My email is filled with parents telling me how shocked they are at having just discovered their child is looking at porn. I’m not shocked. For the past several years I’ve travelled the country speaking to well over 100,000 teens, young adults, and parents about this issue and—in case you’ve been living under a rock on another planet and need to be told this—it’s an epidemic.
In this post I will do two things: 1) Shock you into reality (if you’re not there already) by sharing some recent statistics on kids and porn, and, 2) offer three resources that will help you as parents help your kids.
Let’s begin with an interesting quote from the U.S Justice Department
“Never before in the history of telecommunications media in the United States has so much indecent and obscene material been so easily accessible by so many minors in so many American homes with so few restrictions.”[1]
Sounds about right, doesn’t it. But the scary thing about this statement is that it was made during in the late 90’s, before the advent of smartphones, even before the term Wi-Fi was trademarked.
Back then, if you wanted to look at pornography online, you would have to endure the tedium of dial-up Internet on a large, immovable desktop computer that probably everyone in the house had access to.
And yet even then, the Justice Department was concerned about the amount of obscene, pornographic material that was easily accessible to children.
Today we live in a world where about half of teens own a smartphone, which, without restrictions, can be used as a portable X-rated theater as easily as it can be used as a phone.
And that doesn’t even include the children who don’t own smartphones but do own iPods, which can access the same pornographic content.
Click “like” if you say NO to porn!
The Reality
In 2008 YouGov conducted a survey[2] of nearly 1500 youths. Here are nine things they discovered:
1. 9 out of 10 boys and 6 out of 10 girls are exposed to pornography before the age of 18.
2. The first exposure to pornography among boys is 12 years old, on average.
3. 83% of boys and 57% of girls have seen group sex online.
4. 69% of boys and 55% of girls have seen same-sex intercourse online.
5. 32% of boys and 18% of girls have seen bestiality (sex between a person and an animal) online.
6. 15% of boys and 9% of girls have seen child pornography.
7. 71% of teens hide online behavior from their parents.
8. 28% of 16-17 year olds have been unintentionally exposed to porn online.
9. 20% of 16-year-olds and 30% of 17-year-olds have received a sext.
The Resources
It seems to me we have two options, as parents. Bury our heads in the sand, or act. As I travel the country and speak on this issue I constantly hear parents—good parents—saying a very silly thing: “I trust my children, I don’t need to talk to them about this stuff. My kids are good kids, they’re not looking for porn.”
If you’ve said this, please listen to me: The problem isn’t that you trust your child, but, as I’ve heard one priest (Fr. Sean Kilcawley) say, the problem is that you’ve placed far too much misguided trust in the Internet. Secondly, maybe you’re right, maybe your kids aren’t looking for porn, but believe me, the porn industry is looking for your children: to them our kids look like dollar signs.
1. Get the book, Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn Proofing today’s young kids. Whether we like it or not, if we want our kids to stand a chance in this pornified culture we need to talk to them—in an age-appropriate way—about pornography. This book is beautifully illustrated and is designed for you to read aloud to your child. It will educate your child on why pornography is dangerous and what steps they should take when (not if) they encounter it. They also have a great website which they regularly populate with terrific, practical content.
2. Get Covenant Eyes immediately. Covenant Eyes is, quite simply, the best filter and accountability software on the web. Most of us know what a filter is: it’s, simply put, what blocks the bad stuff. But what is accountability software? This enables you to keep your child accountable online by having regular reports of their internet activity sent to you, which grade their Internet use in much the same way as movies are rated. So if you get a report that says M, or MA, you can look and see what websites your child was looking at (and what search terms they used) and even how long they were there. This will enable you to have a regular conversation with your kids about the goodness of sex, the beauty of God’s plan for their love life, etc. Much more could be said. Learn more here.
3. Listen to my conversation with children’s author Jennie Bishop about how to talk to our kids about porn.
Finally, if you or someone you love is hooked on porn, download my new ebook, The Battle Plan, and my talk, The Hidden Battle for free here.
[1] U.S. Department of Justice. Post Hearing Memorandum of Points and Authorities, at l, ACLU v. Reno, 929 F. Supp. 824, 1996.
[2] SexperienceUK, “Highlights from YouGov’s ‘Sex Education’ survey,” https://sexperienceuk.channel4.com/teen-sex-survey.
