Curiosity cannot be forbidden

How effective and sensible proof of age is at cigarette vending machines or when buying alcohol is certainly debatable, if one looks at it realistically. What is well-intentioned, to protect children and young people from addictive substances such as tobacco and alcoholic beverages, usually flops in practice.

In my day, before I was of age, there were always a few older friends in our clique who helped us get around the minimum age.

It is not uncommon for adolescents to run to the nearest vending machine with a parent's driver's licence to get new cigarettes. Even at the cinema box office, younger people meander past again and again to watch films whose release is well above their actual age. In short, it has always been this way and always will be! Every obstacle can be circumvented and every hurdle overcome!

The same protection of minors has also been attempted for years with sexual media content. Clearly, violence, child pornography and pornography with animals should be strictly prohibited. Even the production of such photos, writings and videos should be prosecuted.

Sexual curiosity, on the other hand, when physical and psychological sexual maturity progresses, the sexual organs change and the maturation process in the brain begins, is something completely normal.

When the adolescent's testicles begin to produce sperm, young women get their first period, he is henceforth capable of procreation and she is ready to conceive, then interest in the opposite sex sets in. In this phase of self-discovery and body exploration, the internet is often used to quench the thirst for knowledge. Nude photos are sought out, genitals are looked at and it is not uncommon for porn from the internet to be a constant companion when masturbating.

Shaking my head, I read that our neighbour Germany wants to enforce compulsory age checks this year and thus make access to such content more difficult.

And the media controllers are serious. They are threatening to block porn sites that do not comply with the age check. Simply confirming that a person is of age is not enough for the strict guardians of morality. They demand the introduction of proof that the age of 18 has already been reached. It may be true that porn is not produced to educate. I also share the concern that content can have an alienating effect on sexual development. And yet it is a fact that many young people are on porn portals and sex sites.

With the planned introduction of mandatory age verification, access will at best be made more difficult, but not effectively prevented. The youngsters just "borrow" their passports from their big brothers and the files they have downloaded are already doing the rounds. Disguising one's own IP is also child's play. With a free VPN tool, you can watch the wild goings-on from another location in the world in the blink of an eye.

All the things that people want to ban have always had a special appeal. Even in my youth, when the World Wide Web did not yet exist, porno magazines secretly made the rounds in the schoolyard. Anyone caught by the teachers with them had a problem. Just like secretly spying when the girls went to the changing room after gym class. The subsequent whipping at home was nothing compared to what we had seen.

The interest in gaining new information and quenching the thirst for knowledge is curiosity. It is an innate instinct that forms the basis of motivation and human success. The thirst for knowledge does not stop at sexuality and cannot be suppressed before the age of 18.

In Australia, work is currently underway to ensure that porn sites can only be visited in future by means of facial recognition, which is intended to prove the age of the user.
In the UK, the plan to prove age by means of personal data only recently failed. The majority of Britons rejected the idea of linking name and date of birth to sexual preferences.
The Germans are now taking the protection of minors so seriously and are announcing a crackdown. That 16 or 17 year olds in the Federal Republic can thus be completely cut off from porn consumption will prove to be a mistake.

More education and finally acknowledging that the increasingly early onset of sexual maturity requires a rethink is what I consider more sensible.

Protecting children from developmentally impairing offers or content is the task of parents, educators and the state.
For the Internet, there is “child protection software” available for this purpose that warns of such dangers. This type of parental control can often be downloaded free of charge and easily installed without any prior knowledge.