How to Effectively Save your Child Porn Addiction

When Children See Internet Pornography

PARENTS have learned to expect, and often dread, two sex talks with their children: the early lesson about the “birds and the bees” and the more delicate discussion of how to navigate a healthy sexual life as a young adult.

But now they are wrestling with a third: the pornography talk.

There is no set script, and no predictable moment for the conversation. It can happen at as early an age as 6 or 7,
when a child may not yet understand the basic mechanics of sex. It is typically set off by a child’s accidental wanderings online or the deliberate searches of a curious teenager on a smartphone, laptop, tablet or one of the other devices that have made it nearly impossible to grow up without encountering sexually explicit material. Even a quick Twitter or Facebook search reveals that older students report seeing pornography on others’ laptops or phones in class, usually with an “OMG” attached.

As Elizabeth Schroeder, the executive director of Answer, a national sex-education organization based at Rutgers University, said: “Your child is going to look at porn at some point. It’s inevitable.”

Parents, then, are faced with a new digital-era quandary: is it better to try to shield children from explicit content, or to accept that it is so ubiquitous that it has become a fact of life, requiring its own conversation?

Conventional wisdom has held that strict rules about screen time and installing filtering software will solve the problem. But given the number of screens, large and small, that fill the average American home, those strategies may be as effective as building a bunker in the sand while the tide rolls in.

Some parents coach their children to click away from explicit material as soon as it pops up, while others try to be as open as possible, filtering content when children are younger and relying on looser controls for teenagers coupled with frank conversations.

“I know how I reacted when my parents were kind of like, ‘Oh, no, this is bad!’ ” said Chaz, a software consultant and father of two who lives near Minneapolis. (Like many parents interviewed for this article, he asked that his last name not be used to protect his children’s privacy.)

He recalled vividly how, as a 14-year-old boy, he was desperate for a glimpse of Playboy magazine. “It is the height of foolishness to assume my son is not like that,” he said.

The pornography talk he had not long ago with his 12-year-old son was prompted by an iTunes receipt for an app showing 1,001 pictures of breasts.

Rather than lashing out or calling attention to the purchase, he sat his son down, asked if he and his friends were interested in that kind of content and then explained that he had just set up a blocking filter, OpenDNS, on their home network to keep out the worst kinds of content.

It’s natural to be curious, he told his son, adding that if he planned to look for explicit content, he should stick to one particular site he had allowed his son access to, which had pictures of naked women that were not much racier than what might appear in the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated.

Others who assumed their children would eventually search for pornography said that they had tried to teach them to be, in effect, responsible consumers: they showed them how to be discreet, erase browsing histories and avoid malware, and they instructed them never to share pictures of themselves or explicit content with others, especially younger children. (Experts caution that showing minors sexually explicit material could, in some states, violate “harmful to minors” laws.)

But many parents take a different approach. Patti Thomson, for example, said she believed that her duty as a mother was to shield her five children, ages 7 to 15, from explicit content, even if it meant hours spent poring over user manuals and access controls for the computers at her home in Reading, Mass.

“Nowadays, it’s insane,” she said, horrified at the range of pornographic material available online. “I want to really protect them until they’re at an age when they can take it in.”

When she discovered that the iPod Touch devices she gave her children for Christmas could be used to surf the Web, she was so upset that she took them back until she could figure out how to deactivate the Internet connection. She also called Apple to argue for a warning label on the box.

Months later, she was delighted to discover a mobile Web browser, Mobicip— designed for devices like the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and Android OS-based devices like the Kindle Fire — that is easy to set up quickly and blocks content either by age or by categories like pornography, chat or games.

Sometimes danger lurks where parents don’t expect it. Jeanne Sager, a blogger, assumed it was safe to let her 6-year-old daughter, Jillian, watch  videos. But when she left the room for a moment, she heard something that didn’t sound anything like a cartoon.

Her daughter had stumbled upon a graphic video by clicking on a related link listed to the right of the video player. It is one of the most common complaints of parents who discover that their children have been exposed to sexually explicit material online — that a few clicks on YouTube can land a child in unexpected territory, like a subgenre of pornography where popular cartoon characters, like Batman or Mario Bros., are dubbed over with alternate soundtracks and editing to show the characters engaging in explicit acts.

In this case, Ms. Sager simply told her daughter, “There are some videos we shouldn’t be watching,” and made sure she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. Later, she set up a separate computer login for her daughter, with bookmarks to her favorite sites, and no YouTube allowed.

For J. Carlos, a writer from Pasadena, Calif., who also asked that his last name not be used, the need for the pornography conversation emerged when he and his 14-year-old son were hiking in the mountains of Virginia. While borrowing his son’s smartphone to look for a restaurant, he noticed the search history, he said, and immediately realized, “Oh, O.K., it’s time to have that conversation.”

He wished they’d had it earlier, he said. The search terms that popped up seemed both naïve and potentially troublesome, and he worried that his son might unintentionally violate child-pornography laws by looking for images of girls his own age. 

But the conversation that followed was, according to sex educators to whom it was recounted, an ideal response.

Rather than angrily confronting his son on the mountaintop, J. Carlos waited for a calm moment when they could have a casual conversation. He emphasized that it was natural to be interested in sex, but that pornographic images are not representative of relationships and that his son should feel comfortable asking him about anything he had seen.

“He asked me what things were like when I was younger,” J. Carlos said. “He felt really safe talking to me about it, so that felt really great.”

Many parents don’t react so calmly, said Ms. Schroeder, of the Answer organization.

They may wonder what is wrong with their child or if what the child has seen will forever traumatize him or her. Neither assumption is correct, she said. The greater potential harm — and shame — can come from a parent’s reaction.

“If we flip out, freak out or go crazy about it, we’re giving a very set message,” she said, one that may prevent children from feeling they can ask their parents questions without being judged or punished.  

But the most common mistake parents make, experts said, is to wait to have the conversation until some incident precipitates it.

“All of this is so much easier if it’s taking place not as the first conversation parents have about sex, but the 10th or the 20th,” said Marty Klein, a family and sex therapist in Palo Alto, Calif., who encourages parents to be frank and direct in conversations with children.

Richard Esplin, a Mormon and father of four in Lindon, Utah, said he has had regular conversations with his children, unlike his own parents, who talked to him about sex rarely — once when he was a teenager, and again before his wedding.

“That’s not the way my wife and I do things,” he said, “because it’s always coming up.”

From an actor in a bathing suit to videos of kissing, he added, the culture creates many opportunities for his family to discuss questions of modesty and sexuality within the context of their religious beliefs.

“They know they don’t go to YouTube without me, because there are videos on YouTube where people don’t wear clothes,” he said. He explained to his children, who range in age from 2 to 8, that the people in the videos are actors who are “pretending to be married.”

GIVEN that most parents don’t devote much advance thought to this particular conversation, however, the words they choose often don’t reflect what they wish they had said after the fact.

One family’s improvised conversation raised questions in hindsight about how boys and girls are treated differently. 

Bonnie, a university administrator in North Carolina with a teenage son and two stepdaughters, realized only after discussing the matter that she and her husband had been sending unintended messages by emphasizing safety and self-protection with the girls and limits with her son.

“Later, we realized how terribly, albeit unconsciously, sexist that was,” she said. 

Dana, a divorced mother of three in Massachusetts, assumed her sons would seek out pornography and thought it was normal for her 9-year-old to want to look at pictures of naked women. But when he was 13, he asked why women liked to be choked. She then realized she needed to explain to him that pornography isn’t real and that the people are paid actors. She compared it to WWE wrestling matches, which her son knows are fake. 

Unlike many parents, Dana had an opportunity to help her son understand what had upset him, which is why therapists like Mr. Klein say that keeping the lines of conversation open is the best safeguard against any potential harm. “We’re not going back to 1950 here,” he added, “to a world where there are no mobile devices, no apps.”

Even Chaz, the father in Minnesota who was careful to block his home network, said he had accepted that he could not protect his child from everything.

Not long ago, he decided to disable Internet access to his son’s laptop and phone for a few hours a day, hoping it would nudge his son to play outdoors instead. He didn’t anticipate the alternative. One day, when he got home from work, his son informed him that the Internet had been erratic lately, but that it was no problem — he had just logged onto a neighbor’s unfiltered Wi-Fi connection, where the entire Web awaited.

Signs and Symptoms of Porn Addiction in Kids

The following are some signs and symptoms of porn addiction in kids. It is important to be aware that while these are possible signs of porn use, these behaviors also can be seen with drug/alcohol abuse, bullying, feelings of disconnect from the family and other problems that teens face.

• Isolation: spending time alone in room or bathroom
• Change in mood: this is a possibility, but has to be evaluated on case by case basis
• Disinterested in spending time with others
• Excessively long periods of time in the shower
• Taking phone into bathroom
• Acting out behavior: sexting, sexual harassment, explicit emails, etc.
• Secrecy, withdrawal
• Increase is contempt/disdainful comments, objectifying others, etc.
• Sexualized language
• Inappropriate sexual knowledge for their age
• Sexually violent comments, jokes, victim blame
• Drawing pornographic images
• Peeping
• Sexual behavior that is not developmentally appropriate

Some more extreme signs of porn addiction, or symptoms that the addiction is progressing: 

• Using media to discuss pornography: texts, X Box messages, Instagram, email
• Viewing multiple pornography sites. Any violent or extremely aberrant sites will create problems with healthy sexual development
• Interest in group sexual violence
• Engaging in risky behavior in spite of negative results: using school or church or neighbors computers to look up porn
• Masturbating in public
• Viewing porn in public place
• Withdrawal symptoms
• Accusations of sexual bullying/harassment

Therapist suggestions for addressing pornography addiction in a child:

• Software Blocks 
• All electronics out of bedrooms
• Only public access to electronics
• Parents to have all passwords to all electronic accounts to assure safety
• Therapy 

This is not a comprehensive list, it does not confirm that a teen is viewing porn nor does it offer a solution to every situation. These are things to pay attention to, regardless of the age of your child and whether or not the child is viewing pornography. The most important thing a parent can do is be present and aware of changes in a child’s/teen’s behavior. Parents should foster a healthy relationship with children (the sooner the better!) to build trust and teach by example ways to create the healthy emotional connection every human needs.

The internet has torn down barriers to communication and made the sum of man's knowledge accessible to all. As such, it has proved a tremendous force for good, by, for example, enabling courageous people in Zimbabwe to expose the injustices perpetrated by Robert Mugabe's regime. However, the internet can also be a deeply corrupting influence.

Scarcely a week passes without news of an appalling crime in which it has played a part. Recently, there has been the homosexual cannibal, in Germany, Armin Meiwes, who met a willing victim by placing an advertisement on the internet; the case of Graham Coutts, who murdered the teacher Jane Longhurst, after spending hours looking at images of rape and strangulation on the net; and the former US Marine Toby Studabaker, who befriended a 12-year-old girl through an internet chatroom, engineered a meeting, then abducted her.

These cases are regular reminders that the net, through images and opportunities for contact, can encourage people to realise their darkest fantasies. What is becoming apparent is that there is a much broader appetite for images of the most extreme forms of sexual perversion and violence than we ever realised. Websites offering pornography are those most visited on the net, so much so that they are putting many of the top-shelf magazines out of business.

It was revealed last month that 3,022 people were cautioned or charged in connection with child pornography offences in England and Wales between 1988 and 2001 - an increase of more than 33% each year. That this increase is happening now suggests a possible causal link between these offences and the proliferation of child pornography on the internet, as well as the ease with which it can be accessed. And those caught are likely to be a fraction of those looking at this material.

Research in the US has found that as many as one in three people found in possession of such images also directly abused children. But what about the remaining two-thirds? Until a year ago, I would have believed that all such individuals posed a serious risk to children. Then, a few weeks ago, my husband was sentenced for viewing child pornography on the net and is now serving a three-month prison sentence.

It began in 1999, when he was employed by a national newspaper to edit its online edition. He spent hours surfing the net, both at home and at work, becoming convinced that the internet heralded a bold new future for the world.

He was equally concerned about its potential to encourage all manner of evil, and began planning a book with the working title Virtual Eden. He believed there were parallels between the Garden of Eden and the internet, but in his book proposal he pointed out an essential difference.

