> have browsed magazines or watched VHS/betamax with the same content.
Who was this guy with stacks of new magazines on demand to say nothing of thousands of VHS/betamax to go through. /g
HN needs to discuss these matters with a bit more honesty:
Porn consumption is driven by the dopamine reward system. Porn is not music. You can listen to a song a zillion times (if you like it) but a specific item of pronography will very rapidly fail to arouse in repeated viewing. New material is required.
Another aspect of porn consumption is that this 'need for variety' also creates plateaus at the content genre. Stronger material is required, progressively.
And strength in porn is not a mere matter of explicitness (which also plateaus in a given genre). Taboos and norms operate at this level, when the genre gets stronger, which by the perverse inherent mechanics of how porn and male brains interact, it must get more subversive.
So, yeah, back in the day you could get your Playboy at the 7 eleven but other materials required a visit to dodgey quarters. You also paid substantially for the privilege. And kids most certainly did not have access to hard porn. So at say 20 bucks a pop for DVD (2 hours of happy time max?) or close to 10 for a magazine (these are 20th century dollars btw) not that many people were even practically capable of getting hooked on porn. It could not even happen.
Today you have free porn on tap, and algorithms (based on well understood mechanics of porn by its peddlers) that continually goade you into 'stronger' content.
> And kids most certainly did not have access to hard porn
Not sure where you grew up, but growing up in Europe, porn was widespread even if it was only available via paid magazines (before video). And kids used what kids had at hand, even if it was just one magazine. Someone knew someone's uncle who was a habitual magazine buyer and sometimes let go of old magazines, or somehow randomly found magazines at some location, like in the woods.
Taking what you say as fact, wouldn't that mean that people consume more porn now than back in 2013? How does it reconcile with the fact that "porn" as a search term is declining, since then?
US. Look even if you managed to get your hands on a European product (wherever) we're talking a handful (npi) of mags. Are you seriously arguing that there isn't a fundamental change in production/distribution/consumption patterns?
You're only stating a fact regarding the use of search engines and the word porn and then jumping to a conclusion. As if "PornHub" a secret that kids need to google for. You go to one, and every content has layers of URLs corresponding to how many times it has been appropriated from original producers so who needs a search engine.
I'm saying that we don't know if the whole "people have to consume more extreme porn to get their "fix"" is true or not, nor if typical hardcore porn consumption is more widespread today than before.
And at least I'm trying to provide some data points in order to ground this debate to facts, which it doesn't seem like you're interested in as you have provided zero.
Sure, here you go: gather the names of all porn providers, publications, studios, actresses, actors, positions, fetishes, etc. Now analyze search trends. My guess is that if kids want to search for porn, they will do focused search and not type "porn" in google (which sounds ridiculous). My guess is that the sum of searches for that set of queries is the far more representative metric than mere 'porn'.
Has it really though? Based on Google search traffic, "porn" as a keyword is actually declining since ~2013: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=porn&hl=...
And before internet porn, the same people watching it online today would have browsed magazines or watched VHS/betamax with the same content.