Proper advice/education is really the only solution.

We all know how ridiculous any attempts to censor the internet is to people with even a minimal amount of tech savvy, especially if gov.uk are involved... I mean, take the UK's attempt to block e.g thepiratebay.org which is defeated by simply putting https:// infront of it (at least, currently, on virgin media)..

The actual issue here though is the progression that some teenage kid goes through by initially looking to find some "HOTCHIX" to... solve an urge.. to 6 months later only getting off to really extreme stuff, being unable to really form relationships, the self destructive mentality porn addiction puts anyone in, and that we have an epidemic of erectile dysfunction in really young people as a result...

None of this is good.

Censorship will never be the solution, but I think we do need to do something; I have no idea what, though....

The problem you're describing is exactly what we need to solve, instead of introducing another censorship/citizen tracking measure. Kids should be learning about their own sexuality, about these urges, how to handle them, how to not handle them. The main reason they're reaching out to that is the obvious, unescapable growth phase AND complete lack of support from parents, teachers and society in general. On one hand we're making sex and sexuality the ultimate taboo, pushing kids into handling these issues completely alone, on the other we're pouring sexuality into everything around us, including car tires sales. And then we try to censor/track all citizens in name of 'think of the children', what's a completely and utterly broken and least effective solution to the symptoms, not the disease.

We're in kind of uncharted territory here though -- for anyone under, what, 25? There has been an almost unlimited amount of instant gratification/indulgence a click or a swipe away that's ALWAYS been there for them. We've never really had to think about what kind of problems this sort of thing produces before. We didn't have that option when we were in puberty or the following over-hormonal years following...

Hopefully things aren't quite so dire as we're making out. I've read several reports that generally say the next generation and entirely boring and barely even drink, fight, get high, smoke, blabla anymore... I'm not sure I totally believe it as a blanket statement, but it seems we're getting a bit less wild as a society... Maybe things will work out ok regardless, then. Or maybe this is a result of isolationism caused by over saturation. Who knows?

We got the pixies and nirvana, weed and wasted days trying to get PPP working..

They've got beiber and unlimited 1080p porn...

I think we lucked out in comparison.. :}

In an age before the internet was widely available in the home I would just stay up late, which was 11pm back in those days, and watch the "ten minute freeview" on "television X" where there was about a 33% chance that you might spy a woman's lady bits for about 5 seconds.

Realistically, kids will circumvent almost anything you put in place if they're interested enough in what they're trying to achieve.

> an epidemic of erectile dysfunction

Ok, that got a chuckle out of me. But really, as a serial porn consumer, I can tell you that people don't progress towards more and more extreme stuff. This isn't like drugs where you start developing resistance to the active substance. If it were, we'd see people give up sex in a few months after starting and the entire human race would die off.

You're basically designing a system for perfectly horny teens in frictionless vacuum.

Another thought - someone should get PornHub to release stats on if and how people's tastes in erotica progress.

> initially looking to find some "HOTCHIX" to... solve an urge.. to 6 months later only getting off to really extreme stuff

Been there, done that. Went away once I realized how fake and asexual porn actually is and that 90% of stuff out there (both vanilla and extreme, pro and amateur) really has no fucking reason to turn anyone on once the initial novelty wears off. I don't believe that wanking to people who are not aroused/shy/insecure/bored/desperate/trying hard to make a show ought to feel any good. It really is hard to find good porn.

> being unable to really form relationships

Had that before the internet, heck, even before the collection of printed lingerie ads cut from newspapers (good fucking luck "protecting" your kids from that, losers). Anyway, I tend to blame my parents' own shitty relationship for this thing.

> an epidemic of erectile dysfunction in really young people

Correlates with relationship problems, one could wonder which way the causation goes. Why should anyone get hard for someone he is with only for social acceptance or, worse yet, self-acceptance?

I hear that the censors in China are pretty successful. It's certainly technically possible.

So now the Chinese government way of handling society sets the bar we're trying match to? ;)

The older I get, the more convinced I become that parenthood effectively cauterizes a large part of your rational mind, supplanting it with emotional, fear-driven responses.

Anyone with a basic understanding of the internet knows that the UK's censorship proposals won't work, and the only thing that really could work is complete government control over all internet content. Disturbingly, even that isn't too high of a price for the people that get the warm and fuzzies from knowing that their special little guy is protected from mean, nasty reality.