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[HRIP7]

Question on Quora:

Are Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons appropriate for K-8 students to use?

[EricBarbour]

I posted some comments on Quora, although frankly it's probably a waste of time.
Beaudette and Walling have all day long (and paychecks) to troll social-media sites, and I don't.

The more I see of those two, the more I dislike them.

Yes, Mr. Salsman, are you a pedophile?

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Fri 9th March 2012, 10:36pm

[jsalsman]

Mr. Salsman, are you a pedophile?

No. Nor have I ever edited on any even vaguely related topic. But I'm completely convinced that the moral panic is completely unjustified. Here's why: kids exposed to porn are much more easily able to talk about sex with their parents, teachers, the police, etc. That's why kids exposed to porn have a far lower sexual assault victimization and perpetration rates, as has been repeatedly documented every time it has been studied. Maybe it's counter-intuitive but it's the same result over and over any time someone studies the question.

I'm interested in knowing what the evidence is that exposing children to sexually explicit material causes harm. It's not hard to find contrary evidence. I understand why it seems repugnant and why it might get school administrators and teachers in trouble, but I'm wondering if anyone has any empirical findings supporting the idea of harm.

Here you go:

http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139...0137-3/abstract

http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567(09)60387-7/abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10579105

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2005.8.473

Okay. The first is conjecture without any findings in its conclusions, and it's talking more about fiction TV and movies than anything you would be likely to find on Commons. ("The erotica under consideration are not so much those explicitly depicting coital behaviors as those that are less explicit and present a fuller social context of sexual engagements.")

The second is a review of "television and movies, rock music and music videos, advertising, video games, and computers and the Internet," which would be interesting in its finding that the, "primary effects of media exposure are increased violent and aggressive behavior, increased high-risk behaviors, including alcohol and tobacco use, and accelerated onset of sexual activity," were it not for their caveat that, "newer forms of media have not been adequately studied." And the risk of accelerated onset of sexual activity has not been observed with the availability of internet porn or Wikipedia -- just the opposite: "from 1988 through 2006–2010, the percentage of teenaged females who were sexually experienced declined significantly (from 51% in 1988 to 43% in 2006–2010)." Even greater number of males are waiting to have sex (Figure 1 on p. 6.) Frankly, I think this is because of the easily availability of internet porn (and Wikipedia is insignificant in the whole scheme of internet porn) and I will gladly elaborate for anyone who can't figure out for themselves why this might be. (Hint: search for "clopping".)

The third is a collection of anecdotes which claims "harm" in the title but only unquantified "risk" in its summary. It claims that conclusions can't be drawn from clinical data, which is absurd. There have been several longitudinal studies looking at exposure to pornography, but that's never been significant for any negative outcomes. Parental alcohol dependence and the mother's educational background are usually the most significant factors for the risks they claim.

The fourth says, "Concerns about a large group of young children exposing themselves to pornography on the Internet may be overstated." Yeah, that's about the size of it.

Does anyone else have any sources which counter the repeated results that easy availability to porn is associated with halving or better of child sex victimization rates?