Children and Internet pornography

Children today grow up in a far different sexual world than older readers of this wiki did. No more world in which Penthouse is the strongest porn you can get. Children today are surrounded by hard-core sex, including parents who deliberately don't conceal their fucking from their children. With the near-universality of the Internet, and the constant decrease in the cost of storage, porn has become abundant. Anyone with a computer connected to the Internet has access to all the porn one could want. It's anything but hard to find. The problem may be keeping it away.

Even in the most conservative household it is all but impossible to keep kids who want it from enjoying porn. First, because the dad in the household may love porn (even though he cannot be open about it), and does all he can to reign in his wife. Secondly, because while it is possible to keep pornography out of the home - no computer, no cable TV, no cell phone pretty much takes care of that - the boy (or girl), unless home-schooled, also goes out of the home. He can see porn at a friend's house, on a school computer, at the public library. (Librarians in general are very pro-First Amendment and as a result porn-friendly.) He would hear about porn from one of the many articles about it (Internet porn) found in mainstream magazines and newspapers, the sort of things one finds, in the U.S., at a high school library.

Children also have, via the Internet, much more access to sexual information. Sexual information abounds there, specific to whatever age, gender, or ethnic group one wishes. The story of how this happened has not been told, but the U.S. has managed (through case law) to draw a line between informative works and those "utterly without redeeming social value", as the famous ____ decision put it, and has decided that minors do not need "protection" from sexual information. Ruth Westheimer, and others like her, can run sexual talk shows at times children may be present. Dan Savage's podcast "Savage Lovecast", which is as explicit as it can get, and which declares that it's objective is "to get our listeners laid", for which reason a mouthwash is an appropriate sponsor, is available with no age restriction. The information's out there, and it isn't hard to find. Ask your librarian.

Pornography (videos), as seen in the U.S. today (2015), has a lot wrong with it. Some is made by morons. It downplays the realities of sexually transmitted infections; even with the testing, infections are endemic among porn actors and actresses ("everybody's got herpes"). Women's sexuality is not well treated. Bisexuality is restricted to a niche. Yet the following are undeniable:

• Pornography conveys the message that sex is good, that it's fun to fuck and suck and shoot.
• Pornography exposes the child to sexual practices he or she is unfamiliar with.
• Pornography endorses and encourages masturbation. (Today's kids grow up in a world in which masturbation is O.K., even good for you, and people are much more open about it.)
• Pornography exposes the viewer to men and women who are utterly unashamed of fucking and sucking in front of a camera, for the whole world to watch. Some of them say it's more fun that way.

Pornography becomes more extreme, or at the least, it progresses A lot of kinky practices - piss sex, gang bangs, glory holes - are as well known as they are today due to pornography.