The key problem with this entire issue is that it's basically a morality law. There are classes of crimes that, over time, society has discovered simply do not have an enforcement mechanism less damaging than the harm they are seeking to prevent.
An example is Adultery. Most people will agree that it is morally wrong to cheat on your spouse. The reason civilized countries no longer have adultery laws is not because a majority of people support the crime, it's that the level of control a government needs to exercise over its citizenry to actually enforce such a law is repugnant. The state must proscribe definitions of infidelity ( human sexuality being the mess it is, this alone is a massive headache), then engage the state apparatus to surveil people's intimate lives, and then provide a legal apparatus that prevents abuse via allegation. And for what? So that people's feelings are a little less hurt?
The juice simply is not worth the squeeze.
So it goes for age restrictions. Age verification creates massive potential for invasion of privacy, blackmail, censorship, and more, necessitating a massive state censorship apparatus to block foreign content, and for what? So that little Timmy's forced back into trading nudie mags at the bus stop? To save parents the onerous effort of telling their kids "no"?
I think that's a bit of rationalizing. I don't thinks there's much evidence that Adultery is no longer a criminal offense because people were concerned about privacy or government control.
It's that people became more secular, Adultery is considered a sin and not a crime, and modern countries instituted separation between religious and secular laws.
Adultry was always a morality law, it's just that most morality laws are derived from religion.
Morality laws, by their nature, require an iron fist to enforce. Because they have no rational consequences or proven tangential harms, we have to police the mind. Which is very difficult to do.
Thats not to say that immoral things should always be legal. Murder is immoral too.
But murder isn't just immoral, that's the difference. Its also a real thing that does real harm we can measure and see.
My point was that adultery is no longer legally enforced was not because of concerns about government overreach.
Whether it's morality or religion that changed people's mind about enforcement of Adultery is tangential
No, religion was just one of the ways it was enforced, and the harms were quite 'real':
> the adultery double-standard in many of these societies is that adultery law was primarily concerned with the secure parentage of children in a marriage and so cared quite a lot less about a married man having sex outside of marriage so long as it was not with another married or marriageable woman. Instead, adultery was the crime of illicit sex with a married woman, not a married person. Some societies also had laws against illicit sexual acts outside of marriage – in Roman law this was stuprum – which often carried lesser penalties.
because
> this question matters much more in a society where nearly all wealth comes in the form of scarce farmland that is inherited from one generation to another and overwhelmingly if not entirely owned by men – even in societies like Rome where women could hold and pass down property, most of the landed wealth passed down the male line. Social status in these societies is essentially predicated on land ownership, without that farm the social position of even the peasant functionally collapses and given the extremely low social mobility in these societies, it collapses with little if any chance to ever regain it. Consequently, as you might imagine, the men who dominate these patriarchal societies are extremely anxious that their holdings – their position in society, however meager, which grants them a more-or-less stable living – pass to their actual, biological descendants.
Monogamy, as a concept, is socially constructed. The consequences are by their nature, abstract and "fake". Meaning, not physical.
Cheating doesn't physically harm anyone because it can't.
The only reason those consequences existed is because they were bandaids. The source of problems was more socially constructed stuff - marriage and monogamy.
In order to have property disputes about monogamy you first need to invent monogamy.
As a Brit I'd say the recent law isn't like that. When I was a kid, pre internet, the porn was restricted by putting it on the top shelves and tell staff not to sell them to kids, likewise X rated movies etc. It worked fine. Adults didn't have to show ID to go to the movies. If a 16 year old got in to an X film no one cared.
The modern law is an attempt at an internet equivalent. It's not using the courts to police adultery.
It's perfectly legitimate for the state to have laws where preventative enforcement is not really possible. Like, we can't surveill everyone such that we can stop murder, but we wouldn't want to do without laws against it.
There are also a lot of differences between adultery (a p2p activity between individuals, usually with no compensation) and the activities of a business like pornhub which is a big platform with lots of employees and multiple large revenue streams. It seems both reasonable and feasible to me to regulate the latter.
For this specific issue (harm to childen through greatly increased access to porn via electronic devices) I think of it more like selling cigarettes to under 18s - it's worth doing something about the problem! - but like you I believe that the proposed age verification laws are not a great solve for the actual problem.
We already don't sell porn to kids. Having an Internet connection requires an adult to buy it and verify their identity and residence.
What you're actually asking for is for the store clerk to follow you home and watch you smoke the cigarette to make sure you don't give it to your kid.
Hi, it's quite challenging to reasonably limit exposure across all the devices, platforms networks and situations that kids are involved in, and it gets more difficult all the time as devices become increasingly essential to participate daily life.
Parents and institutions need to be accountable but in my view so do platforms.
It would be quite challenging to limit exposure to tabacoo too if you gave your kid a carton.
The reality is children absolutely just do not need smartphones.
Do they need an Internet connection? Maybe. So put a computer in your living room like it's 1998. Problem solved, little Timmy can still do homework.
Just give your kid a regular phone. I promise they will live.
And, platforms already ARE accountable. Platforms that have porn don't hide it, its not some secret.
It is your job to monitor the media your own child consumes. Not my job. I don't care what little Timmy sees.
From my perspective, parents are either unbelievablely lazy or they don't genuinely think it's a problem because they're doing nothing. Either way, that means I don't have to care either.
> harm to children through greatly increased access to porn via electronic devices
I'm curious what harm that would be. As a teen, I once watched a porn movie with my parents, just out of interest. After I've seen it, I became deeply disinterested. Real life is much more interesting. Kids are not stupid, they know these scenarios are completely fictional. And the novelty wears off really quickly.
An example is Adultery. Most people will agree that it is morally wrong to cheat on your spouse. The reason civilized countries no longer have adultery laws is not because a majority of people support the crime, it's that the level of control a government needs to exercise over its citizenry to actually enforce such a law is repugnant. The state must proscribe definitions of infidelity ( human sexuality being the mess it is, this alone is a massive headache), then engage the state apparatus to surveil people's intimate lives, and then provide a legal apparatus that prevents abuse via allegation. And for what? So that people's feelings are a little less hurt?
The juice simply is not worth the squeeze.
So it goes for age restrictions. Age verification creates massive potential for invasion of privacy, blackmail, censorship, and more, necessitating a massive state censorship apparatus to block foreign content, and for what? So that little Timmy's forced back into trading nudie mags at the bus stop? To save parents the onerous effort of telling their kids "no"?
It's simply not worth it.