married. Ba-dum-pssshh. :) )
So women observe some of this porn, they get it into their heads that it "looks hot", and that makes it hot. Theoretically.
Frankly I'm a little jealous of folks dating 20something women these days.
Have you ever met a teenager? They're fucking idiotic. That's why we don't let them drink alcohol or vote or get married or have sex or join the army or a bunch of other stuff.
> You know those dirty letters you got from your sweetheart when you were 17? Sexting is the same damn thing.
No it isn't. A dirty letter is a dirty letter. A photo sent via sms has lasting consequences. Youth don't understand consequences, that's why we need to keep reminding them that anything they put on the Internet will stay there forever.
You make this sound like a sociological issue but it's really biological. Teenagers are idiots because their brains / hormones are going through rapid and dramatic changes that retard their ability to make good judgements about what is safe and what is not.
So, you are in favor of the current remediation against teenagers that sext, which is generally to bring the recipient up on charges of possession of child pornography and the sender on charges of making and distributing child pornography?
Such felony convictions will have far more ramifications that the act itself ever could.
That doesn't happen in my country. The US legal system is a cluster fuck of horrible practice, and it's not just weird application of sexting laws that's the problem.
That this doesn't happen where you come from is good. It is the reason for arguing for a different status for these things for teenagers in America, though. More than a few lives have been destroyed in applying these laws to those they were supposed to protect.
I think if the sender and recipient in your described scenario are consenting then they should not be charged with these laws. That is not the intent of those laws. Even if the recipient is not consenting, the sender should also be charged with some other sort of harassment. But if the recipient forwards or shares the image in any way then they probably should receive the severe distribution charge.
Keep in mind that generally teenagers lack legal agency, and so consent is irrelevant because they cannot exercise consent. Their parents can exercise or choose not to exercise the consent for them and a lot of these cases are parents punishing their children's partner. It's not generally the state going off on some ridiculous spree of hunting down horny teenagers just for shits and giggles.
> Have you ever met a teenager? They're fucking idiotic.
I've met plenty of idiotic adults, and I've met plenty of non-idiotic teenagers.
If "idiocy" is the appropriate criterion for determining how people should be disparately treated by the law, then let's develop a precise definition of "idiotic", so we can directly determine whether someone is an idiot or not, and stop using other, inconsistently correlated variables a proxy.
>Some kids who have poor role models are going to ask for oral sex from boys or girls that like them.
In some cultures, healthy and loving relationships between teenagers are beautiful. The emotional drama that follows - which advocates for infantilization use to say teenagers cannot be trusted to handle relationships - is part of growing up and learning to be a person. The idea that this is wrong, idiotic, deserving of punishment, immoral, or indicative of bad role models reflects a specific view of religious morality that not everyone shares. Teaching people to be ashamed of who they are and what they wan't isn't necessarily the best approach.
It's a fascinating cultural shift, and the religious right is fighting hard to stay in the 50s, but I think we're slowly moving forward. Then again, I was raised by atheist liberals, and we're not exactly popular.
> It's a fascinating cultural shift, and the religious right is fighting hard to stay in the 50s
To the extent this is true, its not the actual 1950s, but a mythical image of the 1950s created later, that's mostly associated with that particular time because its a distorted image of what the world was like prior to the supposed liberal reengineering of society in the 1960s and beyond. (And probably because at the time it started to coalesce, "the 1950s" was an easily-romanticized childhood time of the audience the image was meant to appeal to.)
The religious right? That makes no sense. It's the religious right that often encourages marriage at a young age. I've never heard of members of the religious right "shaming" teenage dating.
The religious right encourages abstinence-only education, discourages contraception, and absolutely does not want teenagers in dating relationships or having sex for pleasure. They want them to move from supervised, limited, nonsexual courtships to child-producing marriages as quickly as possible.
Also the less extreme religious right that I see recognizes the need not to be pregnant in college, and wants the whole process moved into early 20s rather than teens.
'Having the internet' is different to the ubiquitous internet access that kids growing up today are subject to. Twenty years ago you couldn't take out a smart phone and watch porn. You couldn't even readily download porn videos, images perhaps if you were lucky. Even so you were unlikely to have unrestricted access to your own computer with internet access, so watching porn was a special event when the parents were asleep or out.
A kid today could pull up porn on their phone right now without a second thought. And it's that 'without a second thought' that is the (slightly) disturbing bit, because it happens before kids develop a proper sense of right and wrong.
