News
Featured Image
“If you've given your child an iPhone or iPod that’s six or seven, and you've done nothing to lock it down, you're not doing a good enough job," says Fradd.

February 21, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Matt Fradd is a popular podcaster, anti-porn activist and author of books like “The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography.”

And he has a stark message for parents: if you’ve given your child an iPhone or iPad that doesn’t have strict parental controls and content filtering turned on “you’re probably a bad parent.”

“I don't know how else to say it,” Fradd told Jonathon van Maren during an appearance this week on The Van Maren Show, LifeSite’s new weekly podcast. “If you've given your child an iPhone or iPod that’s six or seven, and you've done nothing to lock it down, you're not doing a good enough job.”

Listen to the full interview with Matt Fradd (story continues below):

Fradd’s phrasing might lack finesse, but the urgency of his message comes from years speaking to thousands of students about the problems of porn. When he speaks to schools, he says, he just assumes that 70% or more of the students are “regularly” looking at pornography. 

“Most parents I know are freaking clueless,” Fradd told van Maren. “They're giving their children portable x-rated movie theaters and just don't seem to want to be aware of the fact that their kids are looking at porn.”

The fact that many parents struggle to keep up with technology just isn’t a sufficient excuse, says Fradd. Parents have a duty to protect their children from pornography, full stop. 

“I think most of us are willingly blind to the fact that our children are being exposed to awful things on Netflix, on the iPhone, and on the tablet that we've given them. And I think that's just bloody outrageous,” he said. “And I think we'll be held accountable to Almighty God for the sins of giving our children these things.”

Fradd recounted the story of one thirteen-year-old who recently wrote him, dismayed at his inability to break a porn habit that began after his mom gave him a phone when he was 11-years-old. The boy was so disgusted by his habit, that he broke the phone just to stop looking at the porn. His mom immediately replaced the phone. It was only after he broke his third phone that, says, Fradd, the kid was able to “break down and admit that he cannot stop looking at pornography.”

“I know no one likes being told when what they're doing is wrong,” says Fradd. “I hate it. … But some someone has to say it. Someone has to say that we're leading children to hell and we're also just sort of numbing them all the way there.”

Fradd’s message isn’t all gloom and doom, however. Instead of giving your children smart devices that consume their lives, Fradd recommends a conscientious rejection of the technology-all-the-time culture, in favor of healthier family habits.

“I think we just got to totally reclaim family life,” Fradd told van Maren. “We’ve got to do away with technology to a great extent. We've got to learn to love good books and poetry again, and songs that we play. And we just need to we need to be radically different if we want to be healthy, I think.”

Aside from his pubic speaking duties, Fradd is the host of the Love People Use Things podcast and the highly-popular Pints with Aquinas podcast. He is launching in the coming weeks a 21-day porn detox program called STRIVE.

The Van Maren Show is hosted on numerous platforms, including SpotifySoundCloudYouTube, iTunes and Google Play.

For a full listing of episodes, and to subscribe via various channels, visit our Pippa.io webpage here.

To receive an email when a new episode is uploaded, click here.