Comment by sillysaurusx

I wanted to leave a bit more context.

The reason I think it was fine to watch the video at 13 is because it was major news at the time. The Iraq war was just starting up, and I believe Nick Berg was one of the first troops taken prisoner and executed. I wanted to see for myself what other countries were doing to our soldiers.

As I got older, I realized it wasn’t so clear cut as good vs evil, and that we were often the evil ones. (Regardless of the reason, blowing up someone’s home with some of their family inside is evil, and there were civilian casualties in the Iraq war.) But at the time, it was a major formative life experience for me. It galvanized me into wanting to join the marines, which of course would have been a huge mistake. So you could argue that me watching the video was harmful in that sense, since it influenced me pretty heavily.

I take a different perspective. Freedom is about freedom to view something and decide for yourself how you feel about it. It’s easy to forget how mature you felt at 13. If at the time you tried to stop me from watching that video, I would have been furious, and said that you’re preventing me from seeing what’s really going on in the world.

Now, I personally think that that freedom also extrapolates to the rest of the evils viewable on the internet. I watched a lot of cartel videos, some war footage, and so on. You can argue that 13 is way too young, and maybe I’ll even agree once my daughter reaches that age. But if a kid is genuinely curious to see what reality is actually like, I personally find it a little repulsive that we as a society think it’s so awful, and that we say children should be babied for their own protection. If you tried that with me at 13, I’d have given you the finger and figured out a way around whatever security measures you put into place. In my opinion, the correct thing to do is for a kid to have a close connection with their parents, to tell them that they’re curious, and for the parents to explain the reasons why the kid might not want to see it. (This also forces you to explain why it’s so horrible. Surgical procedure videos are equally graphic, but we don’t call them horrible.) And if at the end of that process, your kid wants to watch those videos, be it porn or gore, you should seriously consider their request. Your options are to be supportive or for them to do it in secret. Thinking you’ll stop them is wishful at best.

Yes, it’s uncomfortable. I don’t personally know what I’ll do when Kess comes to me or her mom asking about that. But "forbid it in all circumstances" is in my opinion an extreme overreaction given what’s at stake. At worst, it will cause them some emotional trauma. It arguably did for me. It’s good to protect children from trauma. But if they genuinely want to go through it, who are we to stop them and say we know better? Let them figure it out.

We’re their parents. It’s easy to believe we do know better. And in most cases we probably do. But at the end of the day, by forbidding this content, you’re waging war on your child’s curiosity. I personally find that as horrifying as it probably felt hearing me say that there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fine to disagree.

If this comes up the future, I’ll point back to this comment as my canonical response on the topic. If after reading it people still want to be offended, then okay. But I’m not trying to tell you how to raise your kid. I’m saying, you’re fighting a losing battle if you think you can stop them.