Adolescents

ymmv with Dan Savage but this is a pretty good thing he wrote for teenage boys before he decided trans people were the enemy:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=4642012

based on my own experiences and things I've witnessed other moms do: DO NOT have his mom review his porn habits with him

in general I would say beyond making sure he doesn't fuck up his computer and understanding that porn (for the most part) is not really representative of how actual people have actual sex there isn't much to be gained from having some kind of confrontation w him about it

when an appropriate window opened personally i wd talk to him about the skeevy and misogynist aspects of the porn industry i think

teach him how to use incognito mode/delete history

You could just casually remark to him that porn has about the same relationship to actual sex as roadrunner cartoons have to desert ecology. He can fill in from there.

my son is only 2 but i imagine this will come up for me in 10 years or so. i think it is a difficult balance between:

1) sending him the right message about porn, such as a) porn isn't necessarily realistic; b) it can be sexist, racist, and misogynistic; c) it can be used either as a healthy expression of sexual curiosity or as an unhealthy venue for escape, and that it's good to be mindful of what's driving you to look at it

and

2) not embarrassing him or violating his privacy

the other thing we did w/our good friend's adolescent (this was after she busted him for going to www dot F**ckthebabys!tter dot com at age 12 or so) was give her a hard copy of The Joy Of Sex that she just left lying around the house for him to check out

yeah I don't know what I would have done with the internet at 12. I had Showtime in my room at that age and watched a lot of Emmanuelle so I can guess.

really he's looking for tame stuff now, kinda Sears catalog level. but I'm thinking ahead

yea like i said i don't have adolescents but i think i might lean more towards the "let's talk about this" track than the "i'm going to mind my own business" track. there are tons of shit that my folks didn't want to talk to me about, mostly b/c of their own fear. if i did talk to them, i would've been met with disappointment, shame, and anger. i had my privacy but what i really needed was compassion, empathy, guidance, and support. this goes for porn, drugs, relationships, etc.

I have no advice and for that you should be grateful but funny how all you guys made the instant and correct interp of "growing up". I would've assumed some kind of IRL interest was involved bcz pr0n has generally bored me from a tender age. At 12 or 13 I mostly had the shirtless college guy cutting the lawn to look at.

(My bff's teenage son friended me on Facebook a couple years back and I hid his feed almost immediately cuz no, i do not need to read that kinda discourse.)