I think this says more about giving children phones than about pr0n.

I don't see what could be done. The only thing that can really stop kids from sending dick pics and having oral sex in middle school is good parents, and no one besides the parents can make that happen.

This is just how people behave. When I was in sixth grade picture phones were just coming out. Within weeks of people having them there was a scandal of girls taking pictures of other girls in the locker room and showing them to boys later. You couldn't send picture messages yet. As soon as a technology comes out that will make it easier for these hormone-filled dummies to experiment sexually then they will. The same thing must have happened with regular telephones and postal systems.

This is a really sad development, but all anyone can do is make sure their own kids don't behave this way.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161118/Aboriginal-erotic-rock-art-proves--28-000-years-ago--men-ONE-thing-minds.html

Fast forward 28,000 years and you have Ovid and Catullus writing scandalous sex poetry. A thousand years later you have Chaucer, and then the Renaissance. The only things that have changed are the media for the pornography and the ease of distribution. It would be much more pertinent to have a debate about cyber-bullying.

I'm not sure how this relates, but I'd be prepared to believe that for the first 60,000 years or so of modern human existence, parents probably raised their kids in a one-room dwelling. And people had a *lot* of kids back then. This would mean that for most of prehistory (and a good chunk of history) people pretty much all saw their parents having sex growing up.

Again, I'm not sure how that relates, but my understanding* is that recently psychologists are reaching a belief that children exposed to consensual sex is a lot less harmless than was once believed.

*correct me if I'm wrong. Full disclosure: I know nothing of child psychology as it pertains to sexuality.

"Cyber-bullying" is just kids being assholes to each other like they always have and always will. Again, the only real solution is good parenting to teach kids that being cruel to people is wrong, and good parenting to help kids be able to cope with the bad things life will throw in their way.

"This would mean that for most of prehistory (and a good chunk of history) people pretty much all saw their parents having sex growing up."

More likely they sent them to grandma's hut or something. I doubt the virtually universal instinct to have sex in private is just an artifact of Victorian prudishness.

Kids are mean and unstable. It's part of growing up. What is needed is good parents and family to prevent their kids from being bullies and help their kids if they are bullied.

Invictus, I totally agree. I was pointing out the silliness of the entire discussion.

I'm generally pretty skeptical that porn is healthy at all.

However I'm also pretty skeptical that porn has much to do with that first article.

The real issue is sexting and cyber-bullying.

This is also a feminist issue (surprise surprise, haters), because girls hopefully would live in a culture where they feel comfortable turning down the pressures of horny boys, and also the culture would hopefully discourage boys from being too persistent about it - which can lead to rape.

So if you ask me this is about rape culture, not porn, not technology.

@ Thucy - wouldn't you say that porn generally objectifies women, and that obectification contributes to rape culture?

I think you'll find a very hard time showing a correlation between watching porn and raping women.

Thucy, were you the one who posted that TED talk a few months ago?

It's about as solid as playing Counterstrike and school shootings.
(or whatever it is that kids play these days)

Surprisingly, it's still Counterstrike.

Back to the rape thing again?

OK, I will point out again that, at least in the first world, rape is rarely about sex/horniness. It is usually a power/control thing sometimes combined with an inability for the rapist to experience gratification without that control. Many rapist have either anger issues with women or an inferiority complex.

Now, this is for the non date-rape category of rapes. Date rape/roofies is about sex, but that crowd isn't the "downloading porn in their parent's basement because they think no women could possibly consider them attractive" variety and are usually the arrogant "every babe wants me and so she wanted it" bullshitters.

@abge, others,

A fair point, I think, about it being more tied to phones. I actually thought for close to a full minute about calling the thread "Technology and kids" or something, but decided that (a) that would just cause confusion and (b) I should just call it what the article called it and see where people went.

That does suggest at least one possible solution, too, though I doubt it would be a popular one -- don't give your kids a camera phone.

@ghug, others,

Yes, people have always had an interest in sex, including when young. No, 11 and 12 year old boys have not always been pressuring 11 and 12 year old girls to have sex with them in large numbers. (That's not to say this is the first time in history when it's happened, but it wasn't happening in the UK 60 years ago, or even more recently). (Note I said "in large numbers.")

Although I will say -- re phone/porn -- that I think one or two of the other recent articles did bring out more of the impact that pornography, per se has been having on kids (such as helping generate and define the sexual expectations increasingly young people have of each other. If there's sufficient interest, I'll try to track down that article.

@semck: I'd be careful with generalizations over time without solid backing. You would not be the first to fall into the 'everything used to be better' trap.

I'd consider not giving my kids camera phones, although I'm quite sure that when they are the appropriate age, there will be no other options anymore.

TMOW,

"You would not be the first to fall into the 'everything used to be better' trap."

I'm well aware, and I'm certain such things did occur in some numbers, and in high numbers in some locales. That said, I feel confident in my claim; not because I've seen the definitive social science study, "Sexual behavior in young children in 1950s and 2010s in England compared," but because there are a lot of different lines of evidence one can look to for these things, and they all more or less converge.

" No, 11 and 12 year old boys have not always been pressuring 11 and 12 year old girls to have sex with them in large numbers. (That's not to say this is the first time in history when it's happened, but it wasn't happening in the UK 60 years ago, or even more recently)."
50 years ago girls hit puberty at 11 or 12 while boys hit puberty at 13 or 14. When the boys started to get "interested" the girls where already visibly "growing up". Believe me when I say 13 and 14 year old boys *were* pestering girls for sex back then - most of them weren't getting any though. Why? 1) The girls had too much sense. 2) The Pill wasn't available to school girls back then - so the penalty for having sex was pregnancy.

A disturbing development, and I agree with Invictus it's largely a family matter. I also - out of my own experience - believe that the next generation falsely believes that complicated problems can be solved by texting a friend/boyfriend or writing an angry tweet, which are very poor problem solving strategies. Alas, now starting to risk becoming the conservative nutter of the webdip community, I'll leave it at that :-)

@semck Thing is with intuitive converging lines, they are up for interpretation. I'm not so sure.

Depending on what era you look at, there have been many times when forcing yourself on a girl simply meant you should marry her quickly. And legal age for marriage used to be quite a bit lower. So the number may well be seemingly lower because rape was hidden in unhappy forced marriages. This was certainly true for the early part of the 20th century in most European countries.

Oh, OK, TMoW. Well, that's much easier. The marriage rate among 12 year olds has been low in England for quite a while now. That's pretty easy to ascertain.

Also, "intuitive" was your word, not mine.

@STA,

A good point to bring up, but there's no evidence that puberty has gotten earlier among boys in the UK. See e.g.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/25/early-puberty-growing-up-faster

I agree with the minister - in my class we got interested in girls pretty much around the age of 11 - 12 and that was shortly before the camera phones arrived. also if u look at legal marriage ages across time, one consistently finds that girls were considered "ripe for marriage" between 12 and 14, also in Europe. Boys often a little late, I guess not because they had no interest, but because for other societal conventions… For those who like French XIX century literature, I'd recommend some Zola novels situated in rural or working class environments (Nana, The Soil, etc.) where it is a recurring theme (child to child rape, I mean).

I'm not so concerned about the whole pron/rape thing. I don't really see it. What is slightly concerning is that children may get a somewhat distorted image of sexuality if they watch pron on their phones all the time (rather than on large computer screens where it can be appreciated in all its splendor, ow no wait strike that)

My girlfriend is pregnant at the moment. I pray to God I don't have a daughter..

Most cultures do

Also, I wish you all the best either way