Internet pornography and its effects

[Pokorny]

Although this is an old(ish) news story (December 2010), i wondered what people thought about the concept that children (particulary boys) watching internet pornography are damaging their development, and in extreme cases unable to engage in intimate relationships. Also a point of consideration is the aspect that young adolescents begin to treat women as sex objects - perhaps a link to domestic violence?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12041063

The links are far from proven and those involved in promoting them often have their own agenda. For example in that article you'll find a lot of talk about SaferMedia, SaferMedia are a very nasty organisation who have jumped onto the "ban porn" bandwagon as it fits their agenda. They are an extremist religious organisation who prefer censorship over information (for example they oppose the teaching of sex education) who want to have vast swathes of the internet (not just porn) locked out and rated 18+. They actually point to the Chinese attempts at internet censorship as being something to aspire to rather than the awful assault on freedom that most of the world views them as.

There are some interesting views here from the blogger who was known as Belle de Jour (what later became the TV show):
www.freedominapuritanage.co.uk/?p=1511

Don't get me wrong I don't want my children seeing porn. The links to all sorts of problems are controversial and far from proven but in my opinion it's not the sort of stuff that I want my children exposed to. So I can and will take my own steps to protect them.

But that doesn't meant that I'm not very suspicions of those involved in pushing for the sort of things that that article mentions. They throw around wild theories and if you challenge them then the response won't be to defend and explain their position but at best to label you as someone who isn't concerned with children's safety and at worst to call you a porn loving pervert.

That is a really interesting stance I had'nt thought about. I guess it is up to the parents discretion and what they block on their family computer. I think your right, it would be unethical if internet censorship was introduced in the UK, however what is concerning is how easy it is to upload pornographic videos and share them virally. You've got porn sites such as youporn, who simply ask on the front page whether your over 18, there are no signing up fees, which would surely deter a young boy from going further.

It also seems damaging that women are always shown in such a submissive possition to men in pornography, like they are worthless sex objects. These are all themes i've been reading about from various academics. It always seems to return to the point that society has changed, in that sex is such an issue today.

"You've got porn sites such as youporn, who simply ask on the front page whether your over 18, there are no signing up fees, which would surely deter a young boy from going further."

But what can you do about such sites? They're most often not based in the UK and therefore not subject to UK law. We could in theory put legislation into place saying that porn sites cannot be free and must have signing up free (though the morality of such legislation does concern me) but it just wouldn't apply to most of the filth that's out there.

"It also seems damaging that women are always shown in such a submissive possition to men in pornography"

That's patently untrue, there is pornography out there aimed at women and whether aimed at men or women not all of it all show women as being submissive.

Someone could claim that "most" or "the most commonly accessed" pornography is of that sort and they should then trot out figures to support that. And to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if that were claimed and supported, I dread to think of some of the stuff that's out there lurking on the fringes of the internet.

However anyone that claims that it's "always" the case that women are shown as submissive is either mistaken or deliberately lying to you in order to manipulate you into supporting their own agenda (see my original point).

It's exceptionally difficult to police what your children are watching all the time and they can and do get around fire walls and so on. I am pissed off at having to do this policing and to worry about what my dc might stumble on while others freely put their porn on line with little consideration of just how easy it is for children to access it, even by accident. Requiring proof of age before getting onto well known porn sites would seem to be a minimum requirement. Porn is becoming a part of 'normal' childhood experience and this is not a matter of a copy of playboy being passed around as it might have been 20 years ago. This is hard core stuff available all over the net. It's impossible that that doesn't profoundly shape the ideas and expectations of young people. There was a very interesting piece on Newsnight about this a few weeks back: the findings about how much porn is being watched by teenagers were chilling.

Ok, Badger, it's no doubt the case that not all porn shows women being submissive. But what is your cut off? 50%? 75% 95%? At what point does it become unacceptable or does it ever?

I'm not sure what your position on porn is, to be honest

"It's exceptionally difficult to police what your children are watching all the time and they can and do get around fire walls and so on.

Yes it is, and attempting to filter at the ISP level will not make that task any easier or any less essential because it won't reliably block the filth.

