Video games don't cause violence and pornography doesn't cause sex crime
Until somewhat recently, pornography has been taboo, and let's face it, still is. The origins of this vary from culture to culture, and honestly, aren't very important. There are many reasons, however, and they usually circle around the idea that pornography leads to exploitation and even sexual crimes. We here at ImagineVR have done our research and found that there is surprising research that shows that pornography just doesn't cause sexual crime, but in fact can reduce it.
In 1969, a ban on pornography was lifted, and immediately after, the number of reported cases of child sex abuse dropped immediately as found by Milton Diamond (https://web.archive.org/web/20120203171037/http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/BIB/DIAM/effects_pornography.htm). He goes on to claim that the idea that the wide availability of sexually explicit material invariably leads to an increase of sex crimes and rape is not only a myth, but that more pornography leads to a decrease in sex crimes. In the 1960s in the United States, attitudes towards sexuality became more liberalized and sexually explicit material (SEM) was more prevalent than before. Researchers found that committers of sex crimes had less exposure to SEM in their background and were usually deeply religious and socially and politically conservative. Many perpetrators grew up in sexually repressive environments. The author goes on to state, "Available pornography and other SEM allows an outlet for developing sexuality and natural curiosity that was heretofore unavailable; the sexual drives and needs of minors can now be somewhat satisfied by fantasy and education (even if flawed) offered by pornography."
We find the author's conclusion most interesting: "Sex abuse of any kind is deplorable and should be eliminated. Rape and sex crimes, like any criminal activities are blights on society which should be expunged. The question remains 'How best to do this?' Most assuredly, focusing energy in the wrong direction, or taking actions just to placate victims, politicians or irate citizens will not solve the problem nor help. Nor will spreading myths or misinformation. Removing pornography from our midst will, according to the evidence, only hurt rather than help society.
"I think it is better to expend our energies in two directions. 1) Make better pornography so that preferred role models are portrayed and more segments of society can come to appreciate or at least understand and tolerate its value; and 2) turn our research to other directions to eliminate or reduce the social ills of rape and other sex crimes. The best place to look is probably in the home during the first decade of life. But it is only by research that we can continue to understand how to most effectively meet this social challenge. Governments as well as the pornography industry itself would do well to finance and encourage such research."
We here at ImagineVR are proud that we are contributing to the reduction of sex crimes in at least some fashion. What is groundbreaking about VR is not only its immersion and interactivity, but also that many experiences, especially the ones offered on our site, are done with zero human exploitation and instead make use of computer graphics and animations. We look forward to future experiences that contribute to the reduction of sexual crime and hope various communities, online and elsewhere, will soon realize that video games and other interactive experiences do not cause sexual crime just as violent video games do not cause violent crime.