"In the Garden of Eden, God told Adam and Eve that they must not eat the fruit from a certain tree. With the internet, there is no supreme being telling us what we can and cannot access. The internet is a Godless Eden. It is down to the individual's conscience what they do and do not look at and delve into. Individual nations' attempts at regulating and censoring the net will fail," he wrote.

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Soon his research led him to spend more time looking at indecent images than on developing his book proposal. There were depictions of sexual violence and child pornography which he later told me he found repulsive, but for the first time in his life, he found himself drawn to pictures of pubescent and pre-pubescent girls in states of undress, and started to seek them out on the internet. He thought he could stay within the law if he accessed only websites which in their small print classified their material as "art" under US law rather than pornography, or if they promised that their models were over 18. Some of the sites were Japanese, where such material appeared to be legal and a relatively mainstream taste. For four years he surfed the net, usually paying by credit card to view sites for limited periods. He did not save illegal images or communicate with anyone about them. His was a solitary occupation, usually conducted late at night in his study, often with a bottle of wine at his side.

All I noticed was that he was drinking too much and not getting enough sleep. If I woke during the night, I would often find he was downstairs "working". During the day, he often appeared preoccupied and distant, both with the children and with myself. When we were around, he spent much of his free time either sleeping, reading or listening to music. This pattern of behaviour remained essentially the same over four years. It was brought to an abrupt end by a ring on the doorbell at 6.20am on a bitterly cold morning last March. Five police officers arrived with a warrant for his arrest. They searched the house and found nothing incriminating, but then took away the hard drives from our computers.

My husband's arrest formed part of a major police investigation called Operation Ore. It began in 2002, when the US Postal Service seized a list of names and credit-card details of people who had accessed child pornography websites run by a company in Texas called Landslide Productions. There were 7,272 UK-based subscribers on the list. My husband - a senior newspaper executive - was one of those named, and a police source immediately leaked news of his arrest to the press. Stories appeared the next day and he resigned from his job. We were told social services would be in touch about our children and we waited for the phone to ring.

My overwhelming desire was to discover how the man I loved and thought I knew so well could have done such a thing. He did not seem to know the answer himself. Our elderly parish priest was the only person who would listen calmly and understand. He has had little to do with the internet, but the story of a man who is tempted to do evil, then falls under its control, is only too familiar to an experienced priest.

"Is my husband a bad man?" I recall asking my priest as I dropped him home after his first visit to our house following my husband's arrest.

"No, he is not a bad man. He has been weak," was his reply.

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Addiction to internet pornography is a morality tale for modern times. These images of depravity, both legal and illegal, had acquired an extraordinary hold on my husband. Prior to his arrest, whenever he was alone in the house, he could not resist going online. We were continually bombarded with unsolicited "spam" emails advertising child pornography websites. The same sites continually inserted themselves into our "Favorites". When I asked my husband about them he would say his email address had been sold to thousands of companies and denied that he had looked at pornography of any kind.

Once, late at night, when I was working on the home computer for a change, the screen froze and, as I tried to sort out the problem, a new and unfamiliar desktop appeared. It consisted entirely of lurid icons linked to child pornography sites and gave me a terrible fright. It felt like a manifestation of pure evil. Why didn't I go upstairs to wake my husband and show him what was on the screen? I am still angry with myself when I think about it today. As it was, I left it until the morning and was only too willing to believe his denials.

The police technicians recovered 6,000 images of legal adult pornography and 245 classed as child pornography. Among them were 10 images viewed between 1999 and 2000 that showed images of children being abused by adults. I agree that viewing those images is in effect "child abuse by proxy", and that those who pay to look at them are fuelling demand for such pictures and therefore indirectly contributing to further abuse of children. But it is also absolutely wrong that those 10 pictures and thousands like them can be accessed in minutes by anyone via an internet service provider (ISP), a search engine and a credit card.

Within days of his arrest, my husband had begun to face up to his addiction and arranged to see a consultant psychiatrist every week for three months. The psychiatrist helped him to take responsibility for what he had done, but also to understand that stress at work, depression, insomnia and alcohol had all played a part in his addiction. My husband also came to believe that the problem of child pornography and other illegal material on the internet cannot be solved solely by arresting and punishing those who create a market for it. He hopes that he can help mobilise a campaign for the regulation of the internet. In a statement he prepared to be issued after he had been sentenced he drew an analogy with the war on illegal drugs.

"I became one of the addicts," he wrote, "An addict's habit is fed by dealers."

The dealers in this instance are often major corporations who, in their role as ISPs, sell consumers a gateway to the internet and, through their search engines, facilitate the search for illegal material.

Self-regulation by the ISPs in cooperation with the police has failed to prevent the child porn industry from expanding.

No one doubts that effective strategies to trace and close down child pornography sites would be costly. But the ISPs also worry that unwelcome public attention might then switch to adult pornography. This is probably the most lucrative industry on the internet, generating billions of US dollars.

In November 2002, Lord Justice Rose, vice-president of the court of appeal criminal division, said that increased access to the internet had greatly exacerbated the problem of child pornography by making it more easily accessible "and increasing the likelihood of such material being found accidentally by others who may subsequently become corrupted by it".

And so it has proved. The police are struggling to deal with all those on the Operation Ore list. In January, the Home Office minister Paul Goggins said only one in 20 of them had so far been convicted. A mere 10% had ever been charged.

Over the past year I have read many newspaper accounts of cases where men of previous good character have become caught up in this terrible evil. The extent of their habit varies considerably, from looking at relatively few indecent images of children, to building up huge collections of pictures and exchanging them with others.

While the secular experts are right to demand more research about this phenomenon, Christianity offers an explanation that I have never understood as well as I do now; all human beings are, to a greater or lesser extent, drawn towards evil, and once we succumb it is hard to break free. But there is the hope of redemption and a new beginning. In our own case, it felt entirely appropriate that we should ask our priest to bless the house again after what had happened, and that we should renew our marriage vows on our 20th wedding anniversary. There is something to celebrate when my husband returns home next month. He is free in more senses than one.

Child porn 'endlessly recycled'

John Carvel

Wed 8 Oct 2003 02.17 BSTFirst published on Wed 8 Oct 2003 02.17 BST

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The NSPCC warned last night that children who have been abused by people producing pornographic photographs for the internet are likely to suffer life-long damage.

An analysis of 140,000 images of child pornography posted on websites over six weeks found 35,000 were pictures showing the systematic abuse of just 20 children, none of whom had featured before on known pornographic sites.

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This worked out at an average of 1,750 images of each child, none of whom could be identified or located. Even the children's home countries were in doubt, according to University of Cork researchers, who were looking into the activities of European paedophile networks.

The NSPCC said computer technologies were transforming child pornography into a "global cottage industry, where boundaries between consumers, distributors and producers become blurred".

It commissioned a review of the evidence on child pornography after the conviction of the singer Gary Glitter in 1999 for downloading more than 4,000 indecent images.

The report tells of the experiences of abuse survivors, who spoke about their "intense feelings of powerlessness, shame and humiliation in the knowledge that a record of their abuse exists and can endlessly be recirculated".

The charity called for long-term support and treatment to be available for all victims.

Internet child porn offences rise fourfold

David Batty and agencies

Fri 4 Mar 2005 10.34 GMTFirst published on Fri 4 Mar 2005 10.34 GMT

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The number of people arrested and convicted for downloading child abuse images from the internet has more than quadrupled in the last two years, a children's charity revealed today.

Home Office figures obtained by the charity NCH showed 2,234 people were cautioned or charged with online child abuse offences in England and Wales in 2003, compared with 549 in 2001 - a rise of 307%.

The charity, together with the Association of Chief Police Officers, today called on the government to establish a new body - dubbed the UK Internet Safety Centre - to investigate online child abuse.

The agency, first proposed last year by the children's charity Barnardo's, would be staffed by police, child protection experts and computer analysts.

NCH internet safety adviser John Carr said: "There is now widespread agreement about the need for a new, high-powered national centre to tackle internet crimes against children.

"The only thing there is not yet an agreement about is who should pay for it. We hope ministers can resolve this very soon. What NCH says is that we want a new national centre - and we want it now."

NCH noted that the number of people cautioned or charged in 2003 was 64 times greater than the 35 recorded in 1998 - the first year these offences were recorded. Between 2002 and 2003, the number of offences rose by 157%.

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A report by the government's police watchdog warned this week that the increasing amount of time individual police forces were spending on internet paedophilia investigations was sometimes to the detriment of other types of child protection. The Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales added that child protection officers lacked sufficient training and resources to tackle online child abuse offences.

Mr Carr put the huge rise in the number of arrests and convictions down to Operation Ore, the police investigation set up to track down people who paid to download child abuse images from a website based in Texas.

The investigation was launched after the Federal Bureau of Investigation supplied UK police with the credit card details of 6,500 Britons who accessed the US pay-per-view Landslide website to download child abuse images.

Mr Carr said: "These new and astonishing numbers reflect the arrests made during Operation Ore. But given on-going police activity, the worry is that they represent not a blip but a new 'normality'. Many police admit that they are still only touching the tip of a very ugly iceberg."

NCH also called on internet service providers (ISPs) to follow British Telecom (BT) and Vodafone in blocking their subscribers from accessing known child pornography websites.

The charity will be asking the home secretary, Charles Clarke, to investigate how many UK-based ISPs have yet to block access.

Mr Carr said: "Child pornography on the internet is a modern curse and ISPs have a critical part to play in stamping it out. BT and Vodafone showed the way. We want everyone else to follow or, I am afraid, legislation compelling them to do so will be inevitable."

BT, Britain's largest high-speed internet provider, last year announced that it was blocking 23,000 attempts to access child abuse websites every day.

Equipping your child to resist pornography

Is it true that a pre-pubescent child can get addicted to pornography? Regrettably, the answer is yes. Yet parents often struggle to understand how this is even possible.

When children accidentally encounter porn online for the first time, they’re typically shocked and upset by what they see. That much is certainly understandable. It’s what happens next that dumbfounds parents.

Many young kids – even if they were repulsed or traumatized by the pornographic images they saw – will feel an urge to seek out pornography again.

The question is, why? It’s not hard to imagine why a teen might be tempted. But why would Internet porn exert any pull on a child who hasn’t even reached puberty – a child who has yet to experience sexual attraction and sexual impulses?

The reasons are primarily biological and developmental, and not at all reflective of the child’s moral character. Paradoxically, porn is a powerful influencer precisely because it exploits perfectly normal, healthy drives in a child (or youth) at a highly vulnerable stage in their development.

Very briefly, children will re-visit porn because of their

• curiosityKids are innately curious, and internally compelled to learn more about anything they don’t understand; a sudden new awareness of porn will ignite a sudden new curiosity about it. And not all kids have an instinctive sense, when they first see it, that looking at porn might be wrong.
• normal sexual impulsesExposure to pornography, even very brief exposure, can prematurely awaken a child sexually. Having felt the intoxicating sensations of their sexual drive revving up, they want to repeat the experience, even though they don’t understand what’s happening.

For both children and teens who’ve been exposed, porn quickly becomes difficult to resistfor three reasons:

1 A sexual experience fuelled by porn spurs the release of extraordinarily high levels of craving-inducing neurochemicals in the brain.

Dopamine – the main neurochemical involved – is normally released in the body during sex. (Dopamine is an important driver of sexual desire, and motivates essential survival behaviours too, like eating, drinking and moving out of the cold.) Porn, however, is an unnaturally effective reinforcer of sexual desire in that it triggers a veritable tsunami of dopamine that acts on the “reward centre” of the brain (the nucleus accumbens). In short, porn makes the impulse to look at porn again feel more like an imperative.

2 Kids and teens have an immature prefrontal cortex, the “rational centre” of the brain that is meant to hold impulses and desires in check.

This rational centre in the brain – the region responsible for reasoning, decision-making and evaluating consequences of actions – doesn’t function at full capacity until youth reach their early twenties. In contrast, the emotional centre of the brain – where desires, impulses and the sexual drive arise – functions just fine in kids and youth. For children and teens, that means their “Do it because it feels good” impulse is much stronger than the cautionary impulse “I should pause and think about whether this is really a good idea.” (And remember, when porn is the temptation, the “Do it because it feels good” impulse is also getting a turbo boost from all that extra dopamine.)

3 Adolescents very quickly discover that masturbation to porn provides temporary but effective distraction from stress, emotional pain and even simple boredom.

On their own, if no one warns them, kids don’t recognize the danger of relying on such an unhealthy coping strategy and the high risk of developing a pornography addiction (which can take hold in just a few weeks).