"Requiring proof of age before getting onto well known porn sites would seem to be a minimum requirement."

As said above when many of the sites are not based in the UK we can legislate all that we want to and the sites will not be affected. It would be nice if the sites thought to do this themselves, but they clearly won't.

"At what point does it become unacceptable or does it ever?"

It is always unacceptable when it comes to my children, I don't care who's submitting to who my children shouldn't see it and I believe it would be harmful for them to do so.

"I'm not sure what your position on porn is, to be honest"

I'm not a fan and I don't want my children anywhere near it.

However I'm also aware that there's really not much that we can do about it being out there on the internet.

I'm also very worried about the agendas of some of the groups out there who do desperately want to censor the internet and how they dishonestly exploit our fears for our children and most people technical ignorance in order to try and achieve their goals.

Thanks: I can see where you're coming from. It is exceptionally hard to control the internet but at least we should try, at least to send out the message that we don't think it is acceptable for this stuff to be so easy to access. Doing nothing is akin to condonimg it I think.

You pick up your views from those around you in what they say or do. In the past that meant your family and your village. Now kids have access to the whole world and perhaps most of their views come from outside their family/village.

I think this can be damaging. It's not just the porn, but for example even in the ordinary media 'beauty' seems to be about surgical enhancement these days and young people get their opinions from drug crazed pop stars.

I don't think porn is dangerous to adults, but you want kids to see how 'real' people are first before getting into the other stuff.

Brace yourself for the bad news.

There is no way to put things back as they were. No legal or technical means that would actually work. Plenty of ways to look as though we were doing something, but nothing that would make any real difference.

You will hear that it is possible from certain groups with an interest in control and from MPs who want your vote. You will hear that it is from those who want to sell you software. You won't hear it from anyone honest who knows how the net works.

The only hope I can see is this (and it's not easy or ideal). We have to teach our kids young what life and sex is all about. Before the world teaches them it's about silicone and drugs.

"It is exceptionally hard to control the internet but at least we should try"

Well we do try, for example the IWF sets out to tackle Child Abuse. However they deal with a small number of sites (still too many but far far less than general porn), rely on the public reporting sites to them and have few enough reports to check each one out in person. However even with that much reduced remit they still make mistakes, for example they once blocked the entire Wikipedia site due to an album cover, and partly because of that not every ISP uses them. They also report that most of the sites are foreign so they really can't take much action against them.

Above and beyond that any action we take would do more harm than good, it wouldn't block most of the filth, wouldn't reduce the need for parents to do what they can at home, would deceive parents into thinking things were safe and would be an enormous waste of money and resources that could be far better spent educating parents on how to really protect their children and keep them safe.

"Doing nothing is akin to condonimg it I think."

Doing something harmful just for the sake of doing "something" would be worse.

There isn't really much will to do anything about children and internet pornography. If there were, we would make the easy changes. The most obvious one is to remove pornography and highly sexualised images from the places we can control. We could take pornographic images away from public spaces that children can reasonably be expected to be present in - newsagents, supermarkets, TV before the watershed (which many tv companies don't - they just break the law and pay the fines), adverts for lapdancing venues in public places and so on. That way, when kids are on the internet, pornography hasn't been normalised for them before they come to make a choice on the internet.

Rather than try to link contemporary pornography to social ills that are difficult to research and will take a generation before we can really demonstrate one way or the other, we could act now on the problems we do know exist. Many people are harmed within the sex industry - so let's put in place better services to help those people. Many people are addicted to pornography, and that is damaging them. Let's put in place better services to help those people - we don't need to demonstrate that pornography is always damaging to admit that many people are being damaged by it right now. Many people live with a pornography addict, and that is damaging them. Let's have services for them too.

We talk to children about racism, sexism and homophobia in the media and wider society. Just because something is pornographic, it doesn't make that media have less of a psychological impact on the viewer. So let's talk to young people about racism, sexism and homophobia in pornography, and find out what they think (and tell them what we think) rather than just assume they're not influenced by it. Pornography does not have some magical power to not influence people when the rest of the media clearly does have an influence.

