Earlier on Thursday, I wrote an article detailing how the popular porn site Pornhub had blocked itself from 13 different states, most of which are in the south. It did this over the claim that the laws these states passed requiring age verification put many people's privacy in danger. The states, however, were arguing that these porn sites are a danger to minors who can too easily gain access and find themselves damaged psychologically by it.
(READ: The Adult Site Pornhub Has Almost Fled the Entirety of the South)
Some people declare that Pornhub is right, and that this is suppression of free speech and religious authoritarianism masquerading as protecting the children, but the fact is, children absolutely do need protecting from pornography in the same way they need protection from social media, substances, and experiences during their developmental years.
Pornography's effects on the brain of a minor can vary, but hardly any of it is beneficial. According to the New York Post, children are getting access to pornography and effectively learning about it in ways that aren't based in reality:
The research found young people viewed pornography for the first time, on average, at 13.6-years-old – often before they’d been given the tools to understand what they were seeing.
[...]
While pornography is not inherently problematic, a lot of it “is violent and degrading toward women,” Watch CEO Patty Kinnersly told news.com.au.
“A lot of young people are saying that they’re learning about sex and sexual relationships and relationships by using pornography, and then they’re holding those values and those views as they go into intimate relationships.”
As people age into puberty and sexual attraction begins to play a huge factor in the lives of both girls and boys, their view on sex is radically distorted by kink and extreme examples of what sex should look like, the Post reports:
As Teach Us Consent founder Chanel Contos put it in her National Press Club address last November, learning how to have sex by watching pornography is the equivalent of learning to drive by watching Formula 1.
The comparison is one Kinnersly “absolutely” agrees with.
“It’s the normalization of aggression and misogyny and things like strangulation that has developed in recent decades that is particularly concerning,” she added, noting that one in three Aussies aged 18 and 19 have reported experiencing intimate partner violence in the past year.
“If you think about people as young as 13 starting to see violent pornography that really perpetuates violence against women in particular, and that there is a high percentage of young men watching this pornography regularly and normalizing it, it’s not necessarily surprising that it’s coming out in intimate partner relationships in their early years.”
This doesn't just impact boys, either. Girls will watch this and see this abuse as a normal part of sexual interaction, encouraging submission to abuse and degradation in order to achieve a solid relationship. This isn't just a fringe issue within the wider issue of porn consumption, either. According to Our Watch, 72 percent of young people surveyed noted the porn they saw often contained aggression and violence against women.
It's not just how sex is viewed, either. There is a deep psychological effect porn has on the brain. According to Integrative Life Center, which has looked over the data, your brain forms a chemical dependence that acts a lot like drug addiction. Porn actually modifies neural pathways as it changes your brain's reward system, releasing dopamine upon viewing, effectively making it feel rewarding to watch pornography. With every viewing, the dopamine hit becomes less effective, requiring you to either view it more frequently, or find more illicit varieties. Not only does this lead to you compulsively wanting more, it requires you to delve into kinks and acts that might venture into far more deeply immoral territory.
Now apply that to a child's developing brain, and you have a psychological problem on your hands of epic proportions. Becoming addicted to porn as a youth can severely affect the brain, and it's proven to result in anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems. Your view of relationships can be severely skewed, and sexual relationships may either become not as satisfying or take dark turns, as mentioned in the article by the Post.
And that addiction and development is something the industry wants. As former porn star Brittni De La Mora told Fox News, "Fifty-eight percent of minors that have watched pornography for their very first time — they watched it by stumbling upon it through a pop-up ad and so forth. And they weren't looking for porn — porn was looking for them."
That's even if people get to the point of having sex. In this current era, it's incredibly easy to access pornography and see displays on any working screen, however despite all this sex we're seeing, we're not having a lot of it ourselves. We're in a sex recession brought on by the sexual revolution and "sex positivity," which, as I wrote, discourages loving relationships between men and women where sex is most enjoyed. Instead, women are encouraged to display themselves sexually and men are encouraged to consume it... yet not to interact physically.
(READ: The Post-Sexual Liberation Era Sure Doesn't Have a Lot of Sex in It)
The porn industry is no safe place, either. As I've covered in the past, former porn star turned pastor, Joshua Broome, talked with Michael Knowles in an interview about his experiences in the porn industry and how awful it is on the people who participate in it, especially the women. Rape, suicide, and pressure to always go darker plague the industry.
Is this the kind of industry we want to expose our children to just so we can get easier access to it?
My thoughts on porn are very libertarian on an individual level. If you wish to view or partake in it, then that's your individual choice. However, I do believe fully that it is an evil industry inside and out. I believe it presents a perverted take on morality and sex. I believe it's abusive to everyone inside and out of it. I believe it harms the brain, and damages relationships. I believe it ruins lives.
And I have the evidence to prove all of this, as I've shown above.
The bottom line here is that the porn industry doesn't care about your well-being. It's not the helpful, natural, and safe thing it purports itself to be. It wants you watching, addicting you, and it wants to addict your children who will become constant customers and, hopefully down the line, participants. If it wants to block itself from various regions because the people have said they want age-verification and ID submission before gaining access, then so be it. It's only a net benefit for any region that's blocked.
Moreover, it just seems common sense to require ID verification before gaining access. Do we not do this for strip clubs and bars? Do we not require ID to buy alcohol or even pick up some prescriptions? You need one before you even begin driving a car. We've established ID requirements for these things because we understand they're bad for the youth, so why not this?
Yes, I realize a VPN can easily get around these blocks currently, but my hope is that enough states get to the point where ID verification is necessary that these porn sites finally cave and implement it, so you can't gain access, VPN or no.
If you want to defend porn, then defend it, but be at least be honest about what it is, what it results in, and the dangers it presents, especially to children.
