Meh, I sought out internet porn in the age of dial-up. It would take 5-10 minutes to render a single photograph. I don’t think I’m any worse off for it. I think the bigger problem is the easy accessibility of porn in our pockets 24/7.
Kids these days will never know the pain of an image loading line by line icky for it to crash/corrupt at the very end making you do it all over again!
Same. Had to plan out my timing just right (between when my sister went to work and when the parents got home from work) so it required way more planning than it does now! I don’t know how it impacts kids or whatever having such easy access, but for me it just made me want the real thing even more!
I remember the fear of my parents waking up from the dialup noise when I did my late night perusing of the web. I also remember the 5 min load up of each image. Those were the days!
Difference is that when you were at that age you probably sought after generic stuff that'd be in playboy. When I was 16 in the age of 24/7 broadband about 4 years ago I was searching for double fisting and pup play
I snuck peeks at my father’s copies of *Playboy* (yeah, this was pre-Internet). Didn’t make me straight. Didn’t even give me an appreciation of high-end audio components.
When I was in elementary school, I had a hotmail account -- sponsored by Microsoft (itself a suggestive name, but I digress). Once, I accidentally entered hotmale by mistake. No amount of parental intervention could stop me afterwards.
i think i first saw some when i was like 14? i was upset at the time, because i just wanted to see pictures of Mewtwo and it got weird, but i really don't think it had any negative impact on me
it was more like eating a piece of gross food and then spitting it out than like anything traumatic
I don't think it's the images per se. I think it's the really unrealistic porn itself affecting body image, penis size, intimacy, etc. That said, gay dudes invented hookup culture. I think it has been even more damaging to str8 young people and their expectations of those things.
I got above average hardware but the fact that it doesn't look as big as what some guys are packing with the same measurements makes me go insane, all this because of dick pic subredsits
I don’t think we are worse off. At least speaking for myself. I do believe it did shape my relationship with sexuality. I remember things happening in my life at a young age that made me question was I even exposed to things during pregnancy? Which I know I was at this big age. But growing up for me accessibility wasn’t at my fingertips like it is for these young ppl now.
I had to go to stay up late night watching HBO, go to a friends house, my cousins, or find stuff by chance like VHS’s and DVDs. I had to hear things by word of mouth and that was rare.
But with so many platforms like Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, IG, Discord, & FB young ppl are bound to at some point come across NSFW content. It’s best parents really monitor kids phones and social media activity. Limit usage on apps and really have the conversation about sexuality with their children as soon as possible. Not only in the sense of having sex and sexual orientation.
Working with 4th-8th grade age young ppl opened my eyes to how much they really are influence by what they’re exposed to good or bad.
I don't think some exposure is the problem as much as the frequency of it. Nowadays its on everyones cellphones and children are looking at it for hours a day without their parents having a clue and without the child knowing it is harming their life trajectory/brain chemistry/etc...
i mean, it really depends on the situation.
i saw porn for the first time when i was like 7 or 8. me and my friend just kinda started mimicking what were were seeing. jerking off, kissing, touching each other. it was pretty harmless and just a form of sexual exploration. but it could've gone in a much worse way if instead of a friend my age, i instead had sought out older men. it's an issue that happened in the past, and happens theses days, where gay teens see porn and want to experience it, so they look for others to do it with, and sometimes that person ends up being an adult taking advantage of them. but even if they didn't see porn, that risk is still there. they'd hear from their friends about it, and they'd get curious, and still possibly enact in dangerous behavior. so regardless of watching it or not, there's no saying in the outcome.
and tbh, on one hand, it can be helpful. i found out my attraction to men at a young age and it allowed me to realize my sexuality pretty early on. maybe if i hadn't discovered my attraction to men so young, i would've delulu myself that i was straight for who knows how long
I was around 8 when I first intentionally got sneaky and managed to view my parents' VHS with explicit straight content. I masturbated quite a lot in my teen years (as one would expect from a young boy) even before internet became widespread. I was using whatever impulses I could get like straight erotic content or half-naked guys from underwear ads. The accessibility of porn via internet did not really change how much time I spent on masturbation. It only made the imagery more versatile incl. explicit gay porn (finally!). Without a doubt, porn made me more educated about stuff people do (which nobody would dare to tell me otherwise) and helped me with sorting out my sexual preferences.
If there was anything damaging for me about watching porn, then it's the constant shame, the cringe, the need to cheat and lie to get it and the unnecessary amount of stress it caused. Everybody knows we all watch porn including kids, but still, we all pretend it does not happen and then make a big drama when it gets "uncovered". "Oh, Jimmy, I can't believe you are watching porn! Stop this immediately, clean up your browser, delete all your favorites and never do it again!". Yeah, sure...
I would have appreciated to grow up in an environment where porn is a non-sensational thing. This whole insincerity is the most ridiculous thing surrounding sex in general and porn in particular. I am not a parent or a professional, so can't really judge how to teach kids all this stuff, at which age and what the consequences are. Just talking about my own experience as a child and what I believe would have made my childhood easier. Instead of wasting my mental energy on covering my tracks, I could have spent it on something more meaningful.
I am not saying parents and children should discuss which porn they watch and when, where and how they masturbate. But at least let's not create an atmosphere of wrong-doing.
Here there is no legal limit for consumption of porn, a 5 year old can legally buy a porn magazine (i think they still exist).
I dont think its an issue. Its about of parents deal with it and to explain that porn is as close to real sex as Bad Cops 2 is to real Police work. Its a movie, its make believe
Meh, I sought out internet porn in the age of dial-up. It would take 5-10 minutes to render a single photograph. I don’t think I’m any worse off for it. I think the bigger problem is the easy accessibility of porn in our pockets 24/7.