If I'm honest and I think back to the playground when I was younger, I am sure my understanding of what's right and wrong would be different (worse in my opinion) than they are today.
On the other-hand I'm in favour of free-speech, but then I also think banning kids from disruptive influences (alcohol, smoking) is also an effective means of keeping kids safe until they can take full responsibility for their actions.
Given the absence of real data (as in, studies that demonstrate conclusively that watching too much online porn has certain downsides), it's not surprising that a lot of comments are resorting to anecdotal reasoning of the form: "Well, I use the internet and I'm ok..."
Nonetheless, I think it's worth entertaining the hypothesis that in many ways the internet is like candy for your brain, and constant exposure might have subtle -- perhaps not yet fully recognized or appreciated -- effects on our cognition. We're running a vast uncontrolled experiment, and when things go wrong we (tech elites) tend to dismiss it with some variation of "Well, they had mental health issues or a parental problems or they would have been bullied anyway etc... etc... etc... It couldn't have been the internet."
The problem is that these are the same sorts of arguments that have been deployed in the face of every technological advance. "It's not that video games are addictive, it's that people already prone to addiction choose to become addicted to video games. 100 years ago they would have been addicted to whist."
I find this to be rather unpersuasive, generally, but I'm honestly also at a loss to articulate a compelling counterargument of my own. I have vague misgivings and a handful of anecdotes and not a lot of sound science.
I think the most concrete example of what you're describing is the "pattern" we saw with tobacco. Science suggested for a long time that cigarette smoking might be bad for you. As the evidence grew stronger, tobacco companies ran ads with Joe DiMaggio about how healthy their brand was[1].
Eventually the evidence was so irrefutable, and there were enough "casualties," that most reasonable people were forced to accept it.
This seems like a pattern that repeats itself. It begins with anecdotal evidence, followed by a long period of scientific research, then propaganda campaigns and eventual acceptance.
We're currently seeing it, about halfway through the curve, in the food industry with sugar. It's also happened previously with lead, seatbelts, asbestos, gambling, mercury, alcohol & driving, cholesterol, tanning booths, etc.
And now, perhaps, it's starting on the effect of information consumption. I use the term "information consumption" because it seems to be about much more than just teenagers and their phones.
Do we need real data to know that too much porn is a bad thing?
> The problem is that these are the same sorts of arguments
> that have been deployed in the face of every technological
> advance
I agree and at the risk of sounding like my parents, I think the internet is different. Never before has their been a technology so all encompassing and so powerful (and dangerous).
If I wanted to look at pictures of girls when I was a horny teen, I had the bra section of the JC Penny catalog. The jump from that to the type of online porn that exists today is pretty big. Add to the fact that online porn is so much more accessible than visiting a porno shop, it's no wonder kids can fall into it more easily.
But lets turn back the clock a few thousand years, where pre-teen boys were practically expected to engage not only in sexual acts/experiences, but often with those FAR older than themselves. At the risk of more unsubstantiated statements (qualifier, I spent 7 years studying latin+latin history), I feel like the amount of sexual content exposed to children in that era was FAR greater than now, even with the internet+porn, just in different media, and handled in very different cultural and social light, with much less stigma.
There seems to be a lot of paranoia around this issue, but observe that there have been HUGE ranges of how humanity has handled sexual content over the last few thousand years around the globe, and generally "we've turned out ok." This is a question that answering empirically will be VERY difficult, due to the sheer complexity of the human development process and the number of confounding variables, and I think a degree of faith needs to be had in the resiliency of our species and social structure to adapt.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. That exposure to hardcore porn online is okay because it's better than being raped as a child? Or it's okay because we can adapt to its negative influence and come out alright?
What if I want something better than "ok" for my kids?
Firstly, to say that the older/younger relationships from that era would be generally considered rape even by todays standards would be quite a stretch.
Secondly, I must apologize in advance, I'm having a lot of trouble stating my point, probably because I'm sitting in a cluster computing conference, and will try to give this a better shot when I can devote more focus to it, but in short:
I think we have some very skewed ways of looking at sex and sexual act. A stigmatization of the topic as a whole even makes it very hard to talk about. There are examples of rape and "improper" behavior in sexually liberal, and sexually conservative societies. There need to be new and less black and white ways of looking at and judging both sexual maturity, "appropriate" behaviors, and conduct. It is not productive to point the finger at a prevelence or lack of sexual material and then yell "THINK OF THE CHILDREN", this is going to be answered I think by a better understanding of human behavior and cognitive function, and right now we're grasping in the dark for useful metrics and basing decisions on questionable logic.
