All the nasty stuff.

[Haruspex]

I've been wondering, what exactly is the reason behind sheltering kids from stuff like pornography, scary stuff and suchlike? Supposedly it is meant to cause them to develop in a weird fashion or whatever, but frankly, I have to refer to my own example.

When I was around 12 I had a bunch of porno and adult humour magazines 'confiscated' by my parents, other than that, nothing. When I gained access to the internet around 14, my parents really didn't bother 'policing' me at all. They never bothered trying to prevent me from watching horror or plainly violent films, so basically I've been watching horror films and suchlike from around the age of, well, 6 I'd say. The only mental abnormality I have is health anxiety which I developed roughly two years ago (Don't even try, it hasn't been established, or even suggested that this has anything to do with it. A lack is exactly that, a lack.). Other than that, my mental development has been entirely ok, with nothing out of the ordinary. I can differentiate between reality and fiction blah blah blah and so on and so forth. All the horror and porno films didn't quite mess me up. Actually, I had a great time. Why should the kids not have them?

 

[Chidoriashi]

Horror movies scared the crap out of me when I was I a little kid. I am glad I was sheltered from most of them. Now I look back at the same movies, laugh, and cannot understand why it was scary, but I know it was.. so..

 

[Haruspex]

Horror movies scared the crap out of me when I was I a little kid. I am glad I was sheltered from most of them. Now I look back at the same movies, laugh, and cannot understand why it was scary, but I know it was.. so..

Yeah, they scared the crap out of me too, but that's why I watched them. It's like spicy food, you know it's going to be a rough ride.

 

[Emoni]

Always wondered about this too.

I'd say the most reasonable reason, which I'm not even sure parents think about too much sometimes, is that you'd want to have a child have enough life experience to put something in context when they are exposed to it, and try to have that exposure in a semi-controlled environment where you can explain and put it in context yourself as well.

Age does matter, but ultimately life experience is the most important thing. People simply use age since it isn't possible to judge life experience accurately.

 

[Tsuyoiko]

I can find lots of articles claiming that hundreds or thousands of studies have shown that excessive exposure to violent media can lead to increased aggressive behaviour in children. I'm finding it difficult to find any of these actual studies though. I posted about one in the Video Games forum a while ago that seems pretty conclusive:
Violent video game play makes more aggressive kids, study shows

As the author of the study says,

These are not huge effects -- not on the order of joining a gang vs. not joining a gang. But these effects are also not trivial in size. It is one risk factor for future aggression and other sort of negative outcomes. And it's a risk factor that's easy for an individual parent to deal with.

As for porn, I'd be more worried about a 12 year old boy who showed no interest in it. I like my grandma's way of dealing with it. When she found some under my dad's matress when he was kid she just took it out and left it on the bed in full view.

 

[Emoni]

As much as I value good research, I constantly call into question the details of studies like that. Increased aggression in what way? In what kids? What time line? What were the games/movies? Were they the things that even had an effect?

There are so many factors... games and movies I feel are constantly picked on for very little reason. Obviously you wouldn't let a 5 year old watch something like "The Hostel" (heck, I really don't even want to watch it) but even so, I do not think that it would make the kid a murderer if they saw it. Now, I'm not going to test that, and I don't think it is a good idea...

BUT

There are so many countering factors, such as environment, parents, friends, hell, maybe even food. I'd argue that a kid playing football, or growing up in a bad neighborhood is FAR more likely to cause the child to become more aggressive, violent, or more. The effort seems so misdirected, and that isn't even considering the violent and images IN CONTEXT. Think of Schindler's list, or any movie that shows violence and sex, the context varies greatly.

I grew up playing horribly violent games at times, watching violent movies sometimes, and am knowledgeable of all SORTS of things I wouldn't even mention on this post. While I'm not saying I'm certifiable proof games and movies "aren't bad" I will say that I believe their effect needs to be seriously considered within context, minus the hype.

 

[Tsuyoiko]

To be fair to the researcher I posted above, he addresses some of your points in his FAQ:

http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/Video_Game_FAQs.html

there are many causal risk factors involved in the development of a person who frequently behaves in an aggressive or violent manner. There are biological factors, family factors, neighborhood factors, and so on. Media violence is only one of the top dozen or so risk factors...

extreme aggression, such as aggravated assault and homicide, typically occurs only when there are a number of risk factors present...People with only one risk factor seldom (I'm tempted to say ﾂ"neverﾂ") commit murder.

However, I agree with you that it's not entirely clear that he's shown exactly how aggression is increased. There's reference to Multiple Affect Adjective Checklists, meta-analysis and monitoring behaviour over time, but I would really like to see some graphs or something.

 

[Emoni]

Yeah, I saw some of that in the article you posted after I posted my response. I'd say while I of course question the research, as anyone should do of ANY research, I see an even more serious problem with the media and news agencies that report "studies" which almost always hype and f-up the results and methodology/process of the study itself. That is then reinterpreted into some big mess that is misunderstood.

 

[Half-n-Half]

Most qualitative research is subjective on some level.

To address Derfel's question: maybe it is our paternal/maternal instinct to protect our children that is kicking in. We might instinctively see something like violent video games and movies as something that could potentially harm our children so we aim to shield them from it.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Umm actually i would argue that it is not healthy for most children (underline children not teenagers) to be watching porn- especially since there is a LOT of f***ed up stuff on the internet (& mobile phones) these days that is very disturbing.

Not just that, but porn is very scripted and not relevant to sex in the real world (i.e. trust me that girl is not enjoying that 5inch wide dildo). But a 12 year old boy watching porn may not be able to distinguish between this- his views of healthy sex and porno (fantasy) sex will become warped, and whenever he does eventually get a girlfriend the relationship will suffer for it. Also porn puts unessary pressure on young girls to loose their virginity younger, making them feel pressured to do things that they are not comfortable with etc.

