adult art being restricted from most Lemmy instances

That one is probably a liability issue. Especially a problem with real-life porn, but even with drawn material, you'll often get characters which don't look like adults. So then the mods would have to review each post, which is too much work, and they'd also likely see shit they'd rather not.
Considering this platform is mostly volunteers, if not fully, it's just not worth it.

I'd say it's the exact opposite. Porn has never been as mainstream as it is now, movies and video games have never been as violent. I remember that in the mid 2000s, GTA and Call of Duty were literally demonized because of the depiction of violence.
Now onlyfans modells openly collaborate with mainstream musicians and Call of Duty has stayed just as violent while appealing directly and openly to children. I am on lemmy.world, if I sort my feed by "Hot" and include all instances, I count about 2 or 3 NSFW post per page on average. And I'm not talking some cosplays, I'm talking hardcore BDSM stuff.

This goes into the realm of conspiracy theories, but it certainly feels like advertisers have some sort of agreement to stay away from controversial topics, keep the viewers minds clean and neutral. So that when it becomes necessary or more important profitable, they're easier to sway one way or the other. Don't think, just enjoy and consume please, and don't forget to hate who we tell you to hate.

People have viginas

Name one.

It's funny, because I self censored and it triggered someone a few months ago on Lemmy.

It's even more wild people are getting offended by stupid things like this imho. Almost like they need to be acknowledged to be reminded they're normal.

The funny thing is, I probably swear more than anyone I know in real life most the time but I don't feel like I need to make it part of my personality lol

I see two forces working in that direction.

One is advertisements. If you run a social media platform or website or anything similar, and hope to display ads, you better not show anything they don't want associated with their brand.

The second is the rise of political movements (you know which ones) that have nothing better to offer than "modesty" and "traditional values" (whatever that means) as ways to fix the issues society faces.

Beware of complaining about "this generation" - it definitely means you might be over the hill.

Different cohorts are exposed to and brought up with different experiences and media. People brought up in a media landscape that's personally produced for social media, and subject to scrutiny globally... Are more concerned with what's socially acceptable. Is that really surprising?

This concept has been called "profilicty", but was foreshadowed in the 70s/80s by the philosopher Guy Debord when he said:

"We've gone from a society of being, to knowing, to appearing to be".

If you're raised on videos of people who have hired luxury cars, and mansions to appear like they've made it, whilst others are torn down with a barrage of comments for saying the wrong thing.... You too might worry about appearances (and your status).

But most young people are fine, they're good in fact. They're still new. Don't worry about them. They're just young people... And don't believe the media.

Maybe this is you generalizing people judging only from controlled social networks, like Instagram that censors out absolutely everything except hate speech.

As far as I see where I live kids nowadays are very much the opposite of prudish, maybe too much at that. 13 year olds barely knowing anything about life and trying their best to brag about how many people they're fucking while swearing like they're characters from a GTA script.

Hey.

We have sex scenes - tiddies out - in the middle of the day on regular TV in Germany.

i don't think i'm particularly prudish. i'll routinely go out to clubs and do demos with like nothing on, but that's in a setting where it's expected. i also appreciate not having sex shoehorned into everything i watch or read.

like yeah it's a facet of existence, but it's not everything. i'd rather have it be meaningful and intentional instead of everywhere.

The problems you're talking about in the OP are purely monetary. Advertisers don't want it so media/content can't do it and survive.

The upcoming generation are behaving less unruly these days I think for 2 reasons :

• Everything is being recorded and shared all the time. You fart in an elevator and you might go viral. God only knows the fear you'd experience waking up hungover after a party in this world.

-Regular rebellion against the previous generation. We had eminem, limp bizkit, rage against the machine, Bart Simpson, an entire barrage of "fuck authority" as a culture. Only real way to rebel against that is "fuck yeah, authority".