Gen Y and Porn

Generation Y
n.
The generation following Generation X, especially people born in the United States and Canada from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.

Gen Y is also the first generation to gow up with a nearly ubiquitous access to hardcore porn via, of course, the internet. Does this then indicate the fall of civilization, or something else entirely?

A recent LA Times article gives plenty of food for thought:

Sex, of course, has always sold in American culture. And hand wringing about children's exposure to it is as old as civilization. But never has adult content had a platform as powerful — and legitimizing — as the one-two punch of cable plus the Internet.

Images and subject matter that were stigmatized a generation ago now flow and multiply from one mass medium to another, turning yesterday's taboo into today's in-joke. Adult film actress Jenna Jameson has moved from X-rated DVDs and downloads to the bestselling sex manual "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" and, last year, a VH1 documentary. Dance moves once associated with strippers are as common on MTV as tight pants on rock stars. Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton are famous equally for their TV work and their downloadable bootleg sex tapes.
...
Whether so much sex talk distorts children's views is only beginning to be researched. Dr. Lynn Ponton, a professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco and author of "The Sex Lives of Teenagers," notes that exploring sexuality is an important part of a healthy adolescence, but the usual outlets for that aren't what they used to be.

One study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found, for example, that 70% of the nation's 15- to 17-year-olds have looked at pornography online. But an average porn site can generate as many sexual images in a minute as an entire issue of Hustler, Ponton said, and often they are exponentially more violent and explicit than the centerfolds that past generations used to stash under the mattress.

Being a man of my generation (late-boomer) I can not believe that exposing teens to so much hardcore sex is a good thing. But I do believe it presents an opportunity.

So, before we shut down the internet, let us consider an alternative. A primary danger of being exposed to web based porn is that:

"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."

Misinformation isn't dissipated by ignorance or silence, it can only be destroyed by correct information, by facts, by reality.

So instead of hyperventilating about Janet Jackson's breast on TV (an event apparently more titillating to boomer dads than their Gen Y offspring) we need to talk to our kids. And if the conversation is going to have any positive effect, the conversation will have to be considerably more frank than is customary in Puritan America.

We are waaay past the point where simple denial will do us (or our kids) any good. Pandora's box is wide open. Our choice is what to do with the changed circumstances. It's long past time for us to demystify sex, like it or not it is up to us to deal with it. Our young people's health is a stake.