When Nothing is Taboo, Everything is Boring

Does sex even sell anymore?

PSA: This article is not for children.

A Glutton for Distraction

Is anyone else just…bored? I do not know what has happened to me these past few years. Maybe it’s my age, I do feel like I am 25 going on 50 sometimes. Perhaps that’s why I stopped going to the movies, watching TV, and reading fiction novels published after the turn of the new millennium. Maybe I’ll be taking up crocheting next.

But I don’t think it’s just me who feels like their dopamine receptors are closed for business. And I wasn’t always this way. I remember being so excited for the first Avengers movie. It was 2012 and everyone was waiting with bated breath for that film. Twelve years later, I have lost count of how many Marvel movies have come out and I physically cannot get excited about movies in general.

I think this is why there has been an endless stream of sequels recently. The studios are grasping for quick and dirty films that grab us by the nostalgia and bring us back to the theater. Incredibles 2? Didn’t see it. Inside Out 2? Didn’t watch it even though I wanted to. A smattering of Disney villain origin stories? I always knew that Cruella de Vil was misunderstood!

I can’t watch movies and shows at home because I recently got rid of my TV. Sometimes I want to do the same to my phone, also known as my doom rectangle, as I think it is the main culprit behind the zapping of my synapses. In my moments of clarity, I often fantasize about throwing my phone out the window while driving or bashing it with a hammer. Whenever the Wi-Fi goes out here at home, I feel a sharp sense of relief and a giddy desire to take out candles we don’t have and pretend it's 1890. Anyone else? No?

If it is not obvious, I’m overstimulated by my smartphone and its contents constantly. I treat Gmail like a slot machine. Then, in an ironic twist, I watch videos on YouTube on how to not be overstimulated by technology, only to be left feeling overstimulated again. When I finally drink YouTube’s recommended video feed to the dregs and no new videos catch my eye, my mood dips and I think to myself, “I could have spent all that time writing. So why didn’t I?”

It’s because I’m an addict, a glutton for distraction. And it’s not just me. Just think about how many people you know whose eyes inexorably flick to their phone whenever a notification comes in. I think people (myself included) should be as ashamed to pull out their phones in front of others as they would be if they suddenly farted. Unlike a fart, taking out your smartphone never improves any interaction you have with a family member or friend.

Cell phones are whipped out when a conversation begins to naturally wane because phones are the ultimate boredom cure. Are you mildly uncomfortable in an elevator because there is another person in it that you are desperately trying to avoid eye contact with? How about in line for a concert? How about waiting for the receptionist to call your name before your doctor’s appointment? Sometimes I feel like there is a literal, miniature devil on my shoulder whispering, “You could take out your phone and make all of this mild discomfort go away.”

Depravity or Banality in a Porn-Soaked World

In my experience, phones, and to a lesser extent computers, are the source of and solution for boredom, all at the same time. This feature manifests itself most potently with online pornography, a popular outlet for boredom and other negative feelings. Ironically, while curing momentary dullness, pornography makes sex itself boring and predictable, as it simultaneously seeks to expose viewers to wider swaths of cruel and novel content.

According to Mary Harrington, “The more desires are normalized, the more difficult it becomes to find something sufficiently taboo to give you the tingles.” Quite right. Say what you will about the buttoned-up, so-called “prudish” Victorian era, I’m sure sex was far more fun when even an exposed ankle was titillating. Now, it appears that we have two options in our overstimulated, sexualized culture: we either all get banal and boring or we become so depraved that the FBI comes after us.

While some of us have gone the banal route, others have steamrolled into depravity, often not by our own conscious choice. Bestiality, incest, and non-consensual porn is everywhere online. Pornography companies are knowingly contributing to the transgender craze by constantly suggesting transgender porn videos to viewers regardless of their preferences. AI-powered deepfake porn is a thing. Most worrying to me are the ultra-popular Teen and “barely legal” categories, which consistently rank as the most popular ones on PornHub.

Pro-porn advocates claim that pornography does not create your preferences, but only reveals them. This is complete bunk. Think of it this way; companies pay millions to nab a 15-second Super Bowl ad slot every year. They would not do so if advertisements did not successfully shape consumer habits. So we can’t honestly believe that five hours of scrolling through PornHub’s Teen category is not making child predators out of some of us. These women — if they really are of age — look like tweens.

Though the scientific jury is still out on this question, it seems to be common sense that our desires, addictions, and paraphilias are shaped by a mix of our genetics and our changing environments. Therefore, if we begin to engage with violent content, we usually will grow a taste for more violent content to give our mental reward system the same level of satisfaction. Ditto with porn — it has to get weirder and weirder for the same person to get their rocks off.

So what do we even do? We’re in a state — or at least I am — where we are no better than Pavlov’s dogs. Our minds are so easily hacked by content algorithms and push notifications that it is hard to know how to disengage from the content feed and debug your brain. Though I aspire to disengage from everything, smartphones included, I think a more realistic, baby-step approach is to delay the introduction of smartphones for the vulnerable children among us.

The average age when a child gets a smartphone is now 11. Close behind is the average age of exposure to pornography: 12. This is not a coincidence. I was 11 when I got my first cellular phone. Thankfully, it did not have Internet access; all I could do was text, call, and play Bejeweled. Still, I was first exposed to pornography at 11 anyway, though my medium was a desktop computer. It was 2011 and already, I was not safe online. 

Everything metastasized in 2012, as Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues attest. Facebook went public in May of that year and snarfed up Instagram a month later. Snapchat — a platform solely used for sending nudes in the early days — and a whole host of other nefarious apps and websites like Kik, Whisper, Omegle, and LiveLeak exploded in popularity. And then, on October 10, 2012, Amanda Todd killed herself.

Amanda Todd’s story of how cyberbullying and sextortion led her to suicide went viral. Like many Gen Z kids at the time, Todd had used video chat apps to meet new people on the Internet. One of the strangers she met was a 31-year-old man who begged her to flash her breasts on a webcam stream. After over a year, she relented, only for him to take screenshots to use to blackmail her for more photos. Todd was only 13.

Between banality and depravity, this man had clearly chosen the latter. While he seemed to have had a personal vendetta against Todd, online sextortion has become ubiquitous in recent years, often targeting teen boys for monetary gain. According to the FBI, scammers are primarily from West African or Southeast Asian countries. They pretend to be girls, ask teenage boys for comprising photos, and financially extort them when the pictures are procured.

In light of these realities, please consider delaying smartphone use for your kids until they’re out of high school. I wish someone had for me.

Questions for you:

What is your relationship to the Internet like? How about your smartphone? 

How can we fight offensively and defensively against online pornography?

Am I wrong about smartphones? Are they necessary in a 21st-century world?