from Hacker News

Teenagers and the Internet

by hobolobo on 9/12/13, 9:42 AM with 120 comments

• by 3pt14159 on 9/12/13, 11:04 AM

  I've had the internet for twenty years (since I was 8) and computer access since I was 3. Most of my friends had access since they were 10 or 11. We turned out fine. Some kids who have poor role models are going to ask for oral sex from boys or girls that like them. This was true 3000 years ago. It is true today. It will be true twenty years from now regardless of what silly idea the person who made the documentary has. "Part regulation, part cultural shift." Please. I'm not taking any more "think of the children" arguments for laws.

  Also, I'm sick and tired of "child porn" including 14-18 year olds. It isn't child porn. They arn't children. They are teenagers. Some of them have been having sex for years. It should be a different offence to posses and it should not be an offence to posses if you were in a loving relationship (and similar in age, a 14 year old and a 16 or 17 year old, not a 40 year old and a 14 year old).

  You know those dirty letters you got from your sweetheart when you were 17? Sexting is the same damn thing.

• by msluyter on 9/12/13, 12:09 PM

  Given the absence of real data (as in, studies that demonstrate conclusively that watching too much online porn has certain downsides), it's not surprising that a lot of comments are resorting to anecdotal reasoning of the form: "Well, I use the internet and I'm ok..."

  Nonetheless, I think it's worth entertaining the hypothesis that in many ways the internet is like candy for your brain, and constant exposure might have subtle -- perhaps not yet fully recognized or appreciated -- effects on our cognition. We're running a vast uncontrolled experiment, and when things go wrong we (tech elites) tend to dismiss it with some variation of "Well, they had mental health issues or a parental problems or they would have been bullied anyway etc... etc... etc... It couldn't have been the internet."

  The problem is that these are the same sorts of arguments that have been deployed in the face of every technological advance. "It's not that video games are addictive, it's that people already prone to addiction choose to become addicted to video games. 100 years ago they would have been addicted to whist."

  I find this to be rather unpersuasive, generally, but I'm honestly also at a loss to articulate a compelling counterargument of my own. I have vague misgivings and a handful of anecdotes and not a lot of sound science.

• by nicholassmith on 9/12/13, 10:51 AM

  It's interesting, the Internet has become a micro-society and people are beginning to have expectations that the major players have a responsibility to perform a similar service as that of a government (contributing resources to fight child porn as the example made), whilst also expecting governments to rule it. Can we have it both ways? And should we expect that as a norm?

  The internet doesn't have a morality, it's a tool and usage is defined clearly by the user. The fact that more teenage boys are accessing pornography and have warped approaches to conventional relationships is a problem, but how much of a problem is it due to the internet? My generation (approaching 30) were among the first to have always on, reasonably high speed internet and yes that did mean easy access to pornography but despite that the majority of us are in long term relationships.

  I think there's a lot to be made of how the internet has impacted modern society, but it doesn't exist in a single point of impact. There's also a dozen other factors that have to be taken into account, ranging from parents being less available due to increased workloads to an education system that's not encouraging people to want to learn.

• by djent on 9/12/13, 10:38 AM

  I'm a teenager, and from my own experience, teenagers will do idiotic things even without the Internet. Pointing the finger at the Internet for parents' problems with their children is an easy thing to do because the Internet can't defend itself, especially as a whole.

• by chrisdone on 9/12/13, 11:25 AM

  As usual mass media newspapers, or the shadow left thereof, are decades out of touch with subject matter that has been covered in the blogosphere extensively, making the same old observations (“warped perceptions of women/sex/life/etc.”) that were made about television and games in past eras, treating their audience like sheltered idiots. I don't know why anyone reads this tripe or bothers to watch these ‘documentaries’.

• by teeja on 9/12/13, 3:06 PM

  It's great that someone so attentive to teens is candidly exploring this subject on film. Unfortunate that it seems to be focussed primarily on negatives.

  Yes I spend a lot of time on the net: unlike the TV which consumed thousands of passive, scripted hours in my youth, the net is interactive, the outcome within my control. For most of my life, the many things I couldn't learn more about for lack of time or helpful resources were out of reach; the amplification is awesome. For most of my life, I had to imagine being connected with communities of shared interests, never imagining having the focussing luxury of needing to choose from among them.

  Those changes in my life are all positives. So while teens are doing teenish things with this tech, they are learning - just as we adults are. And when they become parents, they'll know from experience (just as in the middle ages and in the 1800s and 1950s) the impact of these new things.

  The social impact of emergent technologies has always been unpredictable. Luckily humans adapt. And so far, ever since the first piece of flint changed lives, we've muddled on somehow. Not that worry-warting is worthless; reflection is in fact the mother of adaptation.

• by scrrr on 9/12/13, 11:09 AM

  Apparently there's some proof that too much pornography is bad for you. [1] Not too mention all the multitasking. Other than that the Internet is like every other thing. It has good and bad sides. I, for one, have faith in teenagers. They'll turn out alright. It's usually the old folks that make the bigger/worse mistakes.

    [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

• by navait on 9/12/13, 11:22 AM

  It's unfortunate that answers to internet pornography always come in the form of these unworkable filters. Politicians can only justify censoring pornography as "Parent's don't want their kids to see it!", rather than acknowledge it as a public health problem.

  After seeing some of my friends fall prey to porn addiction, I think the sheer amount of porn on the internet is a problem. When porn was something you had to go get on your own, you were limited to a small selection. However, now new and harder materials are avalible instantly, and it creates a feedback loop where people can't have sex without it.

  Really, a better answer would be to discuss pornography addiction as part of the sexual education curriculum, but too many people would consider it "teaching children porn".

