alt Hacker NewsYeah, I personally will not subscribe to this. I am a grown man and I strongly dislike watching depictions of violence and want nothing personally to do with porn. My wife works in mental health and is well aware of suicide and counseling people.
I am not hiding my children from the world, but I am also not letting a toddler or a kindergartner cook on a stove or metaphorically speaking "putting a loaded weapon in their hands" too soon. There is plenty of real world stuff they do not need to be concerned with at this time.
There will be a time when they are mature enough to deal with the adult world, but now is not that time.
Across dozens of studies, the evidence is clear: Exposure by itself produces a predisposition to engage.
Just seeing drugs/alcohol/sex in media increases the likelihood of trying them by 25-50%, further increasing with number of exposures.
It’s nice to have ideals that information should be free, even better to fight off abuse (what your parents did to you), but that does not make it the right direction to go in.
This coming from a child psychiatrist’s mouth.
You want your kids to stay away from drugs? Don’t even show it to them until their brains are formed. Don’t even acknowledge they exist. You’ll breed curiosity, and they’ll be statistically more likely to say yes when offered.