a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by sounds_sound
sounds_sound  ·  4599 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Could teenagers be stopped from looking at porn?
I think our culture is going through a bit of growing pains with the internet right now and that, as a whole, society is healthier when more people have exposure to the dark recesses of human desire - simply because it puts it out there and makes it easier to talk about. I think that basically everyone has a certain proclivity at some point for submersing themselves into satisfying our basic human pleasures - eating, drinking, sexing. When we realize just how normal all of that weirdness is then it becomes easier to make an actual choice to not engage.




newgameplus  ·  4599 days ago  ·  link  ·  
One would hope, but with the rates of obesity in the west it's perhaps not clear if enough people are choosing not engage. Of course, the different factors at play in that situation make it very unique. Drinking is probably a better parallel, only alcohol is at least semi-successfully age-restricted. Which porn clearly isn't at this point. The question is really whether there is harm being done that outweighs the harm we might do by trying to regulate.

It certainly seems like this is a growing concern of many people. Here's another TED talk that blames the current educational underperformance of boys on so-called arousal addictions. Personally, it sounds very over-reductionist to me, and like you, I think there are going to be noticeable benefits from all this in the long run.