Internet Porn and Adolescence

Jennifer: Today on Ask Dan and Jennifer, we’re talking about teens and pornography. Should teenagers watch pornography? Well, no they do but should they? Dan: Okay, so if you're been on to our show for very long, you know, we don’t have an issue with porn specifically. Specifically, grown ups watching porn, whether individually or as a couple is something to bring them closer together to spice up their sex life rather than a quick hit in the corner by yourself when you watch in bed. And we got this really great question from one of our teen viewers and he said, “Hey! Are there any potentially dangerous side effects— Jennifer: Hidden dangers. Dan: Hidden dangers, thank you, the word doesn’t come. Are there ay hidden dangers for teens watching porn? Jennifer: There are some hidden dangers and among those are, one, if you’ve never had a real sexual relationship, you really don’t know what you're getting yourself into and you watch porn and think that that’s what a real relationship looks like, that’s like watching the Transformers and thinking that’s what college life looks like. It’s completely different, its fantasy. Paul Carlson: I think one of the things that we need to get clear here is that teenage means, 13 through 19, that is a huge range in terms of maturity and what people are ready for. And what we haven’t talked about yet is, there are laws against children looking at this stuff. If you look at this stuff and you get caught, who knows. I mean, you know, it depends on what state you live in, what you city you live in, who caught you, who tipped off about it, all that kind of stuff. We do know that a variety of spiritual views in this country and some of them are very conservative and so you know, if you're looking at porn but you know that your parents are spiritually opposed to it, are you setting yourself up for all kinds of guilt trips that you're going to spend the rest of your life living out. It’s not just the porn per se, it’s like, what is this stuff going to do to you when you're watching a porn video. That television actually flicks at you at 60 cycles which automatically put you into a hypnotic state, a true hypnotic state. What people don’t realize is, lets say that you're on your computer and you're just looking at still pictures, well guess what, your computer screen is a screen and guess what, it using 60 hertz in the signal and that puts you into hypnotic state. So what happens as you go in and you see this—in some cases, now if you're looking at the real stylized stuff, you know, like Playboy or Playgirl or stuff like that, whether all airbrushed, you're going to get a very unrealistic perspective of what people really look like. Jennifer: People don’t look like that, seriously. Paul Carlson: You know, you’ll see these gorgeous women. There is not a single blemish on them. And if you're around enough human bodies for a while, you realize, that just doesn’t exist. Dan: And if you know the back side of that industry as we do, you're not going— Paul Carlson: Oh! Dan, you're digging it deeper. Dan: But if you know the back side of that industry, what goes on behind the scenes, you’ll know that most of what you see there is not fake but airbrushed, lets just say the brush turned enhance. Jennifer: Enhanced. Paul Carlson: Well, what it can do too is specially, this is probably more for the males and the females but if you really, really like—get obsessive about it which a lot of kids do, its such an unrealistic expectation that they can’t stay in any one relationship because they're always looking for this model of perfection that doesn’t exist. And so they will find some girlfriend that “Oh! She is hot!” And all of this and that’s fine until she starts to want to talk about getting married or something happens to her that she doesn’t look the same way, he’s out the door looking for another young one. And this can be a life long pattern. So what you do in your childhood years creates the patterns that you repeat throughout the rest of your life. Dan: And we have a question for you. As always, at what age do you think its okay for teens or young adults, lets remember 13 through 19, but whether you think its okay to start watching porn.