Good news to start 2023: in Louisiana it is now more difficult to access pornography sites for minors.
Thanks to a 2022 law that went into effect on January 1, pornography sites are now required to ask visitors who live in Louisiana to prove their age through a system, called LA Wallet [Carteira LA]which is based on the driver’s license.
Unsurprisingly, tech-savvy minors can (and likely will) find ways to evade the law. But anything that keeps pornography far away of minors is a big step forward in our age addicted to pornographyin which the smartphones allow teens and tweens to easily and secretly view explicit content that certainly distorts their developing sexuality.
Consider the case of pop singer Billie Eilish, now 21, who revealed in an interview on the “Howard Stern Show” that she started watching pornography at around age 11.
“I think it really wrecked my brain and I feel devastated that I was exposed to so much pornography”, said in 2021 the singer of hits such as “Bad Guy” and “Male Fantasy”.
Eilish said her pornography use led to nightmares and affected her sexual desires and imagination.
“I got to the point where I couldn’t watch anything else unless it was violent; I didn’t find it attractive,” Eilish recalled, noting that at that point, she was still a virgin.
Over time, the consumption pornography affected his sex life: “The first few times I, you know, had sex, I wasn’t saying no to things that weren’t good. It was because I thought I should be attracted to these things.”
Is this what we want for children and teenagers? Nightmares? Distorted sexual desires? Assent to problematic sex?
In fact, Eilish’s statements directly inspired Louisiana State Representative Laurie Schlegel, who proposed the bill requiring age verification, according to an interview Schlegel herself gave.
Schlegel of the Republican Party also particularly cited the nature of online pornography today as a factor. “I think a lot of parents don’t know what’s on the internet,” she told USA Today.
“I always like to tell people that this is not my dad’s Playboy. What kids are seeing on the Internet is extremely graphic and hardcore pornography,” added Schlegel.
Eilish is not alone in this.
“The average age at first exposure to pornography is between 11 and 12 years old,” he wrote in the website Psychology Today therapist Amanda Giordano, author of “A Clinical Guide to Treating Behavioral Addictions” [em tradução livre].
Viewing pornography as a child can have lifelong consequences.
“People with compulsive pornography habits reported that they first saw online content at age 13, compared to members of the control group [sem esses hábitos]which they only saw at the age of 17”, reported Julie Jargon, from Wall Street Journalciting 2014 research by Valerie Voon, professor of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, England.
“In the more than two decades I’ve worked with hundreds of men and women trying to overcome pornography addiction, I’ve met only one person who didn’t start using pornography as a child,” reports John Fort, director of training at Be Broken Ministries [algo como Evangelização para Traumatizados]in the website covenant eyes [Olhos da Aliança]which promotes computer programs that help with accountability and block pornography.
“Many studies show that when people are exposed to sexually explicit content during childhood or adolescence, they have a significantly increased risk of developing problematic pornography use later on,” adds Fort. “Similarly, studies indicate that the younger a child is when they are first exposed to pornography, the greater their consumption of pornography tends to be as an adult.”
Whatever the reader’s opinions about adults using pornographydoes anyone want this for their children and teenagers?
Consider the story of Alexander Rhodes who, like Eilish, says he first saw pornography around age 11 and whose experience shows how early exposure to pornography can lead to a compulsive habit.
Rhodes was on a video game site when an advertisement popup showed “a pornographic image of simulated rape,” according to an interview he gave to CNN in 2019. Rhodes started searching the Internet for images of women’s bellies and gradually started searching for images more and more risque.
“I think I got addicted to pornography almost within a year of the first time I saw it. Like, I was 12 years old and basically using it all day,” Rhodes said, explaining that he used it for masturbation.
The habit affected his life: in sixth, seventh and eighth grades, he often went to get married and watch pornography instead of private extracurricular activities or hanging out with friends.
Viewing pornography also changed how he thought about women: “I think pornography took all the mystery out of women for me, to the point where I wasn’t interested in them anymore”, recalls Rhodes.
“At first, I kind of thought I wanted to date and stuff. But when I became heavily involved with pornography, I just… didn’t want to. You know, I had pornography, I didn’t need that.”
As an adult, Rhodes founded a website, NoFap [algo como Nada de Masturbação]to help pornography addicts recover.
But wouldn’t it be better if adults never developed a problem with pornography?
Louisiana may be starting a wave. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, last month proposed a bill dubbed SCREEN Act [“Lei da Tela”] that would force pornography sites to verify the ages of visitors before showing content.
“Given the alarming rate of teen exposure to pornography, I believe the government must act quickly to create protections that have a chance of surviving First Amendment scrutiny. [da Constituição, que cuida da liberdade de expressão],” Lee said in a press release.
“We require age verification at masonry shops. Why shouldn’t we demand it online?”
Lee makes a good point — and one that more Americans should hear. In the meantime, let’s hope that in at least one state children will have better lives (and childhoods) because of this legislative action.
©2022 The Daily Signal. Published with permission. Original in English.
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