So...

So...

According to what I have heard, child porn is this horrible thing, and people who are interested in it are horrible people. And people offering anything to the contrary are shouted down.

This might be true of some people, but in my experience what we are really seeing here is how people love bullying other people.

If the logic were the case - that people are "monkey see, monkey do" reflex machines - then violent media would lead to violence in the people that watch it (as opposed to people on the other side of the world who have no opportunity to watch it, which is where the violence mostly happens).

Something similar goes on with pornography and with erotica and so on, in my experience. And you can see this statistically, as well.

My theory is that humans have a certain level of need for things like sex, and violence, and if these can be satisfied via media then these needs do not need to be satisfied using physical acts. So to get a population bubble, you forbid sex and then step back and laugh and the desperate people have their needs form bonds between them.

And if you want to prevent something, you allow its discussion and you allow media depicting it. Some will still happen, but statistically speaking you'll get far less than if you tried denying it.

That's my theory, anyways. But it matches statistics I've seen, about birthrates in modern societies, and it matches trends I've seen in society itself, and it matches my own experiences (I am working up to talking about some of my personal experiences - but I find being objective about my own experiences to be painfully difficult.)