We can do all of these things to change our culture without trying to find some complex and implausible way of making it impossible for children and young people to access pornography online.

The situation with pornography is rather like the situation with alcohol. It is a huge industry, and as an industry its purpose is to make money; it doesn't care about the impact. Many people enjoy drinking, but the fact that they do does not erase the problems associated with alcohol. But we don't want to see the problems of alcoholism and binge drinking - it spoils our fun. So we underfund help for alcoholics and those who live with alcoholics, and brush the extent of the problem under the carpet.

It doesn't have to be an either/or situation. You don't have to want to ban all pornography and hate everything about it to acknowledge the fact that it is causing huge problems right now for some people, and as a society we could do something about that.

I have recently read a book about neuroscience with one chapter explaining how addictive and progressive (adversely) porn is on the mind generally. Sadly, I also have some fairly close personal experience that lead to increasing violence which would back up the theory from the book.

So I'd say, any effort to avoid/minimise it's worth taking.

The book was this, best on neuroscience that I have come across and it covers various aspects of brain workings.

"any action we take would do more harm than good ... would deceive parents into thinking things were safe"

It was good that MNHQ did take note of concerns that an ISP-level block would have limited benefits while making many parents complacent, though it was quite a struggle to convince MNHQ that the minister and various bodies giving advice were possibly overlooking the technical challenges / workarounds and may have had different agendas but "blocking porn" was a handy umbrella they could use to get some of their wishes pushed onto ISPs.

"from the places we can control. We could take pornographic images away from ... newsagents, supermarkets, TV before the watershed"

There has already been action to do so, both at MN and Channel 4's recent Sex Ed show. None of the efforts have had complete success - whether it be inappropriate clothing or the lads mags on low shelves (WH Smith is one offender on the magazine front). However, the C4 show went further and most of the pop video channels on Sky and Freeview (eg 4Music, part owned by C4, and VH1, part of MTV) show semi-nudity and have fairly 'clear' sexual lyrics even at 10:30 am if they show the 'wrong' videos, and despite rubbishy statements about making every effort, they also fall back on 'societal change' making such videos acceptable (or perhaps they just don't want to have to bother categorising and limiting when such videos can be played, as it would make the tamer videos appear too frequently until 21:00 and thus have viewers switching channels from boredom of seeing a smaller list repeating more often).

Battling to get some of the public images removed (and few will fit the category pornographic, as they would have had trouble from the police) will not change what is happening, because the explicit videos and images are being seen by early teens, as previous C4 shows have found, interviewing teens (OK, mostly boys!) since someone will 'share' via Bluetooth from one mobile to another and it needs only 1 household with internet access to get some of the rudest material for free. The aims of the sex ed shows included a dismissal of the "plastic" images that are dished up, with enhanced boobs, and no inhibitions /worries about any activity that can be recorded for viewing. The 'body image' problems of some teen girls may be made worse by porn, because the industry has pushed various images. C4 at least explained far more about every body, male and female, being unique and that the porn images were usually from a very distinct "very attractive" group (though I am sure that showing plenty of boob enhancements which went wrong and the scars etc might dissuade some girls!)

It is back to education, and in the case of porn, unfortunately many parents are out of touch with what their teens (and younger) have seen. Very shocking for some of the parents when they knew what was going around in school and could have been seen by their son (or possibly daughter, though I think most of the girls were too clever to admit to much of what they had seen!). So clear guidelines on what is not to be viewed from the internet, along with some (controlled) exposure, as education and explanation of how false the porn industry can be, might be ways forward when a family has teens... it is perhaps unrealistic to expect to be able to block out all bad influences (what went on at some party or sleepover will be outside control) but education to appreciate what is and isn't acceptable and not to consider the people seen in porn as images to aspire to, might be part of the way forward.

"as an industry its purpose is to make money"

but plenty of sites have no membership fees, and make small amounts of cash from carrying ads, and perhaps larger amounts when some paid-for website gives a commission fee for a new customer

of course porn is damaging, as are pornographic music videos that are freely shown all hours. i think all possible steps should be taken to limit children's access to both, starting with parents controlling what their children can get through the home tv and computer.