LOS ANGELES – When you see someone out on the road driving like an idiot, do you immediately think to yourself: “God damn Vin Diesel and the approximately 400 Fast and Furious movies he’s been featured in. Clearly they’re to blame for this”?
How about when you see a video of a guy who mistakenly thinks he’s about to deal out an ass-kicking, only to find himself on the wrong end of a haymaker from someone he had no business squaring off with in the first place. Does your mind turn to the popularity of televised mixed martial arts as the culprit behind his dismally poor choice?
Whether you’re personally inclined to do so, blaming entertainment products for the bad choices and behavior of entertainment consumers is something of a cherished tradition in this country. From fretting over the morally-corrosive effect of Elvis Presley’s hip-thrusts to blaming violent movies and video games for a (fictitious but persistently claimed) rise in violent crime, to the oft-repeated claim pornography causes its viewers to become more sexually aggressive, we Americans have this blame-the-media thing down to a (pseudo-)science
When subjected to the rigors of actual scientific experiment, however, such claims generally don’t hold up, regardless whether we’re talking about the influence of movies, games, sporting events or any other manner of entertainment.
As I see it, one of the most irritating aspects of internet culture (aside from the term “internet culture” itself) is the efficiency with which absurd and false information becomes codified as conventional wisdom. Someone shares an article that makes an outrageously false claim, others react and re-share, and soon you’ve got a full-blown global bullshit party at which people who believe using sunscreen gives you skin cancer are mingling with folks who think Ted Cruz’s father faked the lunar landing or was the “real killer” in the OJ case, or whatever stupid, irrelevant shit it was the National Enquirer squeezed out of its ass about Rafael Cruz during the Republican primaries.
What I’m not about to do, however, is blame the internet, or internet culture, for people believing obviously untrue things or for behaving like a bunch of jackasses. I’m not inclined to do this because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my relatively short time on this planet, it’s people don’t really need much inspiration to believe things that clearly aren’t true, act like utter bozos or commit horrific crimes.
Beyond being generally skeptical about the cause and effect relationship between entertainment media and the behavioral issues they’re alleged to produce among consumers, it seems to me people have it all backwards — and obviously so — when it comes to the relationship between thought and depiction, concept and expression thereof.
Not surprisingly (to me, anyway), when researchers have explored the alleged connection between porn and sexual aggression, what they’ve found is a certain set of consumers are drawn to more aggressive depictions, not that watching porn makes consumers seek out progressively more ‘extreme’ porn, as many anti-porn activists and theorists often have claimed. In other words, to the extent watching porn made the subjects of the experiment more aggressive, this effect was only observed in a subgroup of men “already predisposed to sexual aggression.”
It seems to me the truth here shouldn’t take a scientific experiment to divine: People make porn, not the other way around. Or, to paraphrase the late, great Bill Hicks: Porn doesn’t cause sexual thoughts; porn is caused by sexual thoughts.
None of the above means there’s no cause for concern when it comes to kids accessing porn before they’ve received any non-porn sexual education. Still, while I certainly understand people being concerned about their children being exposed to porn without first having some understanding of sex, this concern is a bit hard for me to take seriously when it comes from people whose idea of “proper” sexual education is to say absolutely nothing to young people about the subject, believe against all logic, history and human nature those same young people won’t become curious about sex on their own, then sit back and hope it all works out OK.
In other words, if your concern is kids watching porn and believing it’s an accurate and suitable representation of “real sex,” the best approach probably isn’t shaking your clenched fist at the internet or calling your congressman to demand a federal law classifying all computerized devices as porn vending machines.
Yes — as horrible and unthinkable as it sounds, the answer just might be talking to your children about sex. And you might have to do so at an earlier age than your own parents opted to cede that responsibility to your elementary school’s science teacher.
