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Comment by jabedude | Hacker News Reader

The steel man is that the vast increase in production and availability of porn has never been higher and has created a generation of porn addicts who have unhealthy ideas about sex and the opposite sex. These unhealthy ideas often manifest as anti-social behaviors which lead to loneliness and depression.

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Throughout the 20th century we went from drawings of the intimate and obscene to photos, followed by video, then with sound, then delivered by mail, then down the street, and finally right in your pocket. All the while women’s right have been largely improving while actual violent crime has been decreasing.

The world population also exploded in almost every corner from hundreds of millions a to billions.

Relationships, procreation, gender views, and such also depend heavily on economic outlooks and have tracked that rather than porn in every comparison I can find.

I disagree with your assessment that porn causes those things anymore than violent video games cause violence.

As always when it comes to these ("obviously") destructive behaviors, I feel like we don't quite know for sure if the porn addiction comes from people feeling loneliness and depression, rather than the other way around. People tend to jump quickly to the latter theory, but AFAIK there really isn't any consensus that's actually so.

In this case, we actually know (from some recent studies) that "porn addiction" doesn't actually involve any more usage of porn than a control group—what it does involve is guilt around the usage of porn.

I'm not saying unfettered access to an insane amount of porn is healthy, but how does it lead to anti-social behavior. No one is chatting up a person in a cafe then trying to have unprotected anal sex right there in the cafe. I could see it creating unrealistic expectations for men and women, but what's the connection to anti-social behavior?

A lot of pornography is misogynistic. Not all, but a lot. It depicts women as objects to be used, it normalizes sexual violence and degradation, and it focuses mainly on male pleasure. You watch enough of it and you start to internalize these attitudes.

I've seen women complain about men putting their hands around their necks during sex because the men saw a man do it in porn. It's a rather upsetting trend.

No arguments from me on porn being misogynistic and aimed at men. However, it's not like men weren't creeps before porn was invented (saying this as a man). Look at history and there's endless examples of old men marrying 13 year olds, of sexual assault and harassment, etc... Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't see modern porn doing much in making that any better or worse. In fact, as porn has proliferated over the last 50 years, we have made progress in the things that people say porn degrades. Obviously correlation does not equal causation but it's worth thinking about.

Fair points, but the main difference with the state of 'modern' porn is that its accessible to young men during puberty (and earlier), via the internet.

Finding a Playboy magazine in the bushes wont radicalize a 13 year old, but watching BDSM or CNC at an age where you're beginning to form your sexual ideologies can't be healthy.

I must be old, I don't even know what CNC is!

I completely agree that the intensity of porn that can be accessed at a young age is deeply concerning. I have two sons. If I found a playboy in their room at age 13 we would have a discussion but I wouldn't really care. However, if I walked in on them watching extremely hard core pornography I would be pretty concerned.

"Computer Numerical Control"!

> who have unhealthy ideas about sex and the opposite sex

Yeah, we should go back in time to when good men used to regularly beat up and rape their wife just like god wanted. Where anything not cis and hetero was not tolerated. Where relationships where based on dominance and very seldom on love.

Nope. As sad as that may be, in terms of having healthy ideas about sex, we are probably at the peak since the neolithic revolutions. Times have never been better, especially in progressive Western nations.

For porn to have ruined anything where would need to be something to ruin in the first place. Young men had unhealthy ideas about sex long before porn existed. They probably have a little bit more of a clue now.

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely willing to entertain the idea that porn and especially over consumption of porn is problematic in many aspects. However it is not a major societal issues. And I absolutely abhor the idea of the state censoring porn to enforce personal and specifically sexual morality. There is good reason civilized countries don't do this.

Long before modern porn, there were laws that a man could not be charged with raping his wife. Society largely looked the other way when a man beat his wife. There was a time when underage women could be trafficked by their parents into marriage against their will. There was a time when a woman who accused a man of rape would basically end up on trial herself while his lawyer dragged out every single romantic or sexual relationship she had in graphic detail so that the jury would believe "she was asking for it."

I am under the impression that "unhealthy ideas about sex and the opposite sex" have been with us for a very, very long time. If we observe that porn addicts have such unhealthy ideas, are we confusing correlation with causation?

At least in the U.S. the equality of women in society (and in law) has slowly risen over the last 100 years. Over that same period the availability of pornographic images has also slowly risen (from magazines, to VHS, to the Internet, to streaming videos, to VR).

So if we're looking at correlation, doesn't the data imply that _more_ porn is associated with _more_ rights for women?

(Conversely, the vast majority of people calling for and enacting policies for more restrictions on pornography are also rolling back rights for women.)

Eh, not quite steel. "A generation of" is kind of slippery language, as is "has never been higher". How many people? How much more available is porn vs 10 years ago? You seem to imply many/most born during a certain period are porn addicts, and that they wouldn't have been 10, 15 years ago because porn wasn't as available. Not sure either is arguable.

"created a generation of porn addicts"

Not to be rude but, this is a lazy analysis that is filled with assumptions, moralizing, over identification, and magical thinking.

you are falling into a causation coorelation trap

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