Opinion
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December 6, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A 13-year-old girl spends hours watching poison on YouTube. The dream of every parent? Hardly.

But many parents don't see the unfolding tragedy until it's too late.

It's true that educational videos can be helpful, and many families deeply appreciate those that guide kids through algebra, the geography of Africa, or conversational Spanish.

But there's another kind of online education, one producing horrific outcomes, including early (sometimes deviant) sexual activity. Other results are reflected in abortion statistics, criminal cases – and honest obituaries.

At tender ages, our children are taught, via video, to proudly engage in masturbation or to accept abortion (Netflix show Big Mouth). Planned Parenthood features an outrageous YouTube video where teens advocate sexual activity to their peers, and in another, they'll learn the pleasure and “safety” of sado-masochism.

Kids can also binge on suicide ideation (Netflix's 13 Reasons Why, already implicated in several real-life teen suicides). Then there's witchcraft, sorcery, and satanism, readily available in video after video, not to mention popular TV shows like Netflix's revived Sabrina and CW's Charmed.

The online sensation “Slenderman” was the obsession of two middle school girls just arrested at a Florida middle school as they plotted a satanic mass murder of classmates.

And then there are YouTube videos featuring teens who have “transitioned” to the opposite sex. Who watches these? All kinds of adolescents, and the impact is apparently powerful.

Reports in both the U.S. and the U.K. reveal the disastrous impact of binging on gender rebellion videos combined with peer advocacy. The most vulnerable teens, especially those with “progressive” friends, can develop a desire for gender identity change in what is being called “sudden onset gender dysphoria.”

Numerous TV and online videos highlight the “journey” of girls prescribed testosterone to create a new male identity. Your son can learn the benefits of reinventing himself as a girl.

For instance, the saga of “Emmie” Smith on YouTube was produced by National Geographic. The title, “Follow a Transgender Teen's Emotional Journey to Womanhood,” falsely promises the questioning teen that yes, a person can completely wipe out biological history and start over.

Another video also produced by National Geographic features “Eri, “a boy who underwent surgical mutilation in Thailand.

It's the solution to all my problems, the impressionable teen believes. Of course, these touching tales seldom disclose the sky-high health risks associated with puberty-blockers and opposite sex hormones, the presumed medical tickets to a new gender. It's a huge deception.

In the U.K., two recent stories show the disproportionate gender “transitioning” of students at two schools – one in upscale Brighton and the other in an unnamed location. In Brighton, 40 students in one school now identify as the opposite sex, and another 36 are “gender fluid.”

At the unidentified school, a brave educator has gone to the press about her school's gender change advocacy. The teacher revealed that at her school alone, 17 students are in the process of so-called gender “transition,” and most of these students are autistic.

She believes that this condition made them easier targets for indoctrination, often by older students who had themselves adopted an opposite-sex identity. In a process resembling pedophilia “grooming,” the older students talked the younger into walking the same disordered path.

Most of the younger kids had not shown any previous signs of gender confusion, the teacher said. The influence of the older students combined with YouTube videos glamorizing teen sex change caused this adverse outcome.

This is what aggressive indoctrination in deviance produces – corrupted children. And the most susceptible adolescents are those who already struggle with emotional issues.

At Brown University, a study was published a few months ago revealing a developing trend where some teens declare a newfound desire to identify as the opposite sex without prior gender confusion symptoms. The lead researcher was a non-tenured professor at Brown, and her startling conclusions set off the predictable truth-avoidance objections within the transgender activist community.

As a result of the outcry, Brown University stopped promoting the study, deleted it from its website, and began to question its findings.

According to numerous reports by parents, the study found the same trend: that some teens are seeking a gender-altered identity out of the blue – that is, without years of documented struggle. This study named it “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” and it seemed to be produced by heavy social media use, watching numerous videos about so-called “transitioning” to the opposite sex, and also having a circle of non-conforming “LGBTQ” friends. Over 60% had at least one other diagnosed mental health issue.

In other words, it's becoming popular among some teen circles to be a gender-bender, and this researcher found numerous parents who related the same story. Another factor among these teens was marked hostility to normal male-female identities and behavior.

Parents who believe that their household media safeguards are firmly in place can still be stunned about what their kids figure out a way to watch. Pivotal corrupting moments often occur in your child's bedroom when you are asleep or out at a meeting. Or it happens at the home of your child's friend – that new companion who seemed so wholesome when you first met her. Your sweet child may come home a transformed person.

Parents, beware. This age group, and girls especially, can be rapidly and tragically destabilized by wayward friends. They may also view compelling online videos that reel them into a deviant worldview.

And I haven't even mentioned porn.

The online destruction of the soul that results from early pornography exposure is almost impossible to overestimate. It's a cancer within our culture but truly crippling to minors, especially boys.

Online media can be enlightening, fun, connecting. It can also permanently damage the growing human.

Keep your eyes open and your homes safe. There's a lot at stake.

Linda Harvey is president of Mission America.