Anyway, I feel like I may be going away from the answer you wanted/rambling a bit, so I'll cut this short and perhaps reread/reedit my response. I also want to brainstorm a bit with my female, who as a psychologist/cognitive scientist, works with the most extreme cases of sexual deviance/criminals, and in positions of sexual assault support, and I'm sure has some relevant thoughts on the issue.
I think Internet makes an interesting system, as hardcore porn is easily available (really easily), while talking about sex (specially with teenagers/kids) is a huge taboo, and no one knows how to deal properly with sex education (understood as a broad subject)
I think most of the people understands that Rambo is not a good example of a real life soldier, or High School is not similar to Howarts. Equally, I think most of the people understands that porn is not a good representation of real life (nor romantic comedies a good representation of real life relationships, which is also another interesting example of arts influencing life, but I digress). Of course, if we don't discuss those issues with a more realistic approach, I guess there are some people that can miss the point and get bad assumptions and expectations.
>Do we need real data to know that too much porn is a bad thing?
Yes, we do. We also need a definition of "too much". For too many people, "too much" means "more than I prefer."
>If I wanted to look at pictures of girls when I was a horny teen, I had the bra section of the JC Penny catalog.
Those pictures fulfill the same purpose as looking at a girl with no clothes. The motivation was the same.
>The jump from that to the type of online porn that exists today is pretty big
You know what's an even bigger jump? Going from looking at pictures to actually seeing a real naked female, or actually having sex. That's as "hardcore" as it gets for a person, no? Yet everyone manages, forever throughout human history, often with no intermediate steps of seeing pictures of women. Crazy, I know.
> it's not surprising that a lot of comments are resorting to anecdotal reasoning of the form: "Well, I use the internet and I'm ok..."
But this isn't an invalid argument in discussions like this.
We're not looking at questions that pertain to intervene into the population aggregations here; we're talking about how we should approach the use of law to into the particulars of specific individuals' lives. "Data" may not be the plural of "anecdote", but the context in which we're attempting to make judgments here is the context that anecdotes, rather than data, most directly describe.
The fact that people can say "I did X and I'm okay" proves that there isn't a purely deterministic relationship between X, whatever it is, and bad results, and this is a valid argument against top-down, universalized restrictions on X.
> I have vague misgivings and a handful of anecdotes and not a lot of sound science.
Science addresses "is" questions. There are valid "is" questions involved in this discussion, and it's entirely appropriate to rely on science to answer them.
But the fundamental topic at hand here discussion is an "ought" question, not an "is" one, and "ought" questions are outside the scope of science.
> Nonetheless, I think it's worth entertaining the hypothesis that in many ways the internet is like candy for your brain, and constant exposure might have subtle -- perhaps not yet fully recognized or appreciated -- effects on our cognition.
It does, actually. Read Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows' [0], it's a pretty decent book about the subject. It also starts off with comparing our usage of the internet with the rise of reading - you know, books and the like. History lesson; humans needed to adapt their brains to be able to read attentively for longer periods of time. The book contrasts that with the ADD nature of the internet, and yet, indicates how it's actually going back to where we were before. Or just a change similar to when books became publicly accessible.
tl;dr, yes there is a change, but I don't think it's necessarily good or bad; just different. And shocking / to be resisted by the older generation, just as how their parents were shocked and resisting the Beatles and similar long-haired freaks. :p
It's interesting, the Internet has become a micro-society and people are beginning to have expectations that the major players have a responsibility to perform a similar service as that of a government (contributing resources to fight child porn as the example made), whilst also expecting governments to rule it. Can we have it both ways? And should we expect that as a norm?
The internet doesn't have a morality, it's a tool and usage is defined clearly by the user. The fact that more teenage boys are accessing pornography and have warped approaches to conventional relationships is a problem, but how much of a problem is it due to the internet? My generation (approaching 30) were among the first to have always on, reasonably high speed internet and yes that did mean easy access to pornography but despite that the majority of us are in long term relationships.
I think there's a lot to be made of how the internet has impacted modern society, but it doesn't exist in a single point of impact. There's also a dozen other factors that have to be taken into account, ranging from parents being less available due to increased workloads to an education system that's not encouraging people to want to learn.
" My generation (approaching 30) were among the first to have always on, reasonably high speed internet and yes that did mean easy access to pornography but despite that the majority of us are in long term relationships."
