Planned Parenthood Goes Mainstream
The LA Times ran an eerie piece over the weekend about the prevalence of pornography and its impact on teenagers. The message of the article is, "Look, the kids have seen it all and they're fine, so don't get worked up about porn any more." The underlying message--and one we're not convinced the writer himself understands--is that the sex acts portrayed in pornography have become normalized and, therefore, legitimate. The writer seems to be saying, "Look, it doesn't shock kids any more, so it doesn't matter any more." The opposite, of course, is true: If kids aren't shocked by it, they're desensitized to it, and that means they might (might) think it's normal. We're not convinced that's the case, but it's not a good thing that teenagers think pornography is nothing extraordinary.
In fairness to the writer, it should be noted that he provides quotes from researchers who are concerned that all this could be a very bad thing. Link. Excerpts:
"What we once called porn is just mainstream sex now, and what we now think of as pornography has shrunk to a tiny, tiny area," Herdt said. "We've expanded the envelope of normative sex so much that there's not much room for 'porn' anymore."
"If you see images of women being tied up and degraded, and you're seeing them year after year and by the thousands, it desensitizes you," Ponton said. "And this has not yet been looked at developmentally."
"Young people don't have a lot of reference points," agreed Ralph DiClemente, professor of public health and medicine at Atlanta's Emory University, who is midway through a five-year study of children and the Internet sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health. "For them, the media is reality.
"So, you're a young person, you're curious, you haven't had sex but you don't want to appear to be a neophyte. What do you do? You go on the Internet to see, how should I behave? And a lot of what they're getting is a stilted perception of reality."
Whether that perception translates into behavior, however, is another question. Most children, after all, tune out what they don't understand. And for all the sex in their sightlines, teenagers now have the lowest pregnancy, birth and abortion rates in decades. The vast majority of adolescents still are virgins at age 15, and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2002 that the size of that majority had increased since 1995. In a recent poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates commissioned by People magazine and NBC, 95% of 13- and 14-year-olds said they had not had intercourse, and 9 out of 10 said they disapproved of it for those their age.
Conclusion:
"I mean, porn is really easy to get now," the UC Irvine freshman shrugged, tossing his long bangs, which were dyed blood-orange. "It's like, who cares?"
X-rated images, he said, were "like cigarettes, which everybody can get if they want them." They were as accessible as a cellphone ring tone or an addition to the playlist for your iPod.
"Porn," he said, sticking a plastic cup under the soft drink dispenser, "is just another form of entertainment now."
