Seven Reasons Why Porn is Hurting Kids
When I was growing up, if I wanted to see boobs, my choices were limited.
Sure, my Dad kept a couple of old Playboy magazines in his closet. But, I had them pretty much memorized. I could take my chances with the Playboy channel. Pretty much every guy over age 40 saw his first boob on the Playboy channel. Back then, Playboy was scrambled for non-subscribers. But if you were patient enough, every once in a while, in between the scrambled lines, you could get a grainy glimpse of a boob.
With the supply of ”melons” at a minimum in my life as a boy, patience with the Playboy channel was a necessity. Every classroom had one boy who claimed that his parents were subscribers. Every boy wanted to sleep over at his place. Nobody ever did.
Basic Economics
In those days, there was a tremendous imbalance in the supply and demand for boobs. As we all learned in high school Economics, there is opportunity in a supply and demand imbalance. When supply is at a minimum, consumers are willing to work harder to get access to that supply. That’s the reason why boys would watch scrambled television channels for hours in the ’80s. It’s the reason why gasoline and groceries are so darn expensive right now. No supply.
When there is an oversupply, the value of the supply goes down. It’s simple economics…and a lesson the clowns in Washington must’ve missed in high school.
Danger Will Robinson, Danger…..
Things are different and more dangerous today. There is a massive oversupply of boobs. Today, 12% of all websites online are porn websites. And studies show that 98% of men have watched porn. The other 2% are lying.
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In the 1980’s we were willing to watch scrambled television for hours hoping to spy a set of “chesticles”. Today’s research shows that 67% of 13-year-old boys and about 40% of 13-year-old girls have seen at least one pornographic image in the last twelve months. These numbers are wrong, way wrong. I’m not trying to upset you, but if you have boys there is almost a 100% chance they’re watching porn. At a certain age, the temptation and availability are simply too great to ignore.
The End of an Era
Playboy recently stopped publishing pictures of naked women in their magazine. The pictures they ran weren’t titillating enough. There is simply too much competition on the web. And the content on the web doesn’t require a visit to the convenience store after dark. I guess they’re about to find out if men really purchase Playboy magazine for the “articles”.
An Endless Supply of Porn
Just do a quick Google search for boobs. There’s an absolutely endless supply. Of course, Google now thinks I am really interested in “best hot boob pics”. And, my pop-up ads are downright disturbing.
Yes, the interwebs have taken the mystery out of everything, including boobs. It’s a shame. There was such mystery in sex in an earlier era, when seeing naked bodies was at a premium. Getting to sneak-a-peek at a real pair of boobs was like finding a unicorn in your backyard. And that scarcity significantly increased the value proposition of boobs. And, oddly enough, that rarity raised the value and the mystery of women, in general.
In a recent interview with Howard Stern, Grammy award winning singer Billie Eilish (19) spoke openly about her experience with pornography. “I thought I was one of the guys and would talk about it [pornography] and think I was really cool for not having a problem with it and not seeing why it was bad. I didn't understand why that was a bad thing. I thought it was how you learned how to have sex.” Eilish Starting watching porn at age 11.
Eilish continued, “It got to a point where I couldn’t watch anything else unless it was violent,” she explained. “The first few times I, you know, had sex, I was not saying no to things that were not good. It was because I thought that's what I was supposed to be attracted to.”
So, how has the oversupply of content on the web changed the value proposition of sex? Today, curious boys need not spend hours watching scrambled television channels. Or flipping through old nudie mags in the tree house. Free, Ultra High Definition, porn is only a few clicks away. Pornography is one of the most common ways many young people learn about sex. And this guy is the Professor.
Today’s porn normalizes a variety of very risky behaviors and fantasies that are completely unrealistic and, often violent. And that content is available on the nearest portable laptop, iPad or smartphone. People can sneak-a-peep quickly from anywhere: work, school or home. Today’s average screen-time is 9 minutes.
For example, I’ve never had two, bikini-clad women show up at my door with a watermelon….only to result in a wild two-on-one sexual escapade in my hot tub. But, I’m told that kind of strangeness happens in porn films all the time.
Rule 34
Porn has become so widely available that a maxim has been created called Rule 34. It says that "If it exists, there is porn of it". Meaning that creators of porn have run out of ideas for real-world sex scenarios. They’ve now created all sorts of porn using cartoon characters and anime. Trust me, this stuff is as weird as the internet gets.
In 1964 Justice Potter Stewart delivered what has become the most famous line related to the definition of “hard-core pornography”. Justice Stewart must be turning over in his grave. He never envisioned the kind of ultra, extreme weirdness that exists today.
According to ABC News, “Pornography has grown into a $10 billion business — bigger than the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball combined”.
It took 68 years for the Air Lines to reach 50M users. According to PornHub, one of the world’s largest providers of internet porn, it took just 19 days to reach 50M users. And the growth hasn’t slowed down. In 2019 there were over 42 Billion visits to Pornhub, which means there was an average of 115 million visits per day. That’s the equivalent of the populations of Canada, Australia, Poland, and the Netherlands all visiting in one day. And, almost seven million new porn videos were uploaded to PornHub in 2019. If you wanted to watch all of those new “movies” you’d have to roll the calendar back to 1850 to finish them by today. And, of course, the covid lockdown was a porn dream for Producers. Pornhub reported a 24% increase in site traffic between mid-February and mid-March 2020.
So how has this oversupply of porn changed us as a society? Here are a couple of examples you should be aware of:
Rape: the number of reported forcible rape cases in the US was largely flat from 1990-2010 at around 80,000 cases per year. But, something happened in 2012, or about the time high-speed internet became universal. The number of reported rapes began to skyrocket. By 2018, that number reached almost 150,000 cases. There is no direct proof of this correlation, but I’m willing to bet that the dudes holed up in their mom’s basement watching porn are the same guys that are sexually assaulting women.
Addiction: One of the telltale signs of addiction is that you require an increasing amount of something to reach the same feeling. Porn fits that description. Over time, users seek out more and more extreme and violent forms of porn to reach the same level of satisfaction.
Impulse Control: Porn can result in reduced impulse control and a weakened ability to foresee consequences. The more porn you watch, the more difficult it is to refrain from watching it, and the less you will care about the consequences.
Erectile Dysfunction: Excessive consumption of internet pornography can lead to a skewing of sexual expectations. That skewing leads to a desensitization to seemingly boring, real-life sex. The result is a new diagnosis called Porn-Induced-Erectile Dysfunction (PI-ED). Experts report that 25% of new ED patients are under age 40. Almost all of those cases under age 40 are a direct result of excessive consumption of internet porn.
Desensitization: Similar to alcohol or drug addiction, the more porn you watch, the more porn you need to release the same amount of dopamine.
Self-Esteem: Watching porn is like riding a yellow moped. It’s fun but you don’t want your friends to see you doing it. That can lead to withdrawal from friends and social outlets in order to make time for porn. And, that withdrawal and shame can lead to feelings of isolation and lower self-esteem..
Sleep: Adolescents are most prone to sleep deprivation since their ability to practice self-control is limited and their curiosity is peaked. Nothing piques the curiosity of a 13-year-old boy more than Porn. That curiosity can compete for sleep.
I had no idea Porn had grown this mainstream. I do know this. If I was 13 and I could watch this garbage, I would do it. So if you have teens, it’s probably a good idea to talk openly about pornography and why it’s bad. Can’t hurt.
This is a tough topic but I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you think, below. And, please do me a favor and forward this article to other parents so they can also be aware of the facts about porn.
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