Kids and youth – and adults too – also have the power of memory to contend with. A child may immediately reject porn when they see it by turning the phone face down, closing the laptop or clicking the X on the screen, but those images will pop up in their memory again and again to test their resolve. And pornographic images can have remarkable staying power.

Freeing kids from memories of what they saw

As the founder of Protect Young Minds, Kristen Jenson is passionate about teaching parents how to protect their kids from porn.

“When your child first has access to the Internet, that’s the age you should start warning them about pornography,” says Jenson. “Every child deserves to be warned about the dangers of pornography and to have the skills to reject it.”1

Having filters on devices is important, Jenson stresses, but the most important filter is a child’s internal filter. Kids need to be taught how to slam the door on porn themselves – not just when they see it online, but whenever the images reappear in their mind.

To that end, Jenson partnered with Gail Poyner to write Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, a picture book for parents to read to children ages 7 to 11. (Jenson also recently released Good Pictures, Bad Pictures Jr. for 3- to 6-year-olds.)

Good Pictures, Bad Pictures teaches kids to react immediately when they encounter porn by following five simple steps, starting with closing their eyes, looking away, and turning off the computer. Jenson describes the full five steps as:

Close your eyes

Always tell a trusted adult

Name it when you see it

Distract yourself [when the images return to mind]

Order your thinking brain to be the boss [i.e. the brain’s “rational centre” – the prefrontal cortex]

Parents can make a big difference to the success of porn-proofing their kids by coaching kids in how to distract themselves. “We can’t help kids un-see what they saw, but we can help them minimize it,” says Jenson.

“You can’t just say, ‘Don’t think about it’; you have to give them something else to think about. . . . When they come to you and tell you they’ve seen something bad, praise them. Usually they’ll be upset, so you have work through those feelings, but then you have to help them. You can ask, ‘What fun thing are you going to think about instead?’ ”

The best tool for distraction, says Jenson, is to encourage your child to re-live, in their mind’s eye, a past experience that was really exhilarating and fun – perhaps re-living a rollercoaster ride or pretending they’re mountain biking – and throwing their imagination into high gear to fill in the details. “It could also be a song or a poem, but it needs to be something that they are excited about,” says Jenson. (In her book, Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, Jenson also includes reciting a prayer as an option.)

“It takes about 10 times,” says Jenson. “I haven’t done an official scientific study on that, but you have to teach your child to do it over and over again. What you’re doing in fact . . . is you are actually developing another neural pathway away from that pornographic image.”

Recognizing emotional states that lead to temptation

Jenson’s distraction technique is helpful for older kids as well, but tweens are also ready for some more advanced training.

And here, the authors behind Good Pictures, Bad Pictures have more help to offer. In 2017 co-author and porn-addiction therapist Gail Poyner released a guide for parents called Pandora’s Box Is Open Now What Do I Do?

Poyner’s book (which is a secular resource) helps parents coach adolescents in powering up their rational, decision-making skills to override their impulse to seek out porn.

At the same time though, Poyner emphasizes another angle that’s key to understanding and resisting the attraction of porn: it’s often emotional needs that drive kids to seek out porn, rather than sexual impulses.

“Many people feel drawn to porn when they feel bored, stressed, lonely or upset,” writes Poyner. “We are finding this to be true for children, as well. The list can stretch pretty long, but helping a child understand some of the most common reasons they turn to porn can help them deal with these triggers on an individual level.”

Understanding patterns – what time of day and where a child happens to be when they’re tempted to view porn – can be really helpful too. Right after school is a vulnerable time of day for many kids, a time when they’re often alone and mulling over hurts and stresses.

As well as teaching kids to monitor their emotional state, Poyner urges parents to help kids build and take ownership of their personal action plan for managing triggering emotions. That means choosing their own healthy alternatives (rather than resorting to porn for emotional relief.)

Feeling bored? Could you shoot some hoops? What else is really engaging for you?

Mad at a friend? Discouraged? Who would be a safe person to talk to about it?

What can powerfully help kids is having a go-to confidant and coach available by phone who can talk them through moments of vulnerability – someone who can offer encouragement and help them deal with difficult feelings. Parents are a natural fit for that role – particularly dads for sons – but it could also be a trusted uncle or aunt, or older sibling. Jenson’s website at Protectyoungminds.org includes an excellent article by John Fortdiscussing this type of mentoring.

Whether your child has been exposed to pornography or not, purity and strength in this area is something to be praying about regularly for your child. And as you do, also ask the Holy Spirit to make you alert to any signs that your child might have accessed porn. Don’t assume – since your child hasn’t said anything – that all is well. As explained in a companion article to this one, confessing to viewing porn can be extremely difficult for a child.

In closing, here are a few more tips to help remove the temptation for kids to view porn:

• Don’t leave your child wondering about sex. Provide sex education appropriate to their age as well as books they can refer to, and urge them to come to you rather than going online to learn more.
   
• Keep reigniting discussions about porn, and sexuality in general, with your child so you can deal with any new questions, temptations or concerns as new situations arise. Keep encouraging your child to resist porn.
• Don’t give your child an Internet-enabled phone until they are at least 11 years old and you’re confident they can handle the responsibility.
• Common times for kids to be tempted to view porn are at nighttime, after school and during school vacations. Don’t let your child keep their phone or computer in their room overnight. And be alert for unusual nighttime behaviour, for example, if you find your child on the family computer at 1 A.M. claiming that they can’t sleep.
• Gail Poyner warns that she treats many kids who were first introduced to porn at a sleepover. Consider teaching your child a code word they can text you from a friend’s house if there’s something going on that they want no part of. Then invent a face-saving excuse to show up and pick them up, or text them a reason to come home urgently.
• Filters are really helpful but friends can bring porn into your home already downloaded onto their phone. Poyner suggests having friends put phones in a basket when they come over, then hand them back when they leave.
• Teach kids scripts that help them confidently refuse a friend’s invitation to view porn. For example, teach them to say something like, I don't want to watch that. That's not cool.
• Make sure your child sees you rejecting oversexualized messages – turning off inappropriate TV shows and movies, for example. Teach your family to decode false messages in media. Ask, What is this saying about women? About manliness? About violence? About power? Do you agree or disagree with this message?

Starting a conversation about porn with your child

If your child were in deep trouble, they’d come to you and ask for help, wouldn’t they? But what if they just couldn't talk about it?

Manitoba teen Joseph D. knows what it’s like to live with that kind of stress. By just nine years old, Joe was addicted to online pornography, yet found it impossible to confess to his parents.

Joe’s story is at the heart of the documentary Over18 that’s being presented across Canadaby filmmakers Jared and Michelle Brock and their team at Hope for the Sold.

“While you're in it, telling someone is never an option,” says Joe. “And the longer that you keep quiet, the harder it is to tell someone.”

Joe has loving and supportive parents, so why the ongoing secrecy? Why is it so hard for kids like Jo to ask for help?

To answer that, you need to understand what kids are actually seeing when they stumble across pornography online. Pornography no longer means images of partially or fully naked men or women in suggestive poses. Today, kids who are innocently browsing the Internet or playing a game online need only click on an unfamiliar word or a confusing pop-up to be exposed to extremely violent, sexually explicit content. All for free, and without restriction, kids unwittingly get to sample the Internet’s underbelly – an underbelly that’s awash in movie footage where women being beaten, choked and raped, and themes of male domination, sadomasochism, incest and bestiality are common.

For a child, fessing up and describing what they’d seen just once would be difficult enough. So how could a kid caught in a porn addiction ever open up and explain their impulse to return to scenes like that again and again?

Even girls who have never seen porn still feel its impact on their self-image and social life, but again, it’s not a topic they can easily broach with their parents. There’s no easy way to explain what it’s like to rub shoulders daily with young men whose attitudes toward girls and women are being distorted by porn. How do you casually drop into the conversation, By the way Mom, did you know that boys in my class rank girls according to what they will do? You're either “no sex,” “oral sex,” “real sex” or “rough sex.”

Unless we, as parents, take the initiative and start talking about pornography, our kids are going to be left struggling with its pernicious consequences all on their own. It’s time to stop deluding ourselves that we can shield our kids from ever seeing it; we need to start equipping our kids to resist its pull. Over18 co-producer Michelle Brock urges, “Most children are going to see pornography before the age of 18, so I think parents need to mourn – take a week and mourn the fact that their child will probably come across porn somewhere – and then get to work.”

And right from the start, to be truly prepared, we need to understand the full force of what we’re up against. Kids aren’t getting ensnared in pornography because they’re somehow more debased than other kids. Good kids – great kids – are getting ensnared in pornography because it’s tremendously addictive, and especially so for a child or youth, because of the unique vulnerability of their immature brain. Very few children or teens caught in a pornography addiction are going to be able to break free without unfaltering support, empathy and on-going coaching from their parents.

“When somebody engages with pornography, there’s a 200 percent spike of dopamine to the reward centre of the brain – a region called the nucleus accumbens,” explains Michelle. “That’s the same level of reward that you get from a morphine hit. When kids get this dopamine hit to the brain, their frontal lobe has not fully developed to be able to process that. That’s the part of your brain that is forward thinking – thinks about consequences, thinks about the future – and that doesn’t develop in boys until their early 20s. And so, when a 10-year-old is exposed to porn and gets that dopamine hit to the reward centre of the brain, he is not fully able to process it. That can potentially lead to a decade of addiction without the ability to really protect himself.” 

Prepare yourself for the conversation, and for the unexpected

There’s no pretending that cracking open a conversation about porn is going to be easy. Nevertheless, you’ll need to make the conversation as easy as possible for your child.

No matter what your child divulges, it’s essential that you remain calm, and be unflinchingly affirming and supportive. Your son or daughter needs to know that they really can tell you anything and trust that you won’t freak out, blow up in anger or shame them.

Don’t go into this unprepared. First, pray through Luke 8:17, asking the Lord that anything that needs to come out into the light will do so, and that He will fill you with His Spirit of wisdom when you respond to your child. And be encouraged by this advice from John Stonestreet on a recent Focus on the Family broadcast: “Sometimes it’s a far better day when a deep-rooted sin comes to light, even if it’s painful for a parent to see that in the life of their kid, than it is when it’s hidden.”

Once you’ve prayed, run though all the possible scenarios you can imagine in front of a mirror. Practice keeping your face calm and your emotions composed, even as you picture your child revealing the worst: that yes, they have seen pornography, that they were introduced to it by the last person you would have suspected, that they confess to repeated use of porn.

Though it may feel odd, awkward and presumptive, this kind of preparation is important. If your child really does have a dark secret to share, he (or she) will have already spent plenty of time fretting about how you might respond, and you can be sure they’ll be highly sensitive to your reaction. If you show shock or surprise, your child may falsely interpret your expression as disappointment or disgust. And whether it’s real or imagined, that kind of response from you will be devastating to your child.

What to say

One of the biggest hurdles, for many parents, is figuring out a natural way to launch a conversation about pornography. Hopefully the scripts that follow will help you find an entry point that feels comfortable for you.

Your sense of discomfort around this topic may tempt you to make this an intense, one-hour “one and done” conversation, but that’s not what you should aim for. If your child has lots of questions and wants to talk for an hour, that’s great, but for most kids, an initial discussion of just 5 to 10 minutes or so will be best. Your goal is just to ease your child into the first of many conversations about pornography, plus other aspects of your child’s emerging sexuality, and to make their experience so comfortable, they won’t balk at continuing the discussion next time.

To introduce the topic of pornography to a young child:

Right after browsing on your phone (or computer) in your child's presence, you could open the discussion by simply observing aloud, Some people don't make good choices about what pictures to put online. Then you could ask:

Have you ever seen any pictures on a computer or a phone that made you feel uncomfortable?

If necessary, you could add “. . . like seeing men and women with no clothes on.”

Let your child describe what they saw, if anything. Gently explore when and where they saw it, and if anyone else was with them at the time (to determine whether anyone might have deliberately shown them the pictures).

Continue with:

I'm sad to say this, but some people don't know that they should keep their personal, private parts covered by their clothes. So sometimes you might accidentally see pictures that show people's private parts.

Seeing pictures or movies of private things that we're not supposed to see can give us unpleasant feelings. The pictures might frighten us, confuse us or upset us. If you ever see pictures like that, I want you to come and tell me right away, okay? I can help you deal with any uncomfortable feelings you might have. I'll also answer any questions you have about what you saw.

