What is it like in 2021 when 10-to-15yo's discover porn in Good lord, this is a book

I grew up back in the nudie magazine world, where if you were lucky you got to know some guy at the local deli who would sell you a porno mag when you were just 15. Before that, you’d be riding your bike in some random neighborhood and there beside the curb was a copy of “Swank” or “Oui” or “Gallery”. If (you thought) nobody was looking, you’d pick-up the magazine and hope you had something with which to conceal it, before having a look later.

The amusement of perhaps just four or six models depicted there is laughable by 2021 standards, and I can’t even imagine what it must be like today, when your friends at school (when you’re 10 or 12, surely) slip you the name of some website, from which unending porn likely cascades toward viewers 24/7, with hundreds or thousands of models.

The other night I was watching TV and a child of about 12 found a porn stash in his parents’ basement, and a very realistic scenario in which he later shared the find with his friends and only then got caught.

But geez, in 2021, once you’re an underage kid discovering online porn, when does it ever end??? I can simulate everything relating to my own long-ago experiences and I can almost comprehend just HOW much porn is out there today, but the one factor that is beyond my understanding is just what is the impact on a ten or twelve-year-old kid upon first finding the avenue into that vast online world of unending porn?

Geez, I can still to this day (and without looking) recall the very centerfold model in one of those earliest magazines, and I can recall what she was wearing (before she was wearing nothing at all) as well as how (relatively) tastefully done was her photo shoot.

Online porn goes so fast that I can’t even imagine underage boys of today being able to pause and take even mental notes. And lets be honest - the stupid screening that goes on to theoretically catch underage viewers at the door, is completely ridiculous.

Is that why, once they reach ages 13 to 17, they’re so keen on getting any girl in school to send them an illegal selfie?? Because they’ve already been overwhelmed by so much anonymous online porn that the only thing left is to have porn from someone they know?

Not only that, but porn of the day tends to dictate sexual trends of the day, and with porn going as far as possible to push boundaries (in order to stand-out from other porn), does that mean that future sexuality is going to push limits that we can’t even figure out just yet?

And it seems we never hear from mothers whose 10-to-14yo children have dabbled in the secretive viewing of online porn (although I should Google such a thing, for surely…). Yet with so much porn, and with kids being so easily impacted by the internet, surely the parental battle against online porn should be more visible than it tends to be.

Yes, I know about parental filters, although I have a difficult time believing that one places those filters on the home PC until the date of the child’s 18th birthday, and what do you do if you have multiple kids? You probably attempt to leave the filter on the home PC until the last one hits the age of 18.

Parents simply CAN’T be “winning” this battle, for while there might be one mind they can still conquer there at home, they don’t have the resources to battle the dozens of young minds at school who are each experimenting with another path at their own houses. Whoever finds ‘success’ first shares it with the group, and it isn’t long before everybody is in on the porn viewing.

No wonder 2021 doesn’t see as many young kids out throwing a football around the city streets. Kids probably aren’t even throwing snowballs at cars anymore, and the only people throwing rocks onto the freeways are adults… and probably adults who don’t have internet access.

“What to do when your child finds online porn”, when searched on Google, is good for 52,700,000 matches there.

One of the results had 5 bullet points:

“You won’t be in trouble“

“It’s for grown-ups, not for kids“

“When this happens, say this” (re: responding to your friends passing/showing porn websites)

“Your phone is not a toy“

“If you’re going to do it, do it like a grown-up”

Under that last bullet point is the advice:

”” Consider subscribing to a non-digital pornographic resource like Playboy or suggesting books with sexual themes for a less graphic but still stimulating outlet. “”

Andrea Dworkin is surely rolling over in her grave at that last part.

And the next time I hear anyone suggest that kids way back when had it “so much better” than kids of today, I’m just going to laugh…

I always wondered what it was like to live in that household down the street where the father did indeed have his stack of Playboy magazines right out in the open in the front room. (strangely, the kids were nearly angels, and those kids were definitely envied by most parents in the area… although one did go on to run an old school porn shop)

The general basis of the vast sea of online advice for having discovered your child watching/seeing porn seems very well-intended, and it definitely challenges the parent to (keep their cool) at a moment when it would be easier to fly off the handle and scream or cry. And who knows how the combination of generations of kids seeing considerable porn before they’re 12, and parents who are trying to cope with such reality, impacts today’s overall trends in parenting and in (figuratively) losing your kids at a very early stage.

And “does the whole consideration put even greater pressure on young women of today (who already seem to have to run a gantlet of societal pressures merely to reach their 18th birthdays and high school graduation without having been completely derailed by the society all around them)?”

This writer cannot even fathom having been a child of 12 to 15 and encountering the myriad porn that today’s internet can bring. HOWever, one difference is that if you spend enough time searching online for even more porn, you reach a point where even a 12-year-old can discern real human beings, many in their everyday environs, compared to the rarest of physical specimens which were the ones depicted in those long-ago Playboy magazines (or even Playboy of today).

Reiterating: So yeah, if you catch your kid in 2021 watching online porn comprised of real human beings, many moving around their bedrooms and apartments in real third-world countries across the globe, be sure to get him a subscription to Playboy as an option so that he can idealize those without stretch marks, without tummies, and without other flaws, so he can know how porn is supposed to be.