The internet has been a boon for the sex industry. We all know it has made porn easier to access. But it has also made prostitution more easily accessible for young people.
Petula Dvorak of the Washington Post wrote an article this past fall that explores the relationship between technology, youth, and prostitution. It all centers around a disturbing story involving five High School football players who hired prostitutes during a team road trip:
What’s new in this old-as-time story is that today, thanks to smartphones and the nearly complete submersion of the sex trade into the digital swamp, ordering three prostitutes to your hotel room is as easy as ordering a pizza.
This teen boy fantasy is closer to “Weird Science” than “Risky Business.”
“The Internet is the new street corner, and I tell everyone that going down to 14th Street” — the street once known for prostitution in the District — “is nothing more than going to your browser now,” said Sgt. Ken Penrod, a vice detective with the Montgomery County police.
The bold step of ordering up a prostitute on an iPhone often begins as early as middle school, when legions of boys start downloading porn.
Remember when the quest for certain issues of National Geographic or the hunt for Uncle Fred’s Playboy stash used to define porn exploration?
Now that the family computer and its Net Nanny aren’t the only way to get online, the access to porn and paid sex is in the palms of our children’s hands, 24-7, giving the “Droid Does” slogan enhanced meaning.
Mobile porn has become so prevalent among teens that there is even a nonprofit group, Fight the New Drug, and a micro-industry of treatment camps aimed at teens who have a crippling addiction to it.
For teens ogling mobile porn regularly, the next logical step is to act out that fantasy and click on the many ads urging viewers to order up live sex.
As horrified parents, how do we stop this?
The 18 chaperons on the trip with the DeMatha team did bed checks at 1:30 and 4:30 a.m… The DeMatha boys evaded the best efforts of their chaperons by placing their order at 5 a.m…
This isn’t a problem limited to DeMatha or an anomaly in any way. Parents who think their kids would never dream of downloading porn or hiring prostitutes are kidding themselves.
Penrod’s investigators see kids from all over Montgomery trawling the online prostitution sites. He remembers one kid who got stung in a case involving a sex worker, and police saw his profile pop up on a prostitution site the next day after he appeared in court.
The problem here isn’t only about limiting access. There are deeper lessons to address.
The illegal purchase of sex, the fact that most American prostitution is a result of human trafficking and the reality that the plastic, bleached and enhanced world of online sex is a myth that twists ideas of human sexuality and relationships need to be discussed here.
Parents cannot toss aside online porn as the equivalent of the curiosity they remember.
The full article is worth reading.
What do you think? Is porn and prostitution a greater danger today than it was in the past due to the easy access afforded by technology?
Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook.
Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.