If you’d be more comfortable working through an age-appropriate book with your child, Good Pictures, Bad Pictures is an excellent book for children ages 7 to 11. There’s also Good Pictures, Bad Pictures Jr. for ages 3 to 6.

To introduce the topic of pornography to an adolescent:

If you are having this conversation with your son, remember that boys (and men) tend to find face-to-face interactions confrontational and uncomfortable, so look for an activity the two of you can do “shoulder to shoulder” as you steer the conversation where it needs to go. You could open your discussion by saying something like this:

Sooner or later you are going to come across pornography, and I want to make sure you have all the answers you need so you'll know how to deal with pornography when you see it.

Have you ever stumbled across sexually intense images or movies online that have been hard to get out of your mind?

Try to get some idea of what your child has seen, when and where they saw it, and if anyone encouraged them to view it.

If your child responds that they haven't encountered porn:

Be cautious about this response. Perhaps it’s true that your child hasn’t seen porn. On the other hand, your child’s flushed face and obvious discomfort may suggest to you that they have seen porn, but they’re not ready to divulge that to you yet. Either way, your response should be the same – to be warm and affirming and build a sense of trust in your child, so hopefully they will come to you again soon and tell you the full story. You could respond with:

Thank you for sharing that with me. At your age, it's natural for you to be curious about your sexuality and how the sexual side of a man and woman's relationship works. But I don't want you to go online to find out about those things, because there's all kinds of false and confusing information about sexuality online, as well as the troubling images we call pornography. Instead, when you have questions, I hope you will come to me and I promise I will answer any questions you have.

If your child does reveal some familiarity with pornography you could say:

Thank you for being honest with me. I know it took a lot of courage for you to tell me that. I understand that at your age, it's only natural for you to be curious about your sexuality and how the sexual side of a man and woman's relationship works. However, I need to warn you that looking at pornography is dangerous. It can really get a hold of you and become a habit that's very hard to shake off. Lots of good people get into trouble with it.

So please continue being honest with me, because this is important: how often do you think you've been looking at porn? Have you found you can't stop looking at it?

If your child does reveal familiarity with pornography and you’re overwhelmed with grief or anger at what you’ve heard, you may need to buy some time by saying:

Thank you for being honest with me. I know it took a lot of courage for you to tell me. I'm not mad at you and I don't think any less of you now that I know about this. I'm just really upset that I never thought to warn you about pornography before now. You should never have had to face something like this on your own. I'm going to help you with this, but right now I just need to take some time to pull myself together, okay?

Four problems with porn that adolescents need to understand

Hopefully, over time, both you and your child will become increasingly comfortable having brief chats that allow you to answer your child’s questions and build your child’s understanding of why porn is so damaging. Here are some talking points presented in simple, kid-friendly language, to help you convey some essential info to your child.

 1. Porn is not real life – it’s fantasy

Porn is created by actors who are acting out a fake and very distorted picture of the physical side of sex. Their goal is to make money by selling pornographic movies and images, so they are intentionally trying to shock their audience.

Some of what they act out could be very harmful to the human body and most real-life couples would not even consider doing those things.

Unfortunately, because they don’t know any better, many young people think that what they see in porn is normal sexual behaviour between a guy and a girl. Much of it most definitely is not normal behaviour.

2. Porn is dangerously addictive

When people first view pornography, they often have a strong and memorable reaction to it. Those feelings are caused by a surge of chemicals being released in the brain. The feelings are so strong, it makes people want to look at porn again and again to re-experience those feelings. People soon find they’re in trouble because they can’t stop craving the feelings porn gives them, but it can be hard for them to ask for help.

As porn pulls a person under its influence, it sucks the enjoyment out of other parts of their life. Pretty soon everything – even things they used to love – seem dull and uninteresting, and porn becomes all they can focus on.

3. Porn teaches selfishness instead of love

Everybody needs more than just the physical side of sex; they also need the deep emotional experience of being loved and valued by their sexual partner. But porn doesn’t teach you how to love someone. It does the opposite. It teaches people to be selfish and unconcerned about the other person. Over time, porn twists people’s thinking so they lose sight of what a loving, respectful male-female relationship even looks like.

Porn sells people a very lonely and empty kind of sexual experience, because the other person involved is just an actor on the screen. There’s no loving relationship with a real person.

In contrast to the selfishness that porn teaches, God wants us to learn to love, serve and respect others. Those are the skills that let us have close, fulfilling friendships, and a great marriage. For a married couple, God’s gift of sex is wonderfully meaningful and joyful, because it reminds them that they get to do life with someone they love, and who loves them back.

4. Porn encourages men to mistreat women

Pornography often shows women being shockingly hurt and mistreated. Many guys who watch pornography eventually begin to think it’s okay to treat the real women in their life badly too, becoming bullying and disrespectful to their sister, mom, girlfriend or wife. Some guys may even start to pressure their girlfriend into having sex or doing other things she doesn’t want to. But it’s not okay to disrespect women in these ways – not ever. No one wants to be bullied and disrespected like that.

It’s awful, too, to think about the women actors. They are real women – people’s daughters and sisters – and they really are being hurt when they make those movies or images. A lot end up with serious health problems. As more porn gets made, more and more young women are being lured into that industry, often without really understanding what they are getting into and the horrible things they will be pressured to do.

Porn and our kids: What parents need to know

For most parents, whether we realize it or not, it’s no longer a matter of guarding our kids from ever being exposed to pornography. In North America, 90 percent of boys and 60 percent of girls are exposed to pornography before the age of 18. For males, the average age of initial exposure to pornography is 12 years old.1

It’s time for us, as parents, to consider what statistics like these mean for us and our kids. What have our kids seen? How does it impact them? How can parents minimize the harm?

Throughout 2016, documentary filmmakers Jared and Michelle Brock and their team at Hope for the Sold have been helping parents understand these issues, primarily by hosting screenings of their new documentary Over 18 in churches across Canada.

After attending a screening, Wendy Kittlitz – Focus on the Family Canada’s VP of counselling2 – sat down with Michelle to discuss how parents can help their kids navigate exposure to pornography. What follows is a portion of that conversation.3

First though, we encourage you to consider hosting a screening of Over 18 at your church. Pornography is a difficult issue to discuss, but the filmmakers have done an outstanding job of tackling a tough topic in a way that is very appropriate for adults and teens age 16 and over. You can learn more about the movie and how to bring it to your community at Over18doc.com.

Michelle, you’ve talked to parents from across Canada as you’ve presented Over 18. Is there a piece of the picture that parents are missing?

Michelle: I think the violence piece is something that parents don’t understand. Some parents have this idea that when you say the word pornography, it means a stack of Playboymagazines under an uncle’s bed. That’s no longer the case. When a kid says the word pornography, they are not talking about a stack of magazines; they are talking about sexual acts and often violence online in HD video.

Another piece I don’t think parents realize is how accessible pornography is to kids. Christian parents especially have this idea that My kids are good kids and they would never do this. But that’s not really the equation. It’s not whether your kids are good or not, it’s that they are curious.

When I was a kid, I heard a word on the playground, and I knew it was sexual in nature. I can’t remember now what the word was, but I wanted to look it up, so I had to ask my dad for a dictionary. I looked the word up and it was some boring clinical description that I was so not impressed with.

Now when kids hear a word on the playground, they google it. And they don’t realize that by googling that word, they’re not going to get a description that comes from a dictionary. They’re going to be plunged into a world where it is being acted out in front of them.

Kids are hearing all kinds of words all over the place, because our culture is obsessed with sex. And instead of asking their parents what a word means, they’re going straight to the Internet and being exposed to pornography that way.

How does initial exposure to pornography impact children?

Michelle: I think it confuses them, I think it scares them and I think it isolates them. I think it has the potential to change the way that boys treat women and girls. You know, there is a moment in a kid’s life when the look in their eye changes. They lose that childlike innocence they had when the world was this wonderful place, and adults could be trusted, and there was a spark in their eye. I think porn takes away that spark. Obviously, as kids grow older, there are a lot of things that can take that away, but porn is one of those things.

The problem is, when a child is exposed to pornography, it’s a form of trauma. In our Over 18documentary Gail Dines, a professor of sociology, explains that at the point of trauma, if you don’t deal with that trauma, you keep going back to the place where you were traumatized. So a kid who is first exposed to pornography on the Internet with sexually violent images, they will keep returning to that place of trauma because they have no way of processing that.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned while making this film is the brain science behind everything. When somebody engages with pornography, there’s a 200 percent spike of dopamine to the reward centre of the brain – a region called the nucleus accumbens. That’s the same level of reward that you get from a morphine hit.

When kids get this dopamine hit to the brain, their frontal lobe has not fully developed to be able to process that. That’s the part of your brain that is forward thinking – thinks about consequences, thinks about the future – and that doesn’t develop in boys until their early 20s. And so, when a 10-year-old is exposed to porn and gets that dopamine hit to the reward centre of the brain, he is not fully able to process it. That can potentially lead to a decade of addiction without the ability to really protect himself.

How does repeated exposure to pornography impact kids?

Michelle: Pornography exposure changes the sexual template of kids in a way that they are now turned on by sexual violence, because that has been their experience on the Internet. Later on, when they start having relationships with girlfriends and wives, that violence starts to come out. And they are disappointed when their partner doesn’t want to do what theyexpect is normal. That’s also why you have these cases of 16-year-old boys trying to strangle their girlfriends on their first date, thinking that that is what normal sex is.

Today there is so much pressure for girls. Martin Daubney, who appears in our film, is the former editor of Loaded magazine in the UK and he now speaks in schools about pornography. He says that one of the big questions that guys in the classrooms are concerned about is What is legal? The biggest question for girls, on the other hand, is Do I have to have porn star sex in order to be popular? You can see that even the way that boys and girls are thinking about this topic is different. For girls it’s very much tied to their self-worth and popularity. For guys it’s What can I get away with?

How can parents help their kids minimize the impact of porn?

Michelle: Having an open dialog is what will help kids process this. Most children are going to see pornography before the age of 18, so I think parents need to mourn – take a week and mourn the fact that their child will probably come across porn somewhere – and then get to work.

For many parents in the older generation, there was this idea that you have the sex talk once and then it’s done and it’s over. But that’s very different from what needs to happen now. One of the people in our film, Clay Olsen from Fight the New Drug, says that your conversation about this needs to be layered like an onion: you just keep peeling back the layers in an age-appropriate way. But it starts very young and it continues on.

With younger kids, parents can just ask a simple question like Have you ever seen anything online that’s made you feel uncomfortable? Because if your child has seen pornography and has had no words to express what they’ve seen, they still know what they felt in that moment. They know that they felt uncomfortable. That will open up the door then for them to say Oh yeah, I actually saw this. Or, I went on this website and there was this pop-up and it made me feel uncomfortable.

Also, with young kids, there’s a book called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures that’s really helpful. It’s a book that parents can read with their kids and it helps them to identify the difference between good images, like looking through a family album, verses bad images – something that could harm you on the Internet. It teaches kids how to think critically. By the end of the book your child won’t know anything new about sex itself. They’ve done a brilliant job with that.

We just did a screening [of Over 18] on Vancouver Island and one of the pastors I spoke with gave me this helpful analogy for kids:

The Internet is like a new city, a foreign city. And in this big city there are good places, like museums, restaurants, coffee shops and churches. But there are also parts of the city that are dangerous. The key when you are visiting a new city is to never go alone.

How could a parent start a discussion with a teen?

Michelle: If you have older kids, honesty and being real with your kids about your own experiences can really open a door. Kids who are older tend to crave realness and a genuine conversation. So you might start off with talking about the first time you saw porn and what that was like: how that made you feel, and how that affected you – just so your teen knows that they are not being judged for being exposed to this. You’re letting them know that Mom or Dad has had a similar experience and this is how they processed that. I think honesty and having those personal stories can be very beneficial.

Many young people are under the illusion that porn is harmless. What if your teen seems unconcerned about the danger of porn?

Michelle: I would get them to think about the difference between porn and sex in a healthy context. For example, porn is all about taking and abusing and manipulating and lusting. Sex in the context of a relationship of intimacy is about giving, serving, loving and sacrificing. Especially for older teens, I think a good question to ask them is Ultimately, what do you want? If you want porn sex, then you are eventually going to be very disappointed, because porn never loves you back.

