Eric writes: > This sounds quite dangerous a way of thinking to me. Nothing particularly dangerous about it. Adults seem to readily forget that they were completely uninterested in sex prior to puberty; things sexual (including pornography) were nothing more than curiosities that rapidly became boring on those rare occasions when they were encountered. Adults have a built-in obsession with sex; prepubescent children do not. It's rather like gambling addicts assuming that anyone who walks past a casino cannot resist running in and squandering his life's savings on gambling. That may well be a danger for gambling addicts, but it is not a danger for anyone else, and in fact the addict is just projecting his own behavior and preoccupations onto others. Thus, the general public doesn't need to be kept away from casinos, because most people don't care about casinos, anyway--even though gambling addicts may behave self-destructively when exposed to casino activity. > And proven to be quite erroneous ... I'm not aware of any invalidation of this principle, and it is regularly confirmed. > ... look at how the cigarette manufacturers focus on > youth as the ideal target for advertising. Sex and cigarettes are not the same thing. Nobody is interested in sex prior to puberty; everyone is interested in it after puberty. In contrast, an interest in cigarettes is strictly acquired, and in fact must be explicitly sought out, since smoking is not by nature a pleasant activity at any age. > They know they must attack them very young to > bind them on the long run and make them addicted > customers later, when they are grown-up. There is no need to "attack" youngsters with pornography; they will become potential consumers at puberty, whether they are exposed to it prior to that age or not. And conversely, they won't care about pornography until they reach puberty--they'll just see it as something icky and boring, if they run across it at all. > So, in short : *maybe* only adults care about cigarettes > and sex (not sure of), but I think both are - or could be > - the target of choice for advertisers, because it seems > that when you catch them young enough, you > create a bigger, deeper addiction. No spammers are deliberately advertising porn to children; apart from legal risks, it's a waste of time, rather like advertising refrigerators to Eskimos. They are trying to spam _adults_ with porn ads. And given how much traffic on the Internet is dedicated to porn, they probably get quite a return on their investment--from the grown-ups, not from kids. > P.S.: and it appears to be similar with alcohol, > candies, cars, computers, drugs, gambling, guns, pets, etc. None of these have a biological basis. Sex does. The distinction is important.