Same goes for graphic horror films. Let kids be kids and have their fun, don't scare the c**p out of them by letting them watch horror movies that give them nightmares & problems falling asleep for years to come.

There was a terrible incident a while back where 2 boys aged 10 & 11 tortured, beat & sexually assulted 2 other boys of the same age, leaving them for dead in a feild. The offenders had grown up in a toxic home, watching violent horror movies and pornography from an even younger age as well as smoking cannabis;

BBC News - 'Toxic' home life of brutal brothers

Now Derfel you say your upbringing has had no effort whatsoever on the way you have turned out. And as i don't personally know you very well i cannot argue against that.

But in no way will i ever think that it is healthy to expose children to horror movies & porn- i don't consider them part of a healthy upbringing. Children don't need porn, and IMO they are better off not watching most horror movies. We are living in a society where children are having less and less time to enjoy childhood, and where we are only just discovering the problems created by children being exposed to violent/graphic movies & porn etc from a young age. Do you want your future children to become guinea pigs in this experiment or would you rather that they have good normal childhoods appropriate for their ages & development?

 

[Pandora]

People experience everything differently. I have never put much belief in the whole 'children will be corrupted from exposure to this, this, and this' theory and research, because although it is data collected from various tests, humans are all different. People fret about children so much because the younger they are, the more impressionable they are. For example, when a child likes a certain person, role model, cartoon character or something of the like, they decide they want to be 'just like them' and will pick up on their habits or appearance and try to mimic them. I don't support entirely sheltering a child, but I don't support neglect either. I am more of the 'within reason' viewpoint. For example, there was a news report recently where an elephant trainer was being trampled and attacked by the elephant he trained at a zoo. A man and his family were there looking at the elephant exhibit and he made his two young daughters watch the elephant hurt this man until he was bleedy profusely and in the fetal position. When the news reporter asked the man why he made his children watch, he said that next time his daughters asked 'why can't we pet the bobcat or [insert random wild animal here]?' they will realize that it is because in the end it is a wild animal and it can turn on you at any time. There are better ways to teach that than make two little girls watch an elephant corner a full-grown man in all it's gorey splendor. Many of them are less traumatizing than the elephant situation. The issue of humans being in the wrong for caging and instigating animals in the first place aside, I would not let my young children watch something like that happen because it would scare them and give them nightmares about the experience. They might even develop a phobia of animals and I would be saddened by the fact that my children would live in fear because of what they saw. It does not feel good to live in fear and I don't believe parents should stimulate complex emotions that would uneccessarily upset their child if all it is going to do is torture them and bring no lesson or benefit from the experience when they are that young.

 

[bakaKanadajin]

I tend to agree with Tokis-Phoenix's point of view. The stuff these days can seriously warp kids minds.

When I was a kid around 13 I got my hands on my first porno magazines and videos. The stuff I saw was fairly normal. Sex in various positions and u know, that kind of thing. Nothing over the top. Also, I wasn't able to get my hands on a lot of it, just what I had come by, so I kind of treated my magazines and videos, what few I had, like u know, trading cards. I'd read through them and watched them all front to back and was fine with that.

These days however pornography has a definite misogynistic taint to it.
That, and it's available in infinite supply.

I don't mind admitting as a healthy adult male that I like to check out porn from time to time and whatnot. The stuff I look at is to be honest mostly Japanese/east-Asian girl porn (which is a whole other topic) but mixed in the lot you find lot of stuff from back home in the West.

My, how that stuff has changed since I was young!

-Guys banging girls in the throat.
-Girls being held down by their necks with simulated overtones of rape.
-Girls made-up to look underage and placed in playrooms with toys and decorations geared towards very young children, giving an unmistakable image of pedophilia.

Plus the sheer amount of it really brings it into another realm. You know, it's like kids who overeat, there's just too much junk food available. So maybe (probably) there are kids and adults for that matter who overconsume porn. There's just so much you can never watch it all.

So it's just way too much in my opinion.

Saying the words 'It's healthy for a boy to look at a bit of pornography' is fine because I also firmly believe its true. But it's like this.. a donut back in the day was say 50grams, made of mostly flour and had 100 calories. Now a days we have 1000 calorie chemical-laced monsters from Krispy Kreme. It's it still good to have a couple of donuts a day? So I mean, is it healthy for a boy to see 'a bit of porn' in this day and age? Because a bit of porn from today could be way more damaging than the simple stuff from a decade or two ago.

A Playboy magazine, a 'normal' porn (whatever that means), something that simply gives the growing boy/teen what he wants to see (the naked female figure and simple sexual imagery) sure that's healthy. But the other stuff I mentioned above, I wouldn't want my son seeing that.

 

[Nuala]

Haha, yeah, my parents did the same thing. The first rated R film I saw was Starship Troopers. Before that, it had all been G to PG-13 stuff. In fact, I didn't get to play the Resident Evil series of video games until high school. I found that to be a tad screwed up. But hey, I got through it!

 

[Revenant]

I forget where the study was conducted, it may have been Bhutan, or one of the countries nearby, the country had banned TV right up till 1989, but soon after people started watching TV, there was an observable increase in aggression. I don't know, certainly for some kids, watching violence on TV won't make them anymore aggressive, they just aren't those kind of kids, but for a few kids, watching that could make them feel it's somehow powerful and impressive. TV does definitely seem to increase materialism. I'll see if I can dig up that study later when I've got time...

 

[witnessingpresence]

Sounds like you grew up all messed up