My impression is that this generation has historical low levels of involvement in long term relationships and family formation
(not arguing that causality is internet porn ---> people don't get married, but it's an interesting data point)
Sure, marriage does seem to be down amongst the people I know in long term relationships but that mostly seems to be (in my circle) down to apathy about the concept, as they deem it pointless. "Who needs paper and a £10k party to show your love?" sort of thing.
There's a big melting pot of changes in our society, and I do think the internet has played a part as has changing opinions on religion, finance and wealth and so on.
I don't have links on the tip of my fingers, but my impression is that family formation among young people is down, and its not simply a matter of symantics
I'm not even a believer that that's necessarly a terrible thing
but I do think its a real trend, not just otherwise committed people deciding that they don't need a piece of paper
I think internet == food is the right analogy, too much of certain types of internet usage seems obviously not healthy for you, I think as a culture we should make efforts to make sure that message is widely dessiminated
I'm a teenager, and from my own experience, teenagers will do idiotic things even without the Internet. Pointing the finger at the Internet for parents' problems with their children is an easy thing to do because the Internet can't defend itself, especially as a whole.
In the 60's the teenager label emerged. These were just kids that had found a sense of community in sharing music, rebellion against the system, and unique dress. There's nothing new here. Teenagers will be rebellious, as they always have. If the older people in society find ways to prevent them from accessing material they want to see, they'll just find another way.
Teenagers have their own tastes in what the internet provides, and that interests/excites them, through social media, and other specific sites (like ask.fm). Nothing around this is new. Saying we should protect the poor teenagers is very demeaning to a group that are becoming adults, and protecting them by censorship helps no one in our society.
And yet, before the 60's and before the rise of proper education, teenagers went to work after elementary school (if that) and became mature, responsible adults much sooner. At least, so I heard. They couldn't get together and have orgies or whatever, because they were expected to be either at work, or back at work at 6 AM.
Work now requires more education. A PhD student is not less mature than a bachelors student just because he's in school for more years. He doesn't lose the right to make decisions for himself.
Prolonging the socially defined period of childhood didn't magically rewire brain chemistry.
The mistake some members of the adult generation make, and have always made, is thinking that, or acting as though (and that is an easy cop out), the current teen generation is fundamentally different to their own.
Some members of the adult generation i.e. me are concerned that the current generation is no different from their own. I'd hate to think how distracted I'd have been with access to everything my children have.
Having said that, I'm not sure the discussion is advanced much by either highlighting incredibly extreme cases or cases that just happen to involve technology (being sent down from Oxford for dissolute behaviour has a long history).
As usual mass media newspapers, or the shadow left thereof, are decades out of touch with subject matter that has been covered in the blogosphere extensively, making the same old observations (“warped perceptions of women/sex/life/etc.”) that were made about television and games in past eras, treating their audience like sheltered idiots. I don't know why anyone reads this tripe or bothers to watch these ‘documentaries’.
It's great that someone so attentive to teens is candidly exploring this subject on film. Unfortunate that it seems to be focussed primarily on negatives.
Yes I spend a lot of time on the net: unlike the TV which consumed thousands of passive, scripted hours in my youth, the net is interactive, the outcome within my control. For most of my life, the many things I couldn't learn more about for lack of time or helpful resources were out of reach; the amplification is awesome. For most of my life, I had to imagine being connected with communities of shared interests, never imagining having the focussing luxury of needing to choose from among them.
Those changes in my life are all positives. So while teens are doing teenish things with this tech, they are learning - just as we adults are. And when they become parents, they'll know from experience (just as in the middle ages and in the 1800s and 1950s) the impact of these new things.
The social impact of emergent technologies has always been unpredictable. Luckily humans adapt. And so far, ever since the first piece of flint changed lives, we've muddled on somehow. Not that worry-warting is worthless; reflection is in fact the mother of adaptation.
Apparently there's some proof that too much pornography is bad for you. [1] Not too mention all the multitasking. Other than that the Internet is like every other thing. It has good and bad sides. I, for one, have faith in teenagers. They'll turn out alright. It's usually the old folks that make the bigger/worse mistakes.
It's unfortunate that answers to internet pornography always come in the form of these unworkable filters. Politicians can only justify censoring pornography as "Parent's don't want their kids to see it!", rather than acknowledge it as a public health problem.
After seeing some of my friends fall prey to porn addiction, I think the sheer amount of porn on the internet is a problem. When porn was something you had to go get on your own, you were limited to a small selection. However, now new and harder materials are avalible instantly, and it creates a feedback loop where people can't have sex without it.
