"Before the advent of the internet and sexual videos, preadolescent and adolescent boys plotted a secret acquisition of Playboy magazines. They snuck peeks while adults weret watching and hid magazines under beds, in tree forts, and buried them in closets. Adolescent boys have always been fascinated with sex and nudity because curiosity is a part of their emerging sexuality. Such behavior is understandable, if not to be encouraged. But what might have titillated teenage boys when we were young is tame compared to what is available to them now. Women in Playboy magazines twenty or thirty years ago were alone. While they stared seductively at the viewer, they were not engaged in a sexual act. But Playboy over the last few decades has been nudged aside by more graphic magazines and other media. In 1985, 92 percent of adult males had a Playboy magazine by age fifteen. Today the average age of a boy's first exposure to pornography is eleven, and where he might once have seen only a naked woman, now he is much more likely to view sex acts between partners. Nearly half of boys between the third and eighth grades have visited Internet sites with "adult content." The more graphic the content, the more severe the trauma it inflicts on our boys. And we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that it is not traumatic. Pornography warps the natural development of sexuality in boys. It can lead them down paths of perversity that, in their normal development, they would never have otherwise considered. Young boys who view pornography are having their morality, their sense of what is acceptable, shaped by it. And the Internet is full of seducers ready to prey on them, including sexual predators. The problem isn't that many young boys seek pornography out of curiosity, but that pornography pops up at them unawares and drags them in."
January 1, 1970