this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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A House of Commons committee is set to study legislation proposed by Independent Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne that would require Canadians to verify their age to access porn online.

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[–] doylio@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

There are many studies that indicate porn use can negatively affect your brain, sexual performance, and pro-social behaviour.

Porn linked to decreased grey matter

Porn addiction linked to lower executive functioning

Porn linked to negative social behaviour

Meta analysis on research into adolescents porn use discusses a range of negative outcomes such as anxiety, suicidal ideation, social isolation, and academic disengagement

I'm not really sure this law will "solve" the problem, or if it's a good solution to the problem. But there are real, negative outcomes of internet porn

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Same with Alcohol for those points you listed.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

And the alcohol providers are legally responsible for checking the age of the people they sell it to and can face fines if they don't.

That's the crux of the issue, if you provide age restricted material anywhere outside the internet you can lose your right to sell it if you don't make sure people aren't underage and now there's Canadian companies that face no consequences for doing so because they operate on the web.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Fake IDs though, have always been a thing. Banning / Age restriction does not work with the Internet.

[–] doylio@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I fear internet ID is coming whether we like it or not. AI powered bots will pass all captchas and be indistinguishable from humans. The open, pseudonymous internet cannot survive under those conditions. You could spend all day without seeing a comment by a real human.

[–] Numpty@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

You could spend all day without seeing a comment by a real human.

Have you been playing on Reddit again?

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There seems to be a lot of issues with the methodology used in those studies.

For example, "...reported hours of pornography consumption per week....". Hours seems excessive. What's the average duration for all visitors?

And, "Women were excluded from the research, because men more easily encounter such problems due to their frequent contact with pornographic materials.". That's an assumption. Women can also have "frequent contact " with porn, so they should have included women.

And one of them seemed to suggest that men who watched more porn had ED. But maybe men with ED first, have had to use porn to help? Chicken and egg situation.

I'm not defending porn, and I tend to make data driven choices.

But I'm acutely aware that methodology can have averse effects on the conclusion, and I tend to be highly skeptical of studies that appear to manipulate the outcome with their selection bias.

[–] doylio@lemmy.ca 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I agree some are problematic. The first one is based on brain scans, which is hard to refute. And there are many more like it

The porn industry has a vested interest in suppressing this, and billions of dollars to spend muddying the waters.

[–] Doubleohdonut@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

There's also a huge spectrum of consumption between porn addiction and adolescant curiosity. These studies seem to reference several consumption quantities which go beyond the scope of the original question.

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 months ago

The first one is based on brain scans, which is hard to refute.

Yes, but the participant selection was dubious.

Also, while brain scans are used, it's impossible to form a conclusion based on it.

For instance, do men with less grey matter watch more porn? Or does watching more porn cause men to have less grey matter?

A similar study was done on vegetarians. I don't recall the details, but it went somewhere along the lines of "vegetarians have more brain activity associated with empathy". Does that mean vegetarianism improves empathy? Or do empathetic people naturally gravitate towards vegetarianism?

Behavioral studies are so much harder to do compared to health studies. I don't envy the study coordinators!

But more data can always bring us closer to answers, so I'm glad that at least some informational gaps are being filled.