Porn is actually really pathetic when you compare it to what we were designed for. We were designed for intimacy and connection, so if we paint that as the picture for kids, then porn becomes almost inconsequential. We were made to love and be loved, to know and be known. Porn can leave you feeling very lonely, whereas being known by another person and being known by God is so fulfilling.

Another thing I would say, for people who think they can just watch porn and it won’t affect anything else in their life, often there comes a time when you will take your pornography addiction outside of that secret place and you will take it offline. This is where you start seeing assault cases, or step-siblings taking it out on each other, or guys demanding pretty awful things of their girlfriends.

When it comes to pornography, we can’t even calculate the consequences. It’s like throwing a grenade: you don’t know where everything’s going to fly when it explodes. With porn you can’t just calculate Okay, this is going to affect my life in this way and this way, and not in this way. I think that’s something that a lot of young people are missing – that they don’t actually know the consequences.

Porn takes you further than you want to go and it keeps you there longer than you want to stay. There is a story in our documentary about a guy with a porn addiction who pulled over on the side of the road and was looking at porn on his smart phone. But he didn’t realize that he had stopped outside a school. The police came up and knocked on his window and he’s now on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life. These are consequences that we don’t talk about when it comes to porn.

Another consequence is porn-induced erectile dysfunction in young adults. That’s a topic that gets a teen guy’s attention.

What else can parents do?

Michelle: If we hit this from all angles, then I think we will have the best strategy for protection. Kids need both external filtering and internal filtering. The conversations you have with your kids, that would be internal filtering – building their ability to resist this at a heart and mind level. But you also have to have a technical side. On your computers and on your kid’s phone you need some kind of filtering technology, like Covenant Eyes or Kids Wifi.

Healthy childhood sexual development: Prevention (Ages 5-8)

Understanding sexual development and integrity for children ages 5-8

Foundation:

We don't like to think about childhood sexual abuse – let alone it happening to one of our children. Sadly, however, sexual exploitation is a reality. According to statistics, one in four girls1 and one in seven boys2 will be molested by age eighteen. Frankly, I believe all of our children are covertly abused by the explicit sexual material throughout our culture and media. Raising healthy kids requires proactive parents who understand the culture they live in. And speaking of time, now is the time to equip them with information to (1) prevent excessive vulnerability to sex abuse, and (2) help them to think correctly about sexual exploitation were it to happen to them.

Goals:

1. Continue to help your child value his or her physical body. This value lies in the fact that the body becomes the temple of God when one has a faith experience with Jesus Christ.
2. Proactively protect your child’s emerging sexuality without inhibiting him or increasing his anxiety. As parents we can learn to curb our anxiety for our children’s well-being as we recognize that God loves them even more then we do. If, however, we’re anxious for them, our children will most likely develop their own anxieties.

Iceberg zones:

1. We will continue to affirm that the physical body is God’s gift to us, and that it houses not only physical organs that are important to our overall health, but that it houses the mind and the spirit.
2. In this section we will begin to teach our children about the mind, which includes our personality, values, likes and dislikes, etc. This emphasis will include a development of how to think, with an emphasis on healthy thoughts specific to sexual health and integrity.

What’s normal

• Occasional self-stimulation
• Curiosity and questions about sexuality
• Questions about pregnancy and reproduction
• Role playing
• Masturbation at home or in other private places. In most cases, masturbation will not prove a significant issue in this stage. Parents will want to gently redirect their children if masturbation occurs in public, and otherwise simply monitor, to the best of their abilities, any increases or changes that would warrant intervention.

Developmental tasks for your child

• Maintain the developmental tasks from Unit 1.
• Understanding of the human reproductive system within the context of Christian spirituality
• How to view the opposite gender
• How to view the same gender
• How to self-moderate his behaviour including reactions and responses. A child needs to learn self-control, which in turn produces a healthier sense of self and less correction from the parent.
• How to ask for needed boundaries like privacy
• How to express thoughts and emotions
• Socialization with peers, including the opposite gender

How to foster sexual health and integrity in this stage

• Continue to build on the progress developed in Unit 1.
• Supervise your child’s involvement with the media. Be prepared to impose restrictions based on your child’s development level. Watch some of their programs and videos and listen to their music. When appropriate, discuss how a particular piece either supports or tears down your family’s value system. Media restrictions will require more supervision as you discern each child’s developmental level. Begin watching some of their programs and videos or reviewing printed media together and discussing how they support or tear down your family’s value system.
• Offer occasional teaching and warnings about pornography. Explain that pornography is any picture in print, videos, or the Internet that reveals the human body or any kind of writing or cartoon that refers to the human body or sexual behaviours in a bad way. Then, explain that pornography, like alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, is highly addictive or becomes a hard habit to break.
• Provide close supervision of age-appropriate relationships.
• Discuss the slang or profane words that correspond to appropriate names for body parts and sexual behaviours. Reinforce appropriate names for these body parts.
• Provide lots of wholesome physical, emotional and spiritual affection. A parent’s love goes a long, long way in the promotion of healthy sexual development.
• Pray for them and with them about their developmental tasks and milestones.

What to avoid

• Use no humour that devalues men, women, sexuality, body parts, etc.
• Never minimize their feelings about people, especially discomfort, or dislike of certain older children or adults.
• Don’t assume they understand or remember terms or concepts after telling them once. You may have to reinforce new information by example, repetition, or by other ways of explaining terms that are unfamiliar to them.
• Try not to show exasperation over the large number of questions they may ask about topics you find uncomfortable.
• Don’t allow them to visit homes or other places where sexually explicit material is available (libraries, homes with Internet, relatives with romance novels or other pornography) without supervision.

What to do if you’re concerned for your child’s development

• Maintain the action points from Units 1 and 2.
• Ask your child to help you protect them by participating in open and ongoing conversations about their reasonable safety, their experiences, their impressions of the culture, etc. Be sure to model the kind of openness you want to receive from your child. Share with them your thoughts and experiences, and drawn them into conversation with open-ended questions like, "What do you think? Your thoughts are important to me."
• Ask both specific and open-ended questions (questions that can’t be answered simply with a "yes" or "no") regularly about their experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
• Pray with them about various conflicts they or their peer group are experiencing.

Resisting the power of pornography

Seductive faces and scantily clad bodies lurk around every corner – in display windows, in the movies, sometimes even in high school hallways. What happens when you take those second and third looks and start to fantasize? When you go another step and sneak a peek at a Playboy (or that Japanese graphic novel)? When you watch adult cable movies or surf porn sites online?

Pornography causes massive damage in guys' lives and relationships. Are you struggling with its lure? Do you know someone who is? There is a way to avoid its snare. And if you're already trapped, there's a way to get free! If you'd like to know more, keep reading. You'll learn how pornography tears down instead of building up. You'll meet real guys who have struggled with the porn monster and broken free. And you'll learn some principles for keeping pornography out of your life.

The destructive power of porn

Pornography is anything you see, read or hear that's designed to cause sexual arousal. It includes many types of media – magazines, books, movies, music, the Internet and more.1Pornography promises thrills and sexual satisfaction, but it fails to deliver on these promises. It can't give anyone deep and lasting fulfillment.

King Solomon once said, "Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned?" (Proverbs 6:27). Along those lines, can you repeatedly bring sexually arousing images into your head without consequences? You may not be physically burned by sexual images, but psychologists argue that those images can actually be burned into your mind. Emotional arousal causes the release of a hormone called epinephrine in your brain that chemically burns the pictures into your permanent memory. This effect is heightened by the combination of pictures and masturbation.2

Porn affects real relationships, too. You may think that it's okay to experiment now, while you're single, but getting married won't stop a fascination with porn if you've already been feeding it. Many wives complain that pornography crowds their marriage with unwanted extra faces. The New York Times told the story of a 34-year-old woman who discovered that her husband, a minister, had an online porn habit. "How can I compete with hundreds of anonymous others who are now in our bed, in his head? Our bed is crowded with countless faceless strangers, where once we were intimate."3

Sometimes, pornography can even lead you to do things you never imagined. Consider Gene McConnell. He was an ordinary businessman with a wife and daughter, but fascination with pornography became the fuel that caused his normal life to explode. "It began to ruin my marriage, my business, everything," explains Gene. "It started with strip-tease or topless bars, then to massage parlours and prostitutes. Finally, I started fantasizing about what it would be like to actually rape a woman. I tried it one night when I saw a woman who 'fit' the scenario in porn. Fortunately, I didn't go through with it. After being reported and arrested by the police, I spent some time in jail."

Images burned into your mind? A bed filled with strange faces? Going off the deep end? These consequences happen all the time in varying degrees. The fantasy world of pornography is like a big carnival pulling guys in every day with promises of great thrills only to place them on a lonely roller coaster of excitement and emptiness, arousal and anxiety.

When God created us, He gave us a desire for love and intimacy that we could satisfy only in a relationship with Him and, to some degree, through a special relationship with one woman. It breaks God's heart to see men bypass these relationships in pursuit of mere images – lifeless reproductions that can arouse but never give or receive love.

The dirty little habit

Meet Brad.4 Brad came from a loving, two-parent home. He had a younger sister, a cat and a dog. His love was for sports – especially baseball. He was active in his church and school, but pornography caused him to live a double life. Brad's first exposure to pornography came when he was only 8 years old.

"At that age, I hadn't heard of the 'birds and the bees,' so there was no way for me to know what the people in the pictures were doing. However, with viewing those pictures there also came an urge – I knew that what I was seeing was dirty, and that made it all the more exciting. I remember my pulse quickening and the adrenaline rushing through my body. At the age of 8, I hadn't felt those things before. They were very foreign feelings. For many years I held the belief that I was the only one who struggled with this sort of thing."

If you have grown up with a secret habit of viewing pornography, you are not alone. Hundreds of thousands of young men battle this uncontrollable fascination. In fact, teen guys ages 12 to 17 are among the largest consumers of hard-core pornography.5 Like Brad, they often discover it early in life. They stumble onto magazines in the trash or hidden away by a relative. Their hearts race as they thumb through the pages and experience a combination of arousal and guilt. It's a moment of discovery that unfortunately happens in nearly every boy's life. How deeply they get involved with pornography often has a lot to do with how readily porn is available.

Unfortunately, today there's lots of pornography available – at the click of a mouse, the touch of the remote or the purchase of a ticket at the cineplex. Although porn has existed for generations, technology has accelerated the problem through easy access. Now, the determined and curious can easily pull up pictures on the web that are too obscene for adult bookstores to sell. The dirty little habit is growing . . . fast!

A life in pieces

Mike is another young man who struggled with pornography. "The weird thing," he says, "is that 99.9 per cent of the people who knew me would have been absolutely shocked to know I had this habit. I was a classic 'nice guy.' Still pretty shy and easily embarrassed by discussions of sex, I was terrified that anyone might find out."

This is one of the worst side effects of viewing pornography – it divides people. It breaks viewers up inside and separates them from others. Guys who view pornography develop one compartment where they hang out with friends, go to church and spend time with family, while in another compartment they indulge dark and sometimes dangerous fantasies.

That's not the only division. Porn also causes guys to separate physical images of women from all the other things women possess – their minds, hearts and souls. The physical image dominates other more important characteristics.

Worst of all, pornography separates people from God. Guys who indulge in porn often feel the need to hide from their heavenly Father, and – like Adam and Eve – they stop taking "walks in the garden" with Him because of shame and guilt.

Sex and lies

Gene learned his lessons about women and sex from glossy magazines and sex shops. Only after years of frustration and trouble with the police did he grasp the extent of his miseducation. "In jail, I was able to begin the process of weeding out the lies in my life that porn had put there," he says. Gene now travels around the country helping young men evade the clutches of pornography. In his talks, he details the lies that pornography plants in guys' heads:6

Lie #1: Women are less than human.

The women in Playboy magazine are called "bunnies," making them cute little animals, or "playmates," making them a toy. Porn often refers to women as animals, playthings or body parts. Some pornography shows only the body and doesn't show the face at all. The idea that women are real human beings with thoughts and emotions is played down.

Lie #2: Women are a "sport."

Some sports magazines have a swimsuit issue. This suggests that women are just some kind of sport. Porn views sex as a game, and in a game you have to win, conquer or score.

Lie #3: Women are property.

