New York magazine this week is all about online pornography.  This article, about the impact of sex and the internet on middle school girls touches on something I’ve been thinking a lot about.

Each generation tends to be very alarmist about the behaviors of the generations below it, and I’ve been wondering whether my own concerns around the impact of ubiquitous internet porn on younger men and women (who grew up with online porn easily accessible from the time they were kids) is merited. After all, every generation thinks that the behavior of younger generations (which they don’t understand) marks the downfall of civilization as they know it.

But what’s interesting to me, is that the article suggests that even middle school kids are wary of the impact of the internet on their sexuality.

Still, while it’s not surprising that adults believe today’s youth are navigating a brave new world, what is surprising is that the kids themselves—who’ve never known anything different—feel that way, too. They get that they are in a strange, uncharted place. “I think kids kind of mature more because they have computers,” Alexa tells me. “Sometimes it can be a good thing, and sometimes it can be a bad thing.” It’s a version of the idea I heard from every group—an awareness that, sexually speaking, the web may be doing them a disservice.

Read the full story, here.

-Nicole