[gjsman-1000]

> I doubt this would do much to stop kids from looking at porn

2/5s of Gen Z can't even navigate between folders on a computer, according to studies, with CS instructors saying they need to introduce directories as a concept. Yes, it will.

[anonym29]

You are confusing present knowledge with capacity.

2/5ths of Gen Z not currently knowing how to navigate between folders in a hierarchical file system doesn't mean that 2/5ths of Gen Z is incapable of learning how to navigate between folders in a hierarchical file system.

The gap between present knowledge and capacity doesn't exist due to incompetence, it exists due to lack of motivation, and rest assured, once teenage boys discover how great boobs are, they'll have all the motivation they need to learn how to use technology to achieve the goal of viewing and appreciating that kind of material, pretty much regardless of how many restrictions you put in their way.

They'll make their own in a paint app or with ASCII art in a notepad, push come to shove, but that won't be necessary. It's hilarious to think that states have the slighest hope of winning the whack-a-mole game of trying to sue every single website on the entire internet that hosts any pornographic content.

[gjsman-1000]

I actually don't believe this; for the simple reason that if you put a filter in front of porn, "once teenage boys discover how great boobs are" isn't going to happen for most of them. You only seek out porn once you already know how "great" it is, chicken and egg.

How many people do you know whose first introduction to porn was "that's sounds cool, let me look that up?" Versus discovering it by accident, exactly what a law would effectively prevent?

[fluoridation]

Well, let me tell you how it happened for me. I must have been... probably 8-10. I saw something pretty innocuous in a magazine. An adult wouldn't have even thought it was pornographic; risqué at the most. But it aroused me. Then I went looking for that kind of stimulation again. Not actively, mind you, just stayed prepared for when the chance came. We didn't have Internet at home at the time, but if we had, you can bet I would have tried looking something up (not sure now how that would have worked in the late '90s, though).

[HankStallone]

Seriously? As a boy, I didn't need to see naked boobs to know I wanted to see more naked boobs. Seeing them clothed was enough for me to know I wanted a closer look at what was under there. I know the lengths I was willing to go to to sneak my first Playboy, so I know what I would have done if I'd had today's Internet access.

I'm not opposed to measures that try to make it harder for kids to get at porn. But it's going to be pretty much impossible to do that as long as we want adults to have unimpeded access to it, and we do.

One option would be to put the responsibility on the distributor, and not give them the option of a "you must be 18 to enter" fig leaf: if a kid is found in possession of porn that can be traced to your web site, you face serious fines and possible imprisonment. But that would basically eliminate porn sites for everyone, since it would be impossible to prevent it from finding its way to kids, and we can't have that.

[anonym29]

Teenage boys in public school don't need to be the first in their peer group to view pornography in order to be exposed to pornography. No amount of technical measures will prevent this. They will literally dig old porno magazines out of dumpsters, procure VHS players to watch VHS porn, stay up until 4 in the morning to watch 30 second censored adult content commercials on TV.

But again, none of that will be necessary. Rule34 websites, imageboards, video game rendering glitches... the list goes on and on.

It's truly delusional to believe that it's possible to exhaustively censor imagery of the human body from the most motivated seeking/viewing demographic on the planet.

Are you by chance a woman? Were you homeschooled? Do you not have memories of being a teenage guy in the US public school system? I don't mean to denigrate you, I just cannot fathom how anyone can possibly credibly believe that it's even slightly realistic to keep teenage boys completely unaware of what boobs look like in the real world.

[fluoridation]

>They will literally dig old porno magazines out of dumpsters, procure VHS players to watch VHS porn, stay up until 4 in the morning to watch 30 second censored adult content commercials on TV.

Oh, man. You just reminded me of teenage me trying to make something out in scrambled porn on cable TV after midnight. You could kind of see the thrusting, but it was barely stimulating. Those were tough times, let me tell you.

[anonym29]

I speak from what was nearly a universal set of experience of my peer group during my teenage years. Hell, I literally threw sleepover parties where my friend group would stay up all night to watch censored Girls Gone Wild infomercials, and this was in a relatively strict Christian household where my friends' M-rated Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 games would be confiscated by my parents at the door and returned to them when they left.

I was literally looking up Zero Suit Samus fan art on my Wii's web browser when parents put parental control software on the computer.

When I was grounded from all computer usage, I'd pull up Catie Minx photoshoots on a first-generation Kindle, with the e-ink display that had image update latency measured in seconds.

All of my friends would go to these extents and more to access this kind of material. I was introduced to dumpster diving by a friend for this reason. I had another friend who got caught for shoplifting adult magazines from a bookstore.

I don't think the motivation and ingenuity in seeking adult content is generationally restricted or particularly unique at all, it seems to be true for every guy I know, including those who were born in the 50s, 60s, 70's, 80s, 90s.

I genuinely cannot comprehend the thought process of people who truly believe that a few targeted lawsuits at major porn sites is going to make a dent in what might be one of the strongest behavioral drives hardcoded into the human genome.

[johndhi]

This thread is very funny and a lot of fun.

I'll also add that regardless of any access to web or printed materials, boys will get interested in boobs and seeing more of them by seeing them in the real world, on real women.

There is like no stronger instinct in human DNA than for males to be attracted to females. If it weren't that way our species probably wouldn't have survived down the millenia.

[skylurk]

Back in my day the kids in my school didn't know what directories were either. But I taught a few of them how to remote shutdown other computers on the school network with cmd and soon everyone was doing it.

[dmbche]

Because their use case dorsn't need it. They have TBs of data and fast CPUs (or it's all on the cloud - and the same applies), they can just crtl-f for the name of their file or the date.

Are they capable of using computers to achieve their goals? Yes. Does that require navigating folders? No.

EDIT0: I remember writing a 4 line program to crash the school computer (recursively executing itself) on notepad, and I'm pretty sure I didn't know what folders and directories were.

I can also attest to many of my coworkers not understanding what file extensions are, while being over 40 and working in aeronautics.

[CamperBob2]

They'll learn. We did.