It's common to see pictures of the slick car with the sexy girl draped over it. The unspoken message is, "Buy one, and you get them both." Hard-core porn carries this even further. It displays women like merchandise in a catalogue, exposing them as openly as possible for the customer to look at. It's not surprising that many young men think that if they have spent some money taking a girl out, they have a right to have sex with her. Porn tells us that women can be bought.

Lie #4: A woman's value depends on the attractiveness of her body.

Overweight or less attractive women are ridiculed in porn. They are called dogs, whales, pigs or worse, simply because they don't fit into porn's criteria of the perfect woman. In fact, if someone is attracted to a heavyset woman, porn labels that a fetish, which is a sexual obsession or hang-up that isn't "natural." Porn doesn't care about a woman's mind or personality, only her body.

Lie #5: Women like rape.

"When she says no, she means yes" is a typical porn scenario. Women are shown being raped, fighting and kicking at first, and then starting to like it. Porn eroticizes rape and makes it arousing. Women are shown being tied up, beaten and humiliated in hundreds of sick ways and finally begging for more. Even while being tortured, the porn actors and actresses have a smile on their face – a look of intense enjoyment. Porn teaches men to enjoy hurting and abusing women for entertainment.

Brad heard Gene's message, and it affirmed what he had seen in his life: a pattern of trivializing and objectifying women. "When I viewed pornography, it was a totally selfish endeavour. I didn't think about the person I was 'abusing.' I didn't associate my own selfish motives with the fact that this was a real person who has real emotions, real issues and real pain in her life."

I still haven't found what I'm lookin' for

Even though pornography is not a source of lasting satisfaction, guys who view it usually do so because they're looking to fill a deep need. Pornography is a cheap substitute for what they're really seeking – intimacy.

Intimacy means being known inside and out and being loved for who you are. Because God designed us for relationships, He made us with a hunger for intimacy. But being known that well is scary, because it makes us vulnerable. So we go searching for intimacy in less threatening places. Pornography is one of them.

False intimacy

Even if pornography provided accurate images of women (and it doesn't), it still only offers an image – not a real person. For many guys, an image is easier to relate to than a young woman with a heart, mind and emotions. An image has no expectations. You don't have to impress an image or deal with any of the awkwardness that comes with relating to a real person.

Face it. We are all imperfect people. Ever since Adam and Eve messed up in the garden, we have had to deal with shortcomings and disappointments in relationships. The temptation of pornography is to bypass the effort involved in building a relationship between two imperfect people. Porn gives guys a chance to fantasize about perfect people and helps them to forget about their own imperfections. This was something that enticed Brad.

Looking back on his struggle, Brad sees how pornography tried to fill his need for intimacy with a lie. "That lie tried to convince me that intimacy can be found in pornography, and it can be just as fulfilling – if not better – than a real relationship. I was drawn to attach my intimacy, emotion and personal desires to a piece of paper or a computer screen." Using pornography as a shortcut to intimacy can cause men to develop a fear of true intimacy – despite deep loneliness, they're not able to give their hearts to real women.7

Out of control – when fascination becomes addiction

"I have heard that allowing a boy to look at pornography just one time can be as addictive as crack cocaine," Brad says. "I have to agree. It is a rush. A young boy with the most innocent of intentions can be drawn in to the trap of sexual addiction. I strongly believe that is what happened to me. I had my first 'hit' of porn, and I was hooked."

For Brad and hundreds of other guys, pornography is like a drug. "What drew me in deeper," Brad says, "was the simple fact that I was getting bored with the 'soft-core stuff.' And, just like the addict, I needed more and more to satisfy my desires. The picture that I used the day before didn't quite do it for me today. Spending an hour engulfed in porn was long enough last week, but this week I needed three hours. The deeper I became involved in pornography, the harder it was to climb out."

If porn's biggest consequence was addiction, that would be bad enough, but it gets worse. Here's how the addictive process operates:8

Early exposure: Most guys who get addicted to porn start early. They see porn when they are very young and it gets its foot in the door.

Addiction: You keep coming back to porn. It becomes a regular part of your life. You're hooked and can't quit.

Escalation: You start to look for more graphic pornography. You start using porn that disgusted you earlier. Now, it excites you.

Desensitization: You become numb to the images you see. Even the most graphic porn doesn't excite you anymore. You become desperate to feel the same thrill again, but you can't find it.

Acting out sexually: This is the point where men make a crucial jump and start acting out the images they have seen. Some move from the paper and plastic images of porn into the real world: violence, prostitutes and maybe even rape.

The road to freedom

Often it's easier to get into a world of fantasy images than it is to get out. Those who are stuck on the porn roller coaster may vow to jump off after they have bottomed out, but then they find themselves thinking about the next high and not wanting to get off quite yet. From the stories of Gene, Brad and Mike, you can begin to get a picture of how devastating pornography is. Maybe you're struggling with the grip of this monster, too. Or maybe you know someone who is. All these guys have found freedom from the power of porn. And you can, too!

There is a better way

Porn promises intimacy and satisfaction but leaves guys empty and searching for more. The good news is we don't have to search endlessly. Jesus Christ knows our desires and is able to fill them perfectly with His love. If you don't already have a personal relationship with Him, talk to a pastor or wise Christian adult to ask how you can begin this relationship.

What's more, God has a plan for you that's good. He's not anti-sex; it was His idea in the first place. He created sex to be the deepest physical expression of intimacy between a man and woman. God is excited about sex, and He wants us to experience pure sexual fulfillment in the way that He planned. Unfortunately, pornography damages our sexuality, not to mention the mental and emotional parts of us. Pornography isn't wrong because God wants to kill our fun. It's wrong because our loving heavenly Father wants to protect us from porn's damaging effects and keep us pure. When we guard our hearts and minds, we can enter joyfully into marriage – the exclusive place God created for sexual expression and true intimacy.

In order to experience sex as God designed it, we need to be walking the road of purity. No matter what you've been involved in up to this point, God is ready and waiting to help you get back on that road. To get there, you've got to make a serious commitment to restoration and a new life. This kind of commitment has three key components: confession, accountability and mental transformation.

Confession

The Bible tells us that "if we confess our sins, He [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9, emphasis added). No matter how dirty, broken and worthless we feel, God can and will restore our purity. Confession means admitting that we've done wrong, agreeing with God that it is sin and deciding to turn around and do the right thing from now on.

King David was known as "a man after God's own heart." But even David sinned sexually and got caught in the trap of his actions. (See 2 Samuel 11-12.) He had an affair with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed to try to cover up his wrongdoing. Once David was confronted with his sin, he was heartbroken. Psalm 51 demonstrates his anguish and shows how he opened his heart before God and pleaded for restoration. Grab your Bible and read his words as a prayer of confession for your own life: "Create in me a pure heart, O God . . ." (Psalm 51:10).

God didn't ignore David's confession. In fact, Psalm 32 tells the rest of the story: "I acknowledged my sin to You and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’ – and you forgave the guilt of my sin" (Psalm 32:5, emphasis added). If God forgave and cleansed David, He will forgive and cleanse you, too!

Accountability

Consuming pornography is a private sin, and the temptations are greater when you're alone. For that reason, it is important to surround yourself with godly friends who will build you up and support you in your efforts to be pure.

"Accountability is the key to breaking the chains of pornography," Brad explains. "What helped me the most was being able to share my struggles with someone else. It was difficult at first, but gradually it became easier. It finally reached the point that I was comfortable with sharing everything, and Satan's game plan was thwarted. He relied on shame and guilt to keep me feeling that I was in a unique situation with no way out. By exposing his lies to the light – by being accountable – I was able to start down the road to recovery."

Here we meet Johnny, yet another guy who found freedom from pornography. Johnny grew up with an alcoholic father and longed for a real relationship with him. Pornography gave him the appearance of intimacy and adventure but always left him longing for more. Johnny says accountability relationships were key in his recovery as well. "I sought out guys who were strong in this area and asked them to check up on me. I looked for one guy who was my age and then found an older man who had a lot of wisdom and life experience. As I grew to realize that God could meet my needs for intimacy better than porn could, my accountability partner would constantly remind me to keep my 'God cup' filled."

In addition to personal accountability, take advantage of "virtual accountability." Several companies now provide Internet service that is filtered before it comes into your home. Along these lines, Focus on the Family Canada is now partnering with Net Nanny. If you have found that confession and accountability efforts are not adequately addressing your struggle, you should consider professional counselling. A counsellor can be like a physical trainer – offering steady encouragement and professional insight for tackling problems. Most important, a counsellor can help you address underlying issues such as family trauma that may be woven into your struggle.

Focus on the Family Canada has a staff of registered counsellors available for you. You can reach them by calling 1.800.661.9800. This one-time counselling session is available at no cost to you. Our staff may also be able to help you find a professional counsellor in your region who can provide more in-depth and long-term help.

Mental transformation

The ongoing battleground in a world saturated with sexual images is your thought life. You will be confronted with sexual images. The enemy will place lustful thoughts in your mind. You will have relapses and remember images you have seen in the past. But you don't have to dwell on those thoughts.

One way you can reduce the temptation is to cut back on the number of "gateway images" you expose yourself to, especially from TV, movies, magazines and music. If you know that a particular sitcom causes your mind to wander to sexual fantasies, it's time to cut it off. When Johnny realized that his temptation was to channel surf late-night television for sexual images, he resolved to no longer watch TV after 10 p.m.

2 Timothy 2:22 says, "Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." While reading this passage, Johnny was reminded that it wasn't enough for him just to avoid temptation; he needed to pursue righteousness. This meant working actively to replace sexual images in his mind with more wholesome thoughts.

It is also essential to replace selfish and lustful thoughts about women with a godly view of love. Brad describes how his thought life had become dominated with lustful thoughts about women he met and talked with: "I would look at a woman, undress her in my mind and then complete my fantasy. These women were completely unaware of what I was doing. After all, this can happen anywhere – the mall, at work even at church. And all of this takes place with complete disregard for the woman." In contrast, Paul's description of love offers a higher view that transcends lust:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Brad came to understand that to get rid of wrong ideas about women and love, he needed to restructure his time and thoughts: "You have to replace the deceptive images with positive ones. When I was deeply involved in pornography, it was not uncommon for me to spend three, four, even five hours on the Internet, though it seemed that I had been online only for an hour or so. Once I began to break free from the porn, the next question I had to answer for myself was, How do I fill this time – the time I used to spend engulfed in pornography – with productive alternatives?

"I began to invest in relationships, get into God's Word, seek Him in prayer and step out of the mould that pornography had cast me in. Sometimes I didn't want to put forth the effort, but to come to a complete healing, it was something I had to do. So I began to reach out to others, read more, pray more and talk more. My emphasis shifted from myself to the people around me, and I began to care again. I noticed that I was much less susceptible to lust when I was actively pursuing relationships with others. It was a hard road to travel, but the alternative was literally destroying me, and I was determined that I was going to make it."

Wrappin' it up

Although it is difficult in today's culture to avoid suggestive images, you can avoid the consequences of giving in to their pull. By committing to a high standard of purity and setting up an accountability structure, you can avoid the emptiness and frustration that comes with a secret porn habit. If you have already been drawn in by pornography's lies, there is hope and healing for you. Now is the time to allow God to erase the images of your past and to recast you in His image.

When Your Child Chooses Sexual Impurity

Watching Children Make Bad Choices is Hard

What should we do when a child chooses to walk a path not in line with sexual purity? What if we put into practice everything we learn from experts and books and a child still ignores us? Or maybe a child does follow our guidance when they are young, and even through their teen years, but walks away as a young adult.

I have no statistics to quote, but watching my friends and parents I work with, this seems to be a very common story. When even one child in a family chooses a path we know will lead to sexual brokenness it breaks our heart.

Even if we could give flawless guidance some of our children may still walk into sexual brokenness. It will not help us to pretend this is not true. What is a parent to do in these situations?

When a child becomes a young adult, there is very little we can do to change their minds. We have already shared what we know is true and they will either accept or reject it. The time of teaching has passed. There are really only two things to consider at this point:

1. How do we most effectively deal with our own emotions so we don’t say or do something unhelpful?
2. How do we treat this child in a way that is helpful rather than destructive to our relationship with them?

