Religion and taboo often exist for a reason, because endless self gratification does not lead to flourishing.
You don't have to agree that it should be banned, but you can at least concede it's not entirely arbitrary content like say a sitcom.
So then why aren't those activists going after Instagram, TicTok, X/Twitter, etc. you know, the OG spyware, brain rot and anxiety inducing companies, because that would actually benefit society and not too many people would mourn their loss.
Why are they instead going after a dozen random horny video games nobody heard of? Oh that's right, because those random game devs don't have the power to fight back in court, unlike Meta/X, so it's an easy win for them to collect brownie points, for performative nonsense.
Though Steam is not weak. But small-time game devs probably don't care to fight unless they're making bank.
What makes you think they aren't? Because it hasn't been discussed in the HN bubble?
Maybe post some proof that they are if you wanna make this argument.
A habit I've noticed is that a person vulnerable to being addicted to X is more prone to fall back on Y, Z, etc. even when X is fixed. So I only see "this hurts certain people" as a scapegoat. Stairs probably hurt more people in any given day than many activities, we don't base law purely on harm and potential harm.
The issue with GGP is that in context it appears to be an argument in favor of increasing restrictions (ie in favor of the events that the article is talking about) despite disclaiming that "You don't have to agree that it should be banned". That's analogous to a loaded question. Expressing agreement with the literal wording of GGP seems to also carry an implication of agreement with some rather different things as well.
It's perfectly fine to say "I think porn is generally unhealthy and would suggest people not partake, but I think they ought to be able if they'd like". It's also reasonable to say "I think things like porn, alcohol, cigarettes, violence, and/or gambling should be accessible to adults, but they should not be able to advertise in spaces where children are likely to visit (like an online video game store), and stores should check ID to purchase those things, and 'paying via advertising' should not act as a loophole for those ID checks." There's a wide range of reasonable positions to debate that are entirely shut down by basically implying that people are unreasonable to disagree.
That's up for debate on what's "good for people". But I don't mind proper, formal laws from lawmakers restricting access of that's the will of that region. I will note that trying to restrict porn in the US has traditionally been difficult die to the first amendment.
My main point was: credit card is not a lawmaker. It should be as dumb a pipe as my ISP.
I'd actually hypothesise that if you locked three sets of teenage boys in rooms, one with only porn games, one with only social media and one with only sitcoms, that the first group would likely emerge the healthiest of the three. I'm basing this on my bias towards activity and that nobody seems to have bothered with actually doing research on porn games, the organisation pushing for these bans included [1], instead proxying research on porn as a whole for this specific category.
Whatever you want. Substance abuse rates. Marriage or long-term partnership rates. Employment. Income. Wealth. Serum cortisol.
My assumption is someone actively participating in something, even something unhealthy, is going to maintain cognitive and executive function above someone simply observing. (To the degree these games may be destructive, I'd argue it's in its game mechanics.)
We have no evidence pornography causes negative outcomes across population. (Versus among a vulnerable subset.) We have lots of evidence for social media addiction causing broad psychological issues, particularly in children.
Or maybe put another way, if my child was at a neighbors house and one of the parents watched an adult movie with my child I would have a huge issue. If they watched Terminator or something similar, I would have much less of an issue.
They're not even close to the same thing.
A better question would be if you would be more comfortable with your child being shown porn or snuff movies. For me the answer would be neither, in about an equal measure
I think parent comment is asking you to consider why you think young children watching violent movies is way less of a problem. E.g. "Terminator or similar" - why draw the line there?
What else should we arbitrarily ban based on this criteria? It doesn't seem to hold up to much scrutiny.
Sure video games can be unhealthy. Maybe I'm weird but I would much rather prefer my son plays video games 8 hours a day than watches adult content 8 hours a day. Let's stop pretending like they're comparable.
That's the context of this entire discussion though, that these things are being banned…
Isn't it the end result that matters? Presumably you'd like your son to become a functional adult. Neither of the scenarios you describe there sound like that to me (excepting perhaps "professional competitive gamer" but somehow I suspect most parents don't really approve of that outcome either).
It's no worse than reading a lot of books or watching a lot of TV shows, activities that are not disparaged as much.
