[hilbert42]

"Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone."

I went to Australian schools. For comparison I'm old enough to remember when a brand of bubble gum came with cards that had photographs of famous female film stars on them. Whenever we boys got duplicate photos we'd swap them with one another (it was pot luck, until we unwrapped the gum we couldn't see the photo).

I recall an incident in the classroom where we were surreptitiously swapping cards whilst the teacher was writing on the blackboard and had her back to us and she suddenly turned around and caught us.

She walked up one of the aisles towards the back of the class where we were and confiscated every last one of the cards. When she'd finished she turned to us and said in a loud, biting and accusative voice for the whole class to hear "You are all filthy-minded boys and you should be fully ashamed of yourselves".

Of the class only about four or five of us were involved and the school was coed, so half the class was girls (they sat on one side of the classroom we boys on the other).

These cards were only film studio PR photos so whilst the women looked well presented and pretty there was nothing whatsoever sordid or salacious about them.

We were between 12 and 13 years of age at the time. For a boy of that age these film star cards were the sexiest thing we could lay our hands on. There were no adult sex shops or under-the-counter mags wrapped in cellophane so one couldn't see before one bought—they came at least a decade later. Pornography of all sorts was illegal no matter one's age.

[lnsru]

I feel you very well. At that age I had access to Beate Uchse (sexshop from West Germany) catalogue. Completely innocent by today’s standard. Current kids have access to all the online sites where one must klick „I am 18 or older - Enter“. There are five parents, who doesn’t care about parental control, for one parent who implements it properly.

Edit: today‘s sick content is not comparable to the one from the past.

[philistine]

You are not describing anything resembling what kids today are exposed to. There is no scarcity. Any phone can access an endless scrolling list of pornographic videos. Kids can spend hours scrolling and watching new-to-them pornography for free.

The first step in solving the problem of those prudes trying to build an inescapable surveillance state because there is way too much porn online, is accepting that they’re right that children are going to suffer because of the porn accessible online.

[hilbert42]

"You are not describing anything resembling what kids today are exposed to."

Right, that was the whole point of my comparison.

[hilbert42]

In the above comment I should have mentioned how risk averse and conservative Australian society is, and it was even more so at the time that incident took place in the classroom—especially so in sexual matters.

It's worth reading this short piece about British conductor Sir Eugene Goossens who in the mid 1950s was conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and after a tour of the UK brought photographic material back to Australia that was deemed pornographic by Australian Customs. He was arrested, he resigned and his life was ruined for something many nowadays wouldn't give a second thought about (although different, the tragedy has shades about it reminiscent of what happened to Oscar Wilde): https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/british-conducto...

The Goossens incident was a classic instance of Australian conservatism—conservative values—in action.

It happened some years before my classroom incident but Australian Society's views were essentially still static, not much had changed by then.

That said, things did change and by the mid 1970s Australia had largely caught up with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, nevertheless its society has always retained a high level of conservatism and conservative values about it.

The background behind these new internet regulations is both complex and nuanced. That they've managed to take hold and become law almost without so much as a squeak from the population is partly explained because of that risk averse conservatism but also as there's been no opposition to speak of. By and large, Australians do not complain enough when their politicians enact laws that are authoritarian and unjust. It's rare for Australians to take to the streets on mass and demonstrate. The last time I witnessed that was during the Vietnam demonstrations of the late '60s when a broad cross section of the population took to the streets—and guess what, the laws were changed, politicians actually took note (numbers really matter).

These days demonstrations are largely carried out by minority interests, politicians take little interest and not much happens, and the Establishment still gets its way. The population watches on with little interest and often takes the view that such 'radicals' ought to be off the streets.

The reasons for the population's complacency are too complex to cover here except to make the point again that the conservative nature of Australian society makes it easy for politicians to convince the population that authoritarian law is in Society's best interests. Likewise, politicians are easily convinced by vested interests to that effect for the same reasons.

The large migration of recent decades has brought with it additional complexity, it's changed Australian Society greatly. Migrants have brought both cultural and religious values with them many of which are traditionally conservative (but by nature very different to traditional Australian conservatism). Given migrant numbers, Australia is more conservative now than it was say 30/40 years ago but not to the extent it was in the 1950s.

Moreover, as cultural differences now exist across large sections of the population the Nation no longer speaks with one voice on many issues as it one did (politics back then was fought across a narrow spectrum of interests). These differences not only make governments even more suspicious of their citizenries they also enable power brokers and vested interests to more easily manipulate Government to have it change laws than would have been the situation decades ago when the Nation spoke more with one voice on many issues.

In recent years there have been multiple instances of successive Australian Governments having taken advantage of divided opinion across society to change laws—laws that effectively take power from the Citizenry and cede it to themselves. These privacy-busting authoritarian laws/regulations are now on the statutes simply because there was not enough opposition to them. It's another classic instance of united we stand divided we fall.