A Modern Parable about New Life

I was recently hiking in the forest contemplating this dilemma. I walked deep into the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest to remove myself from distraction and hear from God. The city I left behind was approaching 100 degrees but here in the shade of one hundred foot fir trees it was below seventy. The noise of cars and people was gone. Only the chirps of a single happy bird broke the silence. The trail was lined with lime-green shamrocks and the forest floor with huge leafy ferns as far as I could see. Among the first were sixty and seventy foot maples, their bark densely coated with a deep matt of moss. Baby vine maples extended lacy fingers in all direction seeking sunlight. The beauty was stunning.

I closed my eyes to smell, but instead of a clean, fresh odor my nostrils were met with the pungent scent of decay. I looked again at the rolling forest floor and realized it was covered with fallen trees, now grown over with all manner of vegetation. I examined a dead log more closely and saw roots digging into it, nourishing the new life. This entire beautiful scene was only possible because a much older forest had died. The new life came directly out of that death.

God slapped me upside the head and I understood His message.

All of us, if we are honest, have our own sexual brokenness. Some of us indulged in pornography when we were younger, others were promiscuous, some were abused, and some came to fear the sex we were intended to enjoy.

What I have found is, the more brokenness a person experiences, the more beauty God often grows out of them when they finally surrender to Him. God is, after all, in the business of redeeming the most broken among us.

God’s View of a Broken Child

I don’t want to see my children go through the kind of sexual brokenness I experienced. However, the brokenness God saved me out of only amplifies the joy I currently experience in life. When we see a child heading for sexual brokenness, we may panic and fear all is lost. Nothing is lost forever, even when a child walks into the darkest places.

God sees our children and young adults as great potential to bring healing to the broken. He sees people who will have a deeper appreciation for their lives when He redeems them than most others. We can take some comfort in knowing a child who walks away from sexual integrity can not only regain it, but also find a more profound appreciation for sexual purity. There is not only hope, but great hope, for a child who walks away.

So where do we go from here? How do we reconcile our emotions and relate with our children in ways that promote their healing?

Reconciling Our Emotions

Have confidence in what you have taught. Our children are going to get out and explore the world as young adults. They are going to test out what they believe to see if it is true. In the process they will make some mistakes. Some young adults will make really big mistakes. We cannot change this but must accept it.

We can still trust what we have taught them. Most parents reading this blog are doing all they can to give good guidance to their child’s sexuality. When we do our best to teach them young, we can trust they will remember what we have taught them. It may take some time but our words are not forgotten forever. Even if it seems all our work was for nothing, have confidence in what we have given them.

Talk with other parents. Before we can help our child, we will need to care for ourselves. A very good way to do this is to talk to other parents. A child walking away from sexual integrity is very common and we don’t have to look far to find other parents with similar experiences. There is typically a lot of shame that a parent experiences when we learn our child has pursued some form of unhealthy sexual behavior, especially when we have taken steps to prevent that very thing. We may not want others to know, but keeping what has happened a secret will build shame in our lives and become destructive.

We weren’t perfect either. We need to remember that none of us are or were perfect examples of sexual purity. We need to allow our children to be as imperfect as we have been. The form a child’s sexual impurity takes may be very different from the parent, but that doesn’t really matter in the big picture. As painful as it may be, a child’s sexual indiscretions often create more similarity with the parent than dissimilarity.

Relating to Our Child

Slow Down. The first thing we can do is simply slow down. For some of us, myself included, our initial impulse or reaction is often the least helpful. We might feel betrayed and react in anger. We might feel crushed and retreat into isolation. Either reaction sends the message to our child that we are rejecting them. They are our children and they need to know their status has not changed, even in all their imperfection. Give yourself and your child permission to take time to decide how to react. Wait a while before you have a deep conversation about what your child has done.

Affirm Your Child. The first words out of our mouth should be to tell our child we love them. If you need time before you can talk, don’t leave them hanging as to their status with you. Assure them you still love them even if the larger conversation has to wait. The number one goal is to preserve the parent-child relationship, even when the child is an adult. If this is all that happens that is a win.

Listen. We should allow our child to share first. The last thing they need at this point is another lecture, even though some of us very much want to give a lecture. When we do ask our child about what they have done or are continuing to do, we need to be sure it doesn’t feel like an interrogation. This can be tricky to pull off when we have so many questions. Perhaps we don’t need to ask every question we have the first conversation. Let them share what they are able to.

Address Shame. If our child feels shame, that shame is the first thing we must address. A child may feel shame because they acted in a sexual way that they never thought they would. Such a child may feel he or she is defective, which is the definition of shame. We can remind them that we are all sexual beings and our sex drive can be very powerful. We might share again one of our stories of giving in to sexual urges. Giving in to a sexual urge does not mean we are defective, it means we are human. We hopefully learn from such experiences, but we don’t need to wallow in shame.

A child may feel shame for disappointing us. We have to realize that not all children will continue to embrace what they were taught by their parents. Young adults commonly decide to live outside the boundaries they lived in as children. This very well may cause a parent to feel disappointment. Our children, even adult children, still need to know we are here for them when they need us, even if we don’t agree with all the decisions they make.

Consequences. There is a reason we have taught our children to avoid pornography and certain sexual behaviors. These things are harmful to those who participate in them and to others around them. There will be consequences to our child when they decide to ignore our warnings. That does not necessarily mean we will be the ones giving consequences, particularly for an older teen or young adult. Pornography and sexualized behavior will harm them and their relationships without our help.

Younger children may require consequences that protect them while they are still under our care. However, we should use these as protective measures rather than punishment.

There may be additional consequences to our relationship. If a child has been lying about their behavior, especially if over a long period of time, there are natural consequences. The parent has learned that they cannot trust what their child tells them. It is okay to tell our child this, though we should do so calmly rather than in anger. We may have to tell a child that for a while we will only believe their behavior, not what they tell us, since they have proved to us that their word cannot be trusted.

This is not mean nor punishment, but a natural consequence of deceit. We would expect our child to say the same to us if we hide something from them or lie to them repeatedly. We are not saying we will never trust them but that they have to earn our trust back.

Perspective – Bad Choices aren’t the End of the Story

We can’t help hoping our children will not be touched by sexual brokenness. Such a dream is simply unrealistic and unhelpful. We should not feel we have failed as parents, even if we can point to things we could have done better. We are probably doing far better than our parents did. We can try to maintain a positive relationship with our children so they will accept our help when they finally want it.

Sexual brokenness or loss of integrity is not the end of any story. From this can come a new life that surpasses the beauty of what came before. On my hike I finally came across a portion of forest not as old as the rest. There were few fallen trees and as a result there was no greenery on the ground at all. It was barren in comparison. No trees had fallen to give something for new life to sprout from.

I am not suggesting that we wish for our children to lose sexual integrity. But if they do, we can have a new hope that something even better may come out of their broken lives. Rather than viewing the poor sexual choices of our child as failures, we can view them as a reason for new hope.

3 Tips to Talk with the Parents of Your Child’s Porn-Viewing Friend

My Kid Saw Porn on Another Kid’s Device at School

I calmly sat across from my friend and explained to her the “Bring Your Own Technology” fiasco that had happened recently at school. As my daughter and her friend worked together on a collaborative project using the internet as a research tool, she clicked on the wrong tab on her friend’s computer. The tab revealed a paused movie depicting lesbian porn.

My daughter was in the sixth grade.

“How are you going to tell her parents?” my friend asks me.

Tell her parents? I thought. I hadn’t planned on telling her parents. I had focused on processing with my daughter, but hadn’t thought about the intervention needed on her friend’s behalf.

Plus, awkward.

As someone who often speaks and writes about porn, advocating for freedom from addiction and protection for our children, it was befuddling as to why I found myself incredibly hesitant to say anything to them. But I had let this whole scenario affect me on such a personal level that I lost my professional perspective:

• Would they think I’m interfering?
• Would they see me as judgmental?
• Would they be embarrassed and avoid me?
• Would my daughter suffer repercussions?

Seeing myself now as an advocate and not a tattletale, I prayed, asking God for the very best way to handle a very delicate situation. The truth is, whenever we approach another parent about their children, we must come from a place of humility. Many people will quickly assume they are being attacked, are fearful of being wrong, and treat their children as extensions of themselves. It’s risky business, but when it comes to porn and its highly addictive nature, it’s a risk well worth taking. Here are three tips to guide you into a productive and helpful conversation.

Tip 1: Deal with Your Own Emotions First, Then Act

I understand you may be angry that another child exposed your kid to porn. My husband and I worked so hard to protect our daughter’s device, and yet, we were (and still are) powerless over controlling anyone else’s. Access to porn is ever-evolving and even when we think we have all the bases covered, there are usually still opportunities where our kids can be exposed. The point is this: we cannot assume that parents are falling down on the job. Might they be? Yes. But might they also be working just as hard as we are and it just happened? It is almost assuredly true that the parents of the child who had the porn had zero intention of harming your child, just as you have zero intention of harming theirs. Instead of letting our anger take hold, we can believe the best, step back, and reframe.

We must have the perspective that raising kids takes a village. As such, we need to work together to keep all of our kids safe. I get that in our climate of American society right now doesn’t seem conducive to working together or agreeing on anything, but we have to continue to strive to function as a community—to serve, to help, to watch out for each other. Sometimes (maybe a lot of the time), it has to start with us making the move to reach out. As Christians, we love because God first loved us. Reaching out in love to communicate potential dangers can go a long way to helping people recognize the value of community and communication.

Tip 2: Pray

Regardless if this is your best friend or a complete stranger, prayer is crucial when it comes to these conversations. God knows how this person will best respond to the information. Some people may want an in-person encounter, needing to see there is no judgment in your eyes as you convey the message. Other people will need time to process the new information and would appreciate delivery in a well-worded email. Others may do well with a phone call so they can hear your voice, but not have the pressure of having their reaction in full view. Ask God to help you decide which method of communication is best suited to this particular person.

Before you start the conversation, pray. Ask God to help you with the dialogue—that your words would be His words, that He would prepare the heart of the person on the other side of us, and that the discussion would bear fruit.

Tip 3: Be Helpful, But Not Pushy

It can be tempting to deliver the information with an array of helpful advice at the onset of the conversation. Often, though, it is helpful to wait to see if they ask for advice. Let them know you’d be happy to have conversations about what has worked for you to keep your kids safe, but give them space to say “yes” to your input. We don’t want to come across as preachy know-it-alls or assume the worst about their kids’ viewing habits. The posture of humility is so crucial to keeping the flow of conversation going. You may want to say things like:

• “It can be so hard to keep our kids safe online and nothing is full-proof, unfortunately. If you discover some tricks, I’d love to hear about them.”
• “I’ve tried several things to keep porn off our devices. Some have been great and some have been terrible! If you ever want to chat, I’d love to hear what you’ve learned and share what I know.”
• “I know how awkward it can be to talk to kids about sex and porn. I had to get several resources to help me figure out how to do it. If you ever want to look at them, just let me know.”

In our situation, I ended up emailing the mom. I kept it to the events that happened and focused on how I was reaching out because of my desire to protect their daughter from any harm. My heart was pounding the whole time as I awaited her response. In the end, she was so thankful I told her. Her dad did his own research and they scoured her history to see where she was accessing it. It’s my hope that they had some great conversations that followed. The bonus was, they handled it in such a way that their daughter never knew it was my daughter that revealed her secret. All of our relationships were preserved.

Though I know that not all situations will end as ours did, I want you to encourage you to step out in faith and in love to protect kids and come alongside parents who may need your help in navigating these tricky and prevalent situations.

Your Child Struggles with Porn? You Are Not Alone

When my son told us he had been watching pornography, I wanted to throw up. When I understood the depth of his addiction and the length of time he had been watching, I berated myself, feeling inadequate as a parent and person. But mostly I felt alone.

Every other crisis I had endured, I turned to others. My parents, siblings, and friends talked me through. My church pastor or small group friends prayed and allowed me space to speak about my woes. I even saw a counselor after my first husband left me. But this time, I felt I couldn’t tell anyone.

Where Is the Help?

When my then fourteen-year-old son first told my husband and me about his problem, I didn’t sleep well. I never let him leave my side. My anxiety level was elevated. I cried unpredictably. And I searched for help. Of course, we searched for help for my son. We put Covenant Eyes on all our computers and put locks and controls on all our devices. But I mean I also searched for help for me, the mom of a teenage porn addict. But I found none. I realize my friends would have surrounded me with love and comfort, but this isn’t something you want to tell your friends, because they are the parents of your son’s friends. And because it’s his story to tell in his own time, in his own words.

