ASU2003

It will be a long, long time before I ever have kids/teenagers, but I would like your opinion on what you would do in this situation.

Let's go back 11 years to Dec. 1994. I get on the Internet at age 14/15. I am far more competent with computers than my parents or friends. Within a week, I had found internet porn. Now, this is really softcore stuff, just like what is in Playboy maybe Hustler. I became obsessed let's say, it became an addiction at age 21-23. But at the time, my parents either didn't have a clue or didn't care that I was using the computer at night for 3-4 hours at a time after they went to sleep at 11pm. Even if they had found evidence, I'm not sure they would have brought it up. (I'm still waiting for the birds & bees talk). And installing blocking software would have been useless, since I could swap hard drives. And, while I am down to only 4 hours a week now, I was lucky I passed some of my classes in college because I would rather d/l adult movies instead of doing homework.

So, how would you talk to your teenage boy about porn, and not come off as controlling parents? Are there any creative approaches besides take away the computer? Would you take the side of "Never bring this up because he might be very embarrassed."? Would you buy him a subscription to Playboy and allow him to be open about it, but can monitor the time on the PC? Or would you sit down next to him and watch it, and scar him for life?

edit: If they ever asked, I could say I was researching something for school or downloading mp3s (after 1998). I could also say I was working on fixing the computer.