While ubiquitous access porn is relatively new (I think) with printed magazines and now the internet, one still has a great reference from something much older - prostitution. One might conjecture that if society hasn't determined prostitution to be universally bad and banning it everywhere, then the same thing wouldn't happen to porn. A lot of progressive nations these days (citation needed) are aiming to regulate and make prostitution safer, not outright ban it. Now, aiming and succeeding are different things, I admit.
>One might conjecture that if society hasn't determined prostitution to be universally bad and banning it everywhere, then the same thing wouldn't happen to porn.
These two things are hugely different. Kids can and do regularly begin viewing porn right at puberty. There was never such easy access to sexual simulation even with prostitutes. You also cannot photoshop a real life prostitute, or browse around for the most attractive one in the world. Every additional prostitute you are with is an extra price, whereas each additional porn star is free; it naturally leads to needing huge amounts of stimulation that's incredibly hard to get in real life unless you own a harem. And even then if you're into the really hard-core stuff you'd have a hard time finding willing participants.
Society DID recognize it caused problems and basically banned it everywhere (or at least made it frowned upon).
It's starting to look like removing some of the sexual morals that societies had used for hundreds of years is a classic Chesterton's fence style problem. Progressives didn't understand the good effects of some puritan policies and decided to throw it all out because it got in the way of them feeling good right now.
Sure there was some utility gained from those rules, but then we looked at them and the cost-benefit analysis is pretty clearly against them.
Limiting personal freedoms to satisfy old religious beliefs (some of which used to serve useful purposes) makes very little sense nowadays, especially that we have much much much better ways to get much better outcomes with regards to those purposes. (Eg. avoiding genetic defects due to incest, keeping communities growing to have enough people to replace those who are lost due to famines, disease, war, accidents.)
The cost benefit analysis can take generations and is still ongoing.
Cultures that have these rules and restrictions seem to be growing via positive birth rates while cultures that dont are stagnating and not growing and seem to be actively committing cultural suicide. So its not obvious to me which path evolutionary processes will choose to win out in the long run.
