WASHINGTON — Pornography was compared to crack cocaine November 18 when a US Senate hearing discussing the dangers of the addiction called on members to endorse a public health campaign warning of the dangers. “We're so afraid to talk about sex in our society that we really give carte blanche to the people who are producing this kind of material,” pornography researcher from Virginia Tech, professor James B. Weaver said, as reported by the Associated Press.
Catholic Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan) organized the meeting, which revealed that Internet pornography is destroying families and harming children. Unsolicited emails and inadvertent links to sexually explicit materials on the Internet are the norm. University of Pennsylvania sexual trauma program co-director Mary Anne Layden said pornography addiction has similar effects on the brain as heroin or crack cocaine addiction.
Sen. Brownback called for more research to uncover the destructive effect of pornography addiction. Weaver admitted that studies “directly assessing the impact of pornography addiction on families and communities is rather limited.” He said that existing research suggests, however, that extended exposure to pornography creates “sexual callousness, the erosion of family values and diminished sexual satisfaction.”
In June, the US Supreme Court upheld an injunction against enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), requiring commercial content-providers operating on the Internet to restrict access by children from pornography defined as “material harmful to minors.”
See also:
US Supreme Court Rules 5-4 Against Protecting Children from Internet Porn
(This update courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.)
TV Intimacy Influences Teenagers
When it comes to sex on TV, parents are right to worry. A study published in the September issue of Pediatrics found that watching sex on television primes teenagers for earlier sexual experimentation.
The study, conducted by psychologist Rebecca Collins of the RAND Corporation, said, “Watching sex on TV predicts and may hasten adolescent sexual initiation.”
The data showed that teens who watched the most sexual content had a nearly doubled risk of earlier sexual involvement compared to kids who watched the least amount.
“It's social learning: 'monkey see, monkey do,'” Collins told USA Today. “If everyone's talking about sex or having it, and something bad hardly ever comes out of it, because it doesn't on TV, then they think, 'Hey, the whole world's doing it, and I need to.'”
The research also found that the type of sexual content was not necessarily relevant in predicting risk. “Exposure to TV that included only talk about sex was associated with the same risks as exposure to TV that depicted sexual behavior,” the study said.
As possible solutions, the study recommended reducing the amount of sexual content on TV, reducing how much sexual content teens watch, and more frequently including the possible negative consequences of sexual activity. Also suggested: more parental involvement when it comes to what is watched, and more open discussions between parents and teens about what parents believe is appropriate behavior.
(This article appeared in the November/December 2004 issue of AFA Journal, a publication of the American Family Association. This article courtesy of Agape Press).
