God, this is one of the most infuriatingly bonkers threads I’ve read in some time.
My DS is 11, he already knows far more about tech than I do. I’m running full speed and I’m still two steps behind him. I wonder which of us tech dinosaurs has gone looking for something online, not found it in the usual places so gone searching. Even I could probably access some illegal porn if I wanted, which I don’t. It would take me a few clicks.
I can understand the initial gatekeeping argument. A young child might click on something and land up on Pornhub. They wouldn’t be able to get in without age verification so go back to what they were doing. For anyone arriving with even half the intent of viewing the content it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference. If you’re looking for something on the web the chances are that you’ll find it without much trouble.
A PP likened this new law to pulling a curtain over it and that’s exactly what it is. Anyone who wants to see what’s behind the curtain can easily pull it back, and what they’ll find is a cornucopia of violence and depravity I daren’t even contemplate. Even with the best will in the world it’s impossible to stem the tide. We’ve tried it with drugs, we’ve tried it with illegal music and film downloads, and it barely makes a dent. Likewise you’ll never stop young people from looking behind the curtain. We need to be pragmatic, teenagers want to explore, they want to be edgy and dangerous and as parents we need to understand this and educate our kids from a disconcertingly young age that yes, porn is out there, but no, sex is not like that, and that what they view online will affect their real lives. Personally I teach my DS to use himself as a benchmark. If he wouldn’t like something to be done to him, or if he thinks it would hurt, then other people will probably feel the same.
One of the biggest problems of the internet in general is that it isolates us. I might be talking to 100 people on a forum but they only exist on a screen. When a teenage boy is alone wanking himself sick in his bedroom all that exists to him is his own feelings. There’s no feedback, no consequences. Unless we drum it in to our kids from an early age that other peoples’ feelings are just as real as their own, they’ll grow up without the understanding that their behaviour and actions not only affect them, they impact on others as well.
It’s utterly horrifying the amount of truly vile stuff that can be easily accessed, and I’m not just talking the mainstream sites, but getting enraged and shouting on the internet won’t make it go away. It’s clear that the governments of the world have no real appetite to clamp down, and children are being sexualised younger and younger and our government have nothing to say about that, so it’s up to us as parents. It shouldn’t be this way but it is, and if a generation of parents did their best to educate their kids about the cancer that is pornography then maybe we’d start to see the groundswell of pressure we need to force the societal change we need, without which the appetite for this evil filth will never go away.