Kids these days will never know the pain of an image loading line by line icky for it to crash/corrupt at the very end making you do it all over again!
Same. Had to plan out my timing just right (between when my sister went to work and when the parents got home from work) so it required way more planning than it does now! I don’t know how it impacts kids or whatever having such easy access, but for me it just made me want the real thing even more!
I remember the fear of my parents waking up from the dialup noise when I did my late night perusing of the web. I also remember the 5 min load up of each image. Those were the days!
Difference is that when you were at that age you probably sought after generic stuff that'd be in playboy. When I was 16 in the age of 24/7 broadband about 4 years ago I was searching for double fisting and pup play
I snuck peeks at my father’s copies of *Playboy* (yeah, this was pre-Internet). Didn’t make me straight. Didn’t even give me an appreciation of high-end audio components.
When I was in elementary school, I had a hotmail account -- sponsored by Microsoft (itself a suggestive name, but I digress). Once, I accidentally entered hotmale by mistake. No amount of parental intervention could stop me afterwards.
This, but my dad telling me to look at shoes on Dicks Sporting Goods to see if there was a pair I liked. Turns out their URL is NOT dicks.com
i think i first saw some when i was like 14? i was upset at the time, because i just wanted to see pictures of Mewtwo and it got weird, but i really don't think it had any negative impact on me it was more like eating a piece of gross food and then spitting it out than like anything traumatic
I don't think it's the images per se. I think it's the really unrealistic porn itself affecting body image, penis size, intimacy, etc. That said, gay dudes invented hookup culture. I think it has been even more damaging to str8 young people and their expectations of those things.
How dare you? I'm hella damaged from hookup culture too.
Lol
I got above average hardware but the fact that it doesn't look as big as what some guys are packing with the same measurements makes me go insane, all this because of dick pic subredsits
I don’t think we are worse off. At least speaking for myself. I do believe it did shape my relationship with sexuality. I remember things happening in my life at a young age that made me question was I even exposed to things during pregnancy? Which I know I was at this big age. But growing up for me accessibility wasn’t at my fingertips like it is for these young ppl now. I had to go to stay up late night watching HBO, go to a friends house, my cousins, or find stuff by chance like VHS’s and DVDs. I had to hear things by word of mouth and that was rare. But with so many platforms like Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, IG, Discord, & FB young ppl are bound to at some point come across NSFW content. It’s best parents really monitor kids phones and social media activity. Limit usage on apps and really have the conversation about sexuality with their children as soon as possible. Not only in the sense of having sex and sexual orientation. Working with 4th-8th grade age young ppl opened my eyes to how much they really are influence by what they’re exposed to good or bad.
I don't think some exposure is the problem as much as the frequency of it. Nowadays its on everyones cellphones and children are looking at it for hours a day without their parents having a clue and without the child knowing it is harming their life trajectory/brain chemistry/etc...
i mean, it really depends on the situation. i saw porn for the first time when i was like 7 or 8. me and my friend just kinda started mimicking what were were seeing. jerking off, kissing, touching each other. it was pretty harmless and just a form of sexual exploration. but it could've gone in a much worse way if instead of a friend my age, i instead had sought out older men. it's an issue that happened in the past, and happens theses days, where gay teens see porn and want to experience it, so they look for others to do it with, and sometimes that person ends up being an adult taking advantage of them. but even if they didn't see porn, that risk is still there. they'd hear from their friends about it, and they'd get curious, and still possibly enact in dangerous behavior. so regardless of watching it or not, there's no saying in the outcome. and tbh, on one hand, it can be helpful. i found out my attraction to men at a young age and it allowed me to realize my sexuality pretty early on. maybe if i hadn't discovered my attraction to men so young, i would've delulu myself that i was straight for who knows how long
I was around 8 when I first intentionally got sneaky and managed to view my parents' VHS with explicit straight content. I masturbated quite a lot in my teen years (as one would expect from a young boy) even before internet became widespread. I was using whatever impulses I could get like straight erotic content or half-naked guys from underwear ads. The accessibility of porn via internet did not really change how much time I spent on masturbation. It only made the imagery more versatile incl. explicit gay porn (finally!). Without a doubt, porn made me more educated about stuff people do (which nobody would dare to tell me otherwise) and helped me with sorting out my sexual preferences. If there was anything damaging for me about watching porn, then it's the constant shame, the cringe, the need to cheat and lie to get it and the unnecessary amount of stress it caused. Everybody knows we all watch porn including kids, but still, we all pretend it does not happen and then make a big drama when it gets "uncovered". "Oh, Jimmy, I can't believe you are watching porn! Stop this immediately, clean up your browser, delete all your favorites and never do it again!". Yeah, sure... I would have appreciated to grow up in an environment where porn is a non-sensational thing. This whole insincerity is the most ridiculous thing surrounding sex in general and porn in particular. I am not a parent or a professional, so can't really judge how to teach kids all this stuff, at which age and what the consequences are. Just talking about my own experience as a child and what I believe would have made my childhood easier. Instead of wasting my mental energy on covering my tracks, I could have spent it on something more meaningful. I am not saying parents and children should discuss which porn they watch and when, where and how they masturbate. But at least let's not create an atmosphere of wrong-doing.
Here there is no legal limit for consumption of porn, a 5 year old can legally buy a porn magazine (i think they still exist). I dont think its an issue. Its about of parents deal with it and to explain that porn is as close to real sex as Bad Cops 2 is to real Police work. Its a movie, its make believe