Lawmakers across the country (United States) are trying to protect kids by age-gating parts of the internet.
These laws aren’t about children, that’s just a talking point to sell laws that tame the potential anonymity of the internet for private profit.
If American society gave the slightest shit at all about our children, we wouldn’t have literally starved our K-12 system into utter ruin for over half a century to cut the taxes of the corporations and already rich assholes killing the planet and those children’s future on it for private profit. We wouldn’t then say selling public education to for profit industry in the form of charter schools is a solution.
The United States doesn’t give a shit about its children. Not one tiny bit. Now our beloved economy? We’d throw all our (non-wealthy) kids into a fucking volcano if Wall Street told us it would protect that.
Not to mention, do people really believe that people shouldn’t be allowed to see sexual content until they’re 18? I started looking up titties when I was eleven, and as I understood it, the generation before mine either inherited or stole porn mags and tapes from older brothers/dads or got somebody to buy some for them. Given how useless sex ed was on the actual sex aspect of things, how are teenagers supposed to figure out anything besides anatomical structures?
The fundamental premise just seems weird to me, why are we trying to hide away pornography like it’s this shameful corruptive thing? I maybe knew a handful of weird kids that listened to the 18 year old restriction (all on extremely religious grounds), so the idea of actually trying to enforce it seems kinda crazy. I don’t know, it just reeks of the idea that masturbation is a sin, but everyone’s so uncomfortable with the notion of teenagers + anything sexual that nobody wants to touch it.
I just feel like the next couple generations are gonna be weird with the tug of war between book bannings, LGBTQ+ bannings, religion in schools/out of them, and all the other proxy wars being fought using schools as the battle ground. Not to mention all the shootings.
These laws are dangerous, kids are going to sneak a peek at adult things and when they do going to pornhub is far safer than having to avoid strong filters by joining a private discord group full of creepy old guys.
Honestly these laws are a groomers dream, keeping kids naive and then funnelling them in to poorly moderated or purposely immoral porn sharing communities creates actual dangers which aren’t present when a teenager sees some videos from the front page of pornhub.
What we actually need to do it have real conversations about things
For that to happen people would have to agree with the basic fact that “teenagers wanting to watch porn is normal”, which generally doesn’t go well. But ultimately it’s such a touchy topic that the people honestly wishing to protect their children cannot even do it effectively. Some don’t know how to handle it, many just ignore the matter altogether.
Then we end up with these moral panic-driven measures that at best help no one, or, more cynically, enable the erosion of people’s rights and unjustified persecution.
Spoiler Alert: It’s not about protecting children, it’s about the GOP keeping the gays off of the internet
These laws are made by bad parents or those that want to control someone else’s children. It’s so easy to just talk to your kids about the dangers of the internet and to put on parental controls on all devices.
This starts with some ambiguous “protecting the children” from porn argument to eventually requiring everyone to be “verified” with a digital ID before they can set foot on a highly controlled internet (or worse). We’re already seeing increasing glimpses of this and it’s in the government’s and big tech’s interest.
I’m so tired of the constant barrage of shit from all directions. This isn’t the beautiful future of humanity I imagined as a kid. No one will look out for us except for us, the actual people that these out of touch rich and powerful high society clowns try to control and keep occupied with stupid culture wars amongst each other, or placate with bread and circus. Enough already ffs.
Pretty sure that’s already the case in South Korea, having to use your real identity online in certain cases. We can’t let it expand worldwide.
China too. Everything is tied to your phone number
sounds like some fascist culture war garbage that was never meant to protect children from anything because it doesn’t
I haven’t read the article but I assume it’s an invasion af privacy under the guise of “protecting the children” as usual
It’s part of the GOP trying to ban porn. They know they can’t ban it due to the 1st amendment, so they’re making porn unprofitable for distributors.
Google has recently started telling me that they don’t know if I am >18. But I have been using Google for way more than 20 years.
So, Google is incapable of counting to 18? :-)
Maybe they think your parents made this account for you before you were born
If they did that should still be allowed. Despite the fact that I know it’s not allowed and against their TOS.
It will be interesting to see the politicians responses when their porn accounts are hacked and they all have to explain why their ID is associated with profiles that frequent tranny incest porn
That’s the point, they don’t give two shits about the children.
There should be something to this. A lot of parents keep their children off of the internet, but having young children accessing ‘most’ of the internet is a bad fucking idea
Parents, monitor and limit your kids online. I know it’s hard as fuck, I know other kids will think it’s weird that your kid doesn’t know the new tiktok thing. Do it anyway
I genuinely think that children’s ease of access to pornographic content is a serious and unprecedented threat to their well-being. This is why I think it was a mistake to normalise kids having unlimited access to internet-enabled mobile devices, and why I think having the family computer in a public-ish place is smart. It doesn’t even necessarily have to result in your kid being socially impacted, if you just limit their time on it but still allow them some autonomy. I had friends growing up where their router shut down automatically overnight so they couldn’t use their phones when they should be sleeping, but they were still just as hip and cool as anyone else.
I mean, why? What is the unprecedented threat?
And I think you have a misunderstanding of how isolated teenagers were from sexual content before the internet, magazines weren’t exactly hard to get. Even before then, we’ve literally been making porn in every form of media since we were painting on cave walls.
What is the unprecedented threat?
The ease of access of it now, and the extreme shock value of a lot of what even shows up on homepages of major porn sites is unique compared to the pre-internet days.
we’ve literally been making porn in every form of media since we were painting on cave walls. Porn ≠ erotic art or even sexually explicit material. Children should not have their first exposure to genitalia through media made with the express purpose of sexual gratification.
Part of allowing people to develop, evolve, and mature their sexuality on their own should involve preventing formative experiences from being based on fantasy.
homepages of major porn sites is unique compared to the pre-internet days.
It’s really not. You just weren’t exposed to it and think it’s new. The only change is the quantity, not the depravity. Marquis de Sade, the origin of the word sadist produced a significant amount of incredibly depraved erotic works back in the 1700’s, and he was not unique.
To your second point, should their first exposure be to porn? Of course not, but developing, evolving and maturing is done by exploring, not by sitting in a cave and generating knowledge from scratch, even if you have an equally amateur friend. That’s how people get hurt because they have no idea what they’re doing. If they want to see what’s out there, let them. Trying to ban everyone from sexual content until 18 is a uniquely modern take.
Not to mention, we’re far too uncomfortable with the topic to have their first exposure be anything but porn, since sex ed is all drawings and awkward anatomy. And childbirth videos. Since I was a kid myself, all I’ve seen is moral panic that wants nothing more than to simply shut the blinds and pretend that there’s nothing there.
Trying to ban everyone from sexual content until 18 is a uniquely modern take.
You keep equating all forms of media that might depict sex, nakedness, or even erotica as porn.
It’s been a while, but I’m confused. I never said anything like that, but that is essentially the government’s point of view. Erotica requires one to be 18 to see, whether written, drawn, or photographed. Depictions of sex and nudity either ban everyone under 17 ( or 17 and under for NC-17 ratings), or expect parents to restrict those under 17 in the case of television as it can’t be moderated (for now).
At any rate, I just wanted to respond and clarify despite the better part of a month passing.
Probably because they used mobile internet. At least that what I did.
hip and cool as anyone else.
See. Seeing pornography doesn’t make children uncool.
unprecedented threat to their well-being
Actual threat to their well-being is content about quantuum physics and astronomy. Both topics can cause existential crisis.
