It’s hard out there for today’s parents: technology has gone from friend to foe, helping kids grow up too darn fast. If the menace of sexting wasn’t bad enough, now internet porn is teaching kids that anal sex is normal!
Highly esteemed research journal Details has the story: armed with a few statistics (there’s a lot of porn out there, most kids have seen it at some point, anal sex is increasingly popular) and a handful of anecdotes, they’re here to make the case that the internet has dramatically changed the way that teens have sex. And they don’t seem to think it’s a bad thing—but we suspect that the countless other outlets that pick up the story and treat it as gospel will do their best to incite a moral panic.
A moral panic that’s likely unwarranted, at that: a handful of anecdotes about how boys hate pubic hair and love facials and girls are super pervy aren’t really enough to convince us that all kids, everywhere in America, are now raging sluts. Because it’s not like we haven’t heard this before (anyone remember the rainbow parties?). But you know what? Even if there is a widespread phenomenon of sexually literate teenagers…is that really so bad?
Sexually precocious teens have existed long before the internet, after all: over in that libertine land known as Europe, things that might pass as hardcore smut in the States are readily available; and it doesn’t seem that the population is much the worse for it (in fact, if the porn we see coming out of Hungary is any indication, they’re much, much better for it).
And let’s not forget that access to porn isn’t the only thing that’s made teens more aware of—and comfortable with—sex and sexuality. The internet has also created a vast number of sex education resources, including many targeted specifically at teens. Should the fact that sites like sexetc.org offer honest info on topics like anal sex really be sending us all into a panic?
Frankly, there are worse things in the world than teens who are aware that sex is good, and that flavors beyond vanilla exist. If anything, a more sexually literate teen populace simply means that we’ll have to, you know, actually talk to our kids about sex, making sure that they’re getting the right message from whatever it is that they’re running into.
But, oh, wait. This is America. Forget what we said before: let the moral panic commence!
· How Internet Porn Is Changing Teen Sex (men.style.com)
· Thumbnail via Stroke My Dick Now (jointheporn.com)