Really, a better answer would be to discuss pornography addiction as part of the sexual education curriculum, but too many people would consider it "teaching children porn".
>a better answer would be to discuss pornography addiction as part of the sexual education curriculum, but too many people would consider it "teaching children porn".
> the program was sometimes counterproductive in some populations, with those who graduated from D.A.R.E. later having higher than average rates of drug use
Normally the phrasing I used indicates satire. In my case I was entirely serious. (That is, I'm well aware that DARE does in fact seem to teach drugs.)
Both The Guardian and The Daily Mail, who enjoy huge web audiences, and who campaign passionately for freedom of the press, also campaign incessantly against freedom of expression on the internet, giving our politicians the wide political grip they need to clamp down on technology. It's ironic how much these two papers can be alike sometimes.
Those men who retain their privacy by abdicating social media pay an impossible price. The gradual fade of their relationships and social livelihood. Only one who has spent so long starved by it's lack that their ache has forgotten to bother them can hope to pay it. Thankfully current business is email. But our peers are eager to change that.
Tales of young women giving themselves to multiple men is a common trope in hysterical portrayals of social ills. If one would like an example of what these tropes look like, 'Reefer Madness' is on netflix. This article almost reads like a paid endorsement of david camerons internet filter. It is a outrageous story about internet porn, men who dare anonymity, and youth corrupting youth designed to generate panic in the minds of ordinary men.
I have no idea what the situation is in the UK, but I know I've never been invited to any sex parties. Nor have I ever heard of such a thing happening in my area. This might be because such sex parties don't exist, or because men who obviously wouldn't participate aren't invited.
But then, who can argue with such wonderful anecdotes?
Yeah, then you read the article and it says "molested."
I went back to verify this and couldn't find it (!). Until I searched for "gang" instead... That's when I found The Guardian had changed the wording in the last few hours! If you scroll down to the bottom you'll find this:
"The standfirst to this article was amended on 12 September 2013. It originally referred to a girl who "let herself be gang-raped" to get her BlackBerry back. The misrepresented the text of the piece, which says she allowed herself to be sexually assaulted."
So, go ahead and blame technologists for allowing the internet to cater to our more prurient interests, but the newspaperpeople seem to the ones directly responsible.
Expect, and get disappointed. Humans simply cannot be perfect at all times. Eventually, we all fuck up. Expect that and you won't be much disappointed.
Bit off-topic, but interesting that in this sentence:
> Kidron, who carries lightly the title Baroness for her pioneering work not just in making such films as the BBC's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit but in spreading the narrative wonder of great movies to schoolkids across the country through her FilmClub, says that many of her friends have said the same thing
where would you except the "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" link to lead? Maybe another Guardian article about the film? Wikipedia? IMDB? Homepage of the film? Trailer? I for one would not have excepted a credible paper like Guardian link to a crappy and most likely illegimate rip of the film. That's barely above linking directly to The PirateBay.
oops, sorry. I didn't finish that comment then decided to delete it... but, here it is:
CTRL+F this sentence:
We have to start asking why they are not being made responsible for it.
Lost me right there; that whole paragraph. Sure, talking about what's on the internet to young people is important and should be done. It's one thing for internet-companies to remove content that has been reported and deemed a ToS violation or illegal, but we don't need people turning their personal beliefs/ethics/etc into proactive-internet-filters. I don't exactly love the content on stormfront.org, but I'm not asking the webhost or my ISP or anyone to shut it down or filter it because ThinkOfTheChildren/Terrorists/current-boogeyman. I feel the article focuses a lot on the "problems" with the internet and not so much the problem of parents not ensuring the children have a "balanced"(whatever that means) world view.
The only practical approach is to give teenagers the tools necessary to deal with this and make sensible decisions based on their own values and respect for others (as if being a teenager wasn't hard enough already). However, good luck in getting PE (Porn Education) taught to ten-year olds, never mind being able to filter out all the agendas of concerned parties and being able to create the materials necessary with essentially nothing to base it on - in terms of the effects it's having on teenagers development.
The ship of consequences sailed a long time ago on this one and it's not clear where it's headed.
I've always thought the problem was letting kids alone on the net. You wouldn't let you kid alone in a shaddy neighborhood for hours without checking up on them, would you? So why do exactly that with the internet?
