Blog: Gene Expression
Topic: Porn, a new age, an old age, and all that

I suspect that the ready availability of porn among other things, has had at least some impact on currently normative sexual mores among young people.

I have no citations, nor can I recall any recent studies on the matter, just the observation for example, that many teenage girls who shoot naked "self shot" pictures of themselves have shaved pubes, leading to the assumption that porn consumption is perhaps responsible for the transmission and adoption of this practise.

Examination of the GPS tags in the EXIF data of many of these self-shots, could perhaps reveal some interesting and inferred socio-economic patterns for those interested in such matters. As a side note, there appears to be a distressing lack of awareness among the girls who take these photos, that they are also publishing the exact location that they were taken, presumably in their homes, and hence there is some exposure to the possibility of unpleasant consequences in the future.

Obviously there is a problem with assertions of the like, and there may well be other obvious socio-cultural factors of which I am either unaware, or have discounted, such as the influence of celebrity sex tapes, which may be posited as just amplifiers of an existing signal.

In any event, I have encountered individuals who self-censor themselves, like my children when they were pre-adolescent, to other teenagers, who not only deliberately do not seek out porn, but quickly shut it down when they encounter it.

We also tend to ignore I have noticed, the possible impact on porn on the more senior members of our society, no doubt for obvious reasons, but their reactions when exposed to such material tends I think we can agree to a large extent, to not induce moral panic, but amusement such as this example, where some Grandmas watch the Kim Kardashian sex tape.