• by dtf on 9/12/13, 10:53 AM

  Both The Guardian and The Daily Mail, who enjoy huge web audiences, and who campaign passionately for freedom of the press, also campaign incessantly against freedom of expression on the internet, giving our politicians the wide political grip they need to clamp down on technology. It's ironic how much these two papers can be alike sometimes.

• by isolated on 9/12/13, 1:06 PM

  Those men who retain their privacy by abdicating social media pay an impossible price. The gradual fade of their relationships and social livelihood. Only one who has spent so long starved by it's lack that their ache has forgotten to bother them can hope to pay it. Thankfully current business is email. But our peers are eager to change that.

  Tales of young women giving themselves to multiple men is a common trope in hysterical portrayals of social ills. If one would like an example of what these tropes look like, 'Reefer Madness' is on netflix. This article almost reads like a paid endorsement of david camerons internet filter. It is a outrageous story about internet porn, men who dare anonymity, and youth corrupting youth designed to generate panic in the minds of ordinary men.

  I have no idea what the situation is in the UK, but I know I've never been invited to any sex parties. Nor have I ever heard of such a thing happening in my area. This might be because such sex parties don't exist, or because men who obviously wouldn't participate aren't invited.

  But then, who can argue with such wonderful anecdotes?

• by tomstuart on 9/12/13, 11:28 AM

  Ugh, “the girl who let herself be gang raped”? I expect much better than this from the Guardian.

• by jpswade on 9/12/13, 11:29 AM

  The Internet isn't the problem here, consumption is, just like TV wasn't the problem 20 years ago, or computer games wasn't 10 years ago.

  Let us not forget the 7 deadly sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride.

  Teenagers simply aren't equipped to deal with these issues like adults are, hell even some adults struggle.

• by zokier on 9/12/13, 11:40 AM

  Bit off-topic, but interesting that in this sentence:

  > Kidron, who carries lightly the title Baroness for her pioneering work not just in making such films as the BBC's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit but in spreading the narrative wonder of great movies to schoolkids across the country through her FilmClub, says that many of her friends have said the same thing

  where would you except the "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" link to lead? Maybe another Guardian article about the film? Wikipedia? IMDB? Homepage of the film? Trailer? I for one would not have excepted a credible paper like Guardian link to a crappy and most likely illegimate rip of the film. That's barely above linking directly to The PirateBay.

• by smackay on 9/12/13, 12:28 PM

  The only practical approach is to give teenagers the tools necessary to deal with this and make sensible decisions based on their own values and respect for others (as if being a teenager wasn't hard enough already). However, good luck in getting PE (Porn Education) taught to ten-year olds, never mind being able to filter out all the agendas of concerned parties and being able to create the materials necessary with essentially nothing to base it on - in terms of the effects it's having on teenagers development.

  The ship of consequences sailed a long time ago on this one and it's not clear where it's headed.

• by simias on 9/12/13, 2:07 PM

  I've always thought the problem was letting kids alone on the net. You wouldn't let you kid alone in a shaddy neighborhood for hours without checking up on them, would you? So why do exactly that with the internet?

  I think the main problem with the web is that it makes you lose your right to be forgotten. Think of those kids who post stupid videos of themselves on youtube that go viral. It won't go away, people will be able to find that 10, 20 years from now in New York, Paris or Tokyo.

• by pjc50 on 9/12/13, 3:49 PM

  Do bear in mind that there are effectively two alternatives:

  - uncontrolled internet access, where other people's kids have access to a lot of awful stuff (not just porn but "shock" videos; goatse and worse)

  - State- or business- controlled internet access, where someone else gets to control what you see, potentially eliminating access to inconvenient stories like Snowden.

  We could really do with a "third way", but it needs someone to imagine what it could be, how it could work, and how it avoids the usual attempts to ruin it for everyone.

• by throwaway43210 on 9/12/13, 12:18 PM

  I am a teenager who was watching internet porn daily. I was forced to stop during a 2 week long holiday in which I shared a room with my family and had limited internet access.

  I immediately started noticing girls more and being more outgoing in life. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but I can't help but feel like it is unnatural to masturbate so often.

  I think those chemicals in our body help us function and relate during crucial years and that such easy access to internet pornography is upsetting some balance.

• by cbhl on 9/12/13, 1:46 PM

  If I live outside of the UK, what's the right way to go about seeing "In Real Life" legally? There appears to have been a showing at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, but apart from that there appears to be nothing.

• by zwieback on 9/12/13, 4:10 PM

  Or maybe the reality is a lot less interesting: a tiny percentage of teens will go off the rails, a tiny percentage will benefit hugely and the vast majority will do stupid things and reach adulthood more or less unscathed.

• by peterwwillis on 9/12/13, 4:15 PM

  The Internet is not to blame.

  "One of the motivators for me making the film was that a friend of my daughter came round to talk to me about a boy she had her eye on and he said she could be his girlfriend if she gave him a blowjob."

  How can any rational person believe this is different from 40 years ago? You don't think teenage guys were asking for blowjobs in the 70s?!

  The sexual pseudo-revolution changed our society's norms forever, well before the internet, and modern ADULT culture keeps them alive in ways that affect young people. Really, adults should be looking at themselves as the reason for why kids act the way they do.

  But what adult would possibly blame themselves for what they can blame on the internet?

  "Most of the responsibility has to lie, however, she thinks, with the corporations."

  And telephone companies should be held accountable if someone calls you bad words on the phone. Look, there is a certain amount of personal responsibility that parents and our society as a whole have to take on, because no amount of litigiousness will stop people from behaving badly. Social change requires social change.