Porn awareness for our kids - what tobacco can teach us

Greg Barrett's Huffington Post article Like Big Tobacco, Big Porn Peddles Poison to Children makes interesting reading.

The writer summarises the ongoing debate about the similarities between porn addiction and smoking, and the case for censorship legislation. We are reminded of just how much hardcore porn is available on the web, and that lots of people, including our wide-eyed children, are lapping it up. Barrett gets a little carried away with the shocking revelation of it all, but that's ok; if one parent is reminded that they really ought to take more notice of what their kids get up to online, this journalistic treatment is justified.

Barrett picks up on Hoover Institution fellow Mary Eberstadt's recent comparison of the addictive qualities of porn and tobacco. There are indeed some surface similarities, especially in terms of the common justification of "everybody does it". But Eberstadt's report highlights some of the critical differences too, predicting that the prevalence of porn will become a greater issue of social and political concern. Logically, some form of public health campaign may be beneficial, just like raising awareness of the hazards of smoking. I don't interpret Eberstadt's report as a direct call for censorship.

Barrett's article laments the failure of the proposed Child Online Protection Act in the US. This legislation would have required porn sites to check visitor's ages upon entrance, just as cigarette and alcohol vendors are required to ask for proof of age ID. In theory a nice idea, but it would have had little impact. It simply would have converted even more people, over and underage, to obtaining their porn from bittorrent and peer-to-peer sites. The proposed law didn't even have capability to regulate the millions of porn sites based outside of the US.

It works for tobacco, it won't work for porn. Censorship is not an answer.

As is so often the case, the posted comments beneath the article are particularly insightful:

What happen to parents actually being parents? ... bringing this up to your kids guarantees that they will look up porn! pay attention to what going on in your children s lives, its your job as a parent.

I completely agree that we are only just waking up to just how damaging porn can become for some of us. But censorship and prohibition serve to perpetuate the taboo of porn. As far as I'm concerned, anti-smoking sentiment is fine; the anti-sex message and effect of legal clampdowns is not.

Let's wrap this up with another comment posted beneath the article:

If we gave our teens good, non religious based sex education, gave them all tools to make informed decisions based on their upbringing and moral compass, we would be more open sexually, yet less dangerously promiscuous!