I've noticed a tendency of people of this generation to blame assorted sexual issues on porn. One problem is that these days there is no control group i.e. there is no-one who has not seen porn.

For example, young men having sex for the first time tend to often have a hard time (e.g. trouble achieving orgasm, or staying "functional"). They tend to blame this on porn. However this is a problem that is as old as the hills. Read "Portnoy's Complaint" for the same problem pre-porn. Having sex is a skill that takes time to learn.

I grew up in an environment where there was basically no porn. Small country town, no porn in the magazine shop. Nothing. When I finally saw a naked woman, I was very surprised what she looked like.

From what I have read, and from talking to various people, it is quite common for human sexuality to be rather wild and woolly until sufficient sexual experiences normalize it. This applies with or without porn.

In that sense both "no porn and no sex", and just plain "no sex" (plus "porn" generated by your own imagination) will not lead to this normalization process. The real problem I think is the lack of normal sexual experiences.

As porn has become available, rape rates have fallen markedly so that is at least one significant benefit. And I think that porn does at least provide some information, albeit imperfect, about sex.

This issue of the lack of normalizing sexual experiences is a difficult problem to resolve, because young men in our society are not really considered desirable. They have no money, no car, no job, and unless they have unusual charisma or are a sports star, early sexual experiences can be hard to come by.

While porn does lead to some degree of liberalization of sexual attitudes (eg interest i using alternate orifices) I think that its direct detrimental effects are greatly exaggerated. I would suggest porn does no more to encourage unrealistic attitudes about the opposite sex than do "romantic novels".