Porn need not apply on iPad

Late on a Friday night in May, when the small children of first-generation iPad users were fast asleep after bedtime stories on its fascinating new digital display, a tech blogger launched this e-mail fireball at Apple CEO Steve Jobs:

"If Dylan was 20 today, how would he feel about your company? Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with 'revolution?' Revolutions are about freedom."

So began an e-debate between the blogger and the CEO.

"Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data," Jobs wrote back. "Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a-changin"'

Seems what set the blogger off was Apple's new iPad commercial. The ad touts "revolution" with images of an iPad owner on a scooter, a parent and child reading "Winnie the Pooh," and examples of 200,000 applications, aka "apps."

Among these apps you can find almost anything from The Wall Street Journal to Weber grill recipes to air hockey. But you won't find porn.

That bothers the tech blogger. So do other standards Apple set for developers who want to use its platform to reach consumers. The blogger "worries about Apple's growing power to limit self-expression."

So he shot back: "I don't want 'freedom from porn.' Porn is just fine!"

Jobs suggested the blogger might grow concerned about porn when he has children.

He's right. Parents have good reason to care about pornography. Production and consumption of porn are rampant, and children are particularly vulnerable.

About 116,000 online searches for child pornography happen daily, according to "The Social Costs of Pornography," a recent report from the Witherspoon Institute. Every second, more than 28,000 Internet users are viewing porn.

That includes young people who trip on it accidentally.

More than a third of adolescents in a national sample in 2006 said they had been exposed to sexual content online without seeking it, the Youth Internet Safety Survey found. Worse, one in seven said they had received unwanted sexual solicitation. A Columbia University study in 2004 reported that 45 percent of teenagers had friends who regularly viewed porn online.

Adolescent girls who consume pornography are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors, studies show. Therapists report seeing porn-addicted adolescent boys who act out sexual aggression.

Among adults, pornography consumption is associated with divorce, infidelity and decreased sexual satisfaction.