I think the main problem with the web is that it makes you lose your right to be forgotten. Think of those kids who post stupid videos of themselves on youtube that go viral. It won't go away, people will be able to find that 10, 20 years from now in New York, Paris or Tokyo.
Would it have been okay for your parents to wiretap your phone? No? Then why is it okay to demand to read your children's private conversations?
I am terrified we're going to have a generation of kids who have no concept of private. Who've never been allowed to speak or be curious about anything their parents wouldn't approve of. Who are used to having to explain conversations and reading to people who were never supposed to be part of them. Parental Thought Police are orders of magnitude more terrifying than state Thought Police.
Can you imagine an adult who has never had a private experience as a child? Maybe to a collectivist culture, that isn't so scary, but to me it's dystopian.
My phone? I didn't have a cell phone while growing up, the only phone at home was in the living room. So no wiretapping really needed...
And seriously, your parents aren't the NSA. Of course they should do what you are doing and of course you will do what you can so that they don't find out. It doesn't mean having a GPS tracker on you at all times.
I stand by my original point: the internet can be a very dangerous place filled with strangers, it's irresponsible to let your kids browse it unsupervised.
As far as the phone, I guess houses with one central telephone aren't really what I'm talking about, so much as Bye Bye Birdie "The Telephone Hour"-type situations. Teenage girls in the 50s and 60s were able to talk about boys, criticize authority figures, and generally be themselves and develop as their own people using technology without supervision or censorship. You probably didn't have that experience, but my parents did, and it would have been creepy and invasive then for their parents to demand to be part of those conversations, just like it's creepy and invasive now.
The NSA is (ostensibly) only looking for terrorist plots. Your parents are looking for criticism, attitude, impure thoughts, differing political beliefs, ingratitude, and a whole bunch of other things that are part of being a young human being. There is no question in my mind that given the choice, I'd take the NSA.
You know what else is a dangerous place filled with strangers? School. Sidewalks. Libraries. Not just strangers, but dangerous ideas. College. Especially college. At some point kids have to learn to navigate those things independently, lest they self-destruct the moment the leash is removed. Not as 5-year-olds, sure, but definitely by 16/17 (depending on maturity, of course).
Do bear in mind that there are effectively two alternatives:
- uncontrolled internet access, where other people's kids have access to a lot of awful stuff (not just porn but "shock" videos; goatse and worse)
- State- or business- controlled internet access, where someone else gets to control what you see, potentially eliminating access to inconvenient stories like Snowden.
We could really do with a "third way", but it needs someone to imagine what it could be, how it could work, and how it avoids the usual attempts to ruin it for everyone.
I am a teenager who was watching internet porn daily. I was forced to stop during a 2 week long holiday in which I shared a room with my family and had limited internet access.
I immediately started noticing girls more and being more outgoing in life. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but I can't help but feel like it is unnatural to masturbate so often.
I think those chemicals in our body help us function and relate during crucial years and that such easy access to internet pornography is upsetting some balance.
If I live outside of the UK, what's the right way to go about seeing "In Real Life" legally? There appears to have been a showing at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, but apart from that there appears to be nothing.
Or maybe the reality is a lot less interesting: a tiny percentage of teens will go off the rails, a tiny percentage will benefit hugely and the vast majority will do stupid things and reach adulthood more or less unscathed.
"One of the motivators for me making the film was that a friend of my daughter came round to talk to me about a boy she had her eye on and he said she could be his girlfriend if she gave him a blowjob."
How can any rational person believe this is different from 40 years ago? You don't think teenage guys were asking for blowjobs in the 70s?!
The sexual pseudo-revolution changed our society's norms forever, well before the internet, and modern ADULT culture keeps them alive in ways that affect young people. Really, adults should be looking at themselves as the reason for why kids act the way they do.
But what adult would possibly blame themselves for what they can blame on the internet?
"Most of the responsibility has to lie, however, she thinks, with the corporations."
And telephone companies should be held accountable if someone calls you bad words on the phone. Look, there is a certain amount of personal responsibility that parents and our society as a whole have to take on, because no amount of litigiousness will stop people from behaving badly. Social change requires social change.
Also, I'm sick and tired of "child porn" including 14-18 year olds. It isn't child porn. They arn't children. They are teenagers. Some of them have been having sex for years. It should be a different offence to posses and it should not be an offence to posses if you were in a loving relationship (and similar in age, a 14 year old and a 16 or 17 year old, not a 40 year old and a 14 year old).
You know those dirty letters you got from your sweetheart when you were 17? Sexting is the same damn thing.