So I suffered in silence. Or, rather, we suffered, my pain spilling over into my marriage. My husband felt the brunt of my torment–one moment believing the best and the next wallowing in shame and self-pity. Never mind the fear. The fear that my son would never be set free and that he would live like this for the rest of his life.

The Power of Another’s Story

A few weeks ago I spoke with a friend who recently caught her son watching pornography. This is the first connection I’ve had with another mom in the same circumstances as me. The fact that we could talk about it openly with someone else who had “been there” was a relief for both of us. We cried together. We prayed together. We built each other up. I listened as she berated herself for being stupid for not seeing it and not protecting their devices better. She felt, as did I when I first learned of my son’s addition, like a bad mother. I believe it was helpful for me to say to her, “You are not alone. This does not make you a bad mother.”

The Weight of Parenting

When our kids are young, they are time consuming. We cradle their heads and cushion their falls. We protect them by buckling them into car seats and vetting their babysitters. We pray without ceasing, hoping that one day we can let go and they will live perfect lives, clinging to God and making right decisions.

In reality, they become more time consuming as they mature. Their needs are greater and their problems are heavier. My son will never be perfect on this side of heaven. If I allow it, the weight of his addiction brings me down. I know that if I focus on it too long, I will drown.

Hope Exists

But I know there is hope in Christ. When I focus on Him and allow His love and acceptance to comfort me, I can parent without fear, standing in my identity as a much-loved child of God. I can come alongside my son and be his advocate. I can encourage him to be the person God is molding Him to be.

So I say to you, Mom (and Dad), you are not alone. And we don’t have to battle this without help. Seek friends who can lift you up. Find others who have walked the path you are walking. Be encouraged! There is hope.

Understanding the Teenage Brain: Different, Not Broken

When I was a teenager (back when dinosaurs roamed, according to my children), adults seemed to think teenagers were temporarily broken. One famous comedian at the time had a bit about how all teenagers have brain damage. We all probably have stories about things we did as teenagers which we now look back on and say, “What was I thinking?”

This tendency for teenagers to do things impulsively does not bode well for modern teens trying to resist the allure of pornography. Being impulsive, while trying to avoid the dangers of pornography, don’t go well together.

Research on the Teenage Brain

Research has been done more recently to uncover what actually goes on in a teenager’s head. To boil it down, around age 10, rapid growth starts in the limbic system, which among other things creates a very strong attraction to novelty, risk, reward, and pleasure.¹ Within five years the limbic system is fully developed and at full strength.

The pre-frontal cortex also starts developing at age 10.² This part of the brain is used in forethought, regulating emotions, and decision making. Unfortunately, the pre-frontal cortex develops slowly and is not fully formed until around age 25. By age 15, children have the greatest disparity between their desire to seek novelty, risk, and reward and their ability to foresee consequences, regulate feelings and make careful decisions.

On top of all this, their hormone levels go through the roof, creating a sex drive they have never had to deal with before. As if that wasn’t enough, their bodies grow the most physically during this time too, which puts a huge drain on energy available to power what little ability to make good decisions they have left.

Teenagers are left in this state to try to resist pornography which feels risky, is very novel, and gives a strong reward in the form of pleasure. Anyone see a problem here?

Understanding God’s Design for the Teen Brain

Before we fall into despair, remember that God, the creator of teenagers, does not do anything on accident. In other words, there must be a reason for this otherwise apparently dysfunctional stage of mental ability.

This temporary state of limbic system overdrive reduces a teenager’s ability to control emotions, including all the positive emotions such as compassion, empathy, and love. That means teenagers can have higher levels of these positive emotions than younger and older humans. This makes teenagers uniquely capable of extreme compassion for others. Teenagers are the most impulsive of all ages, making them much more likely to give in to the desire to help others no matter what it costs them. Teenagers are perhaps the most willing to take the greatest risk to be vulnerable, talk about scary things, and relate to the opposite sex. Teenage brains are not good at thinking ahead to consider negative consequences of giving fully of themselves to help someone else.

This means teenagers can be some of our most effective ministers to others…if we empower them to do so. Teenagers are quite possibly the most vulnerable to the allure of pornography, but they are also the most ready to be open and talk with others about pornography and how to escape it. Yes, they need our guidance. Their compassion for others can be fleeting, but if we can catch them in such a state, they have enormous capacity for good if we enable them to pursue it. They are like missiles, flying off at a thousand miles an hour, but without fins or wings to direct them. Parents are not here to put out the flame that drives them but give them gentle nudges in the right direction.

A Season of Courage

As a teenager, I had a terrible problem with pornography, which I felt immense shame about. On the other hand, I wanted my friends to come to know God, because God was the only thing in my life that gave me a sense of hope. I was quite shy in high school, but somehow found myself inviting all my friends, and even kids I barely knew, to come to church with me. I recall wondering where I got the courage to do this as it was so unlike me. Something within me simply overcame my fear.

I understand now that my apparent courage came from how God had created my mind to work during those years. In my mid and late twenties, I was no longer shy but found myself afraid to ask people to visit church with me and rarely talked about God with anyone outside my church. I am no longer shy and I am not as reluctant to share God with others, but I still can’t make myself as bold as I was as a shy high school kid.

5 Ways We Can Empower Our Teens

1. Teach your children what is about to happen to their brains when they are about 12. It isn’t fair not to warn them if we know. But we should teach the positive side of those temporary changes, not leave them feeling like they will be cursed for the next ten years.

2. Encourage the potential for good your teenagers have. Ask them what they are passionate about. Ask them how we can support them in pursuing those things. Give them a voice and help them feel empowered to actually follow up on their passions. Don’t do it for them, as parents tend to do these days. Let our children try on their own with minimal assistance from us. Pornography becomes less attractive when there is something exciting and positive to pursue instead.

3. Be prepared for your children to change their minds… a lot. That is okay. What they are passionate about today may not last. That doesn’t matter. This includes worrying about their interest in pornography. There will be times when they feel strongly drawn to pornography, but remember this is simply a side effect that is happening as they grow. If we are involved and helping them, this does not have to be a permanent condition.

4. Share your story. Tell your kids the things you were passionate about at their age and whether you did anything about it. What are your regrets about not pursuing your passions? Admit your history with pornography at their age and what you learned from your experience. Be transparent. Your teenager is at a time when they are most ready to be transparent, if you will show them it is safe to do so.

5. Above all, remind yourself and your teen that the teenage brain is good. God created this temporary mental state on purpose in order for teens to do unusually good things for others. Yes, teenagers will do what appear to be “stupid things” now and then, and consequences can help them learn. But we should try to put our greatest focus on helping our teens take advantage of what God is taking them through. They’ve only got ten to fifteen years before “reason” takes over and their boldness fades.

Reclaiming Your Family Trips from Technology

I’m the oldest of seven children, which means that I don’t have a childhood memory that doesn’t include a van. I wasn’t even three years old and we were already a family of five, which meant that going anywhere was a feat in managing chaos and not losing any humans. But, starting when I was in third grade, and almost every year until well into high school, my parents planned some kind of family trip over spring break.

In hindsight, we probably couldn’t afford it, but they saved and made sure we had an amazing time. Decades later, I have significant memories about those trips–the random places we stopped, the piles of hamburgers, fries, and Filet-o-Fish sandwiches we consumed at McDonalds along the way (it was always lent–only fish!), adjoining hotel rooms because we always needed two rooms, being the first one to find the coveted Alaska license plate. Oh, and going to the bathroom alongside the highway “when we just couldn’t hold it any more” in an era when rest areas were few.

I enjoyed typing that last paragraph as memories flooded my mind.

Technology Is Changing the Family Trip

Due to my upbringing, we’ve now made it our own annual tradition to visit my aunt in Florida with our four kids. Up and down I-75, Michigan families who make this trek have added another element to the list of car time essentials–a heathy dose of screen time. DVD players, gaming devices, tablets, Wi-Fi in the car, and a data plan when all else fails. Since our van doesn’t have any of those fancy digital amenities, we bring a laptop to play DVD movies (we’re so old-school). As the primary driver, I’ll often listen to podcasts with one earbud in and the other ear attentive to whatever is going on with the rest of the van.

For a two-day trip to Florida, we’ve determined that some technology is acceptable.

But, what about a 45-minute trip to Grandma’s house after church? Or a 30-minute trip to the doctor’s office?

It’s for these situations that we’ve come up with a rule to help us keep tech in it’s place. I want to share it now as a low-tech summertime tip that might work for your family.

Under an hour–turn off the power.

In other words, for any trip 60 minutes or less, there are zero screens. We had to draw clear lines as to not allow technology to invade what can be some very entertaining moments with everyone in the family strapped into a seat and forced to interact with the other humans in their space. This also applies to me and Andrea, giving us the opportunity to chat.

Let Kids Be Bored Again

Often, the biggest hinderances to implementing rules like this are the parents. This means parents might need to find other activities for kids to do. Check out books (reading books on a screen is a violation of the policy, if you’re wondering!). Bring a box, five dice, and paper for Yahtzee.

Or, let them be bored! Seriously. And, model this for them! Stare out the window, ponder your day, assess what went well yesterday, make plans for tomorrow, and dream about the days to come. Oh, and talk to your spouse.

How to Talk to Your Kids About Porn

Pornography is everywhere. We’re past the relative innocence of boys discovering Dad’s stash of Playboy in the back of the closet. Even hardcore porn has become ubiquitous. TIME’s April 11 cover story is about young men who are reporting serious consequences from watching a lot of pornography in their youth. It’s important to let your kids know that you are aware that explicit videos are almost unavoidable, and that you’re comfortable talking about it—even if you don’t feel so comfortable.

Interest in sex and sexual imagery is completely normal, so the biggest thing for parents to remember is to approach the issue in a non-judgmental way. You should offer to answer any question, however embarrassing. You don’t want them to be ashamed of their curiosity, or to feel so guilty it interferes with developing a healthy sexual identity.
However! Porn is often so unrealistic—a literal “perversion” of real human interactions—that it can endanger kids’ ability to have a healthy relationship with their body and with sexual partners. Parents need to be the reality check. Here are some points for “the talk.”

• Start simply: “I’m pretty sure you have looked at pornography. I’m not upset. But I really have to share some facts with you.”
• Porn stars aren’t meant to look real: Many of those bodies are surgically and hormonally enhanced, and further exaggerated by the way they’re photographed. No one should expect to look that way — or for other people to look that way.
• Porn sex isn’t real, either: In the real world, people don’t relate to each other this way. They have complex needs, and sex is usually just one part of their relationship. Real people don’t have intercourse for hours at a time, and they don’t always use the language and have the attitude towards each other that are common in porn films.
• Real sex comes with emotions: Feelings are intentionally absent from most porn. And sex depends on constant communication — about the wants and needs of your partner and yourself, and about consent. Sexually responsible individuals obtain consent before engaging in sexual activity, and recognize it’s also essential to keep communicating throughout sexual activity. It’s vital that partners are on the same page, which means verbal consent must be obtained as the activity moves on to different phases. Real communication has no place in porn, and so porn is not a teaching guide for how to interact sexually and emotionally with others.

• Start simply: “I’m pretty sure you have looked at pornography. I’m not upset. But I really have to share some facts with you.”
• Porn stars aren’t meant to look real: Many of those bodies are surgically and hormonally enhanced, and further exaggerated by the way they’re photographed. No one should expect to look that way — or for other people to look that way.
• Porn sex isn’t real, either: In the real world, people don’t relate to each other this way. They have complex needs, and sex is usually just one part of their relationship. Real people don’t have intercourse for hours at a time, and they don’t always use the language and have the attitude towards each other that are common in porn films.
• Real sex comes with emotions: Feelings are intentionally absent from most porn. And sex depends on constant communication — about the wants and needs of your partner and yourself, and about consent. Sexually responsible individuals obtain consent before engaging in sexual activity, and recognize it’s also essential to keep communicating throughout sexual activity. It’s vital that partners are on the same page, which means verbal consent must be obtained as the activity moves on to different phases. Real communication has no place in porn, and so porn is not a teaching guide for how to interact sexually and emotionally with others.

Young men who’ve become obsessed with porn report serious problems with their romantic lives. If what turns them on becomes divorced from what is available in the real world, they can find themselves in trouble — as can their partners. And emerging research into the biological effects of heavy pornography use suggest it may be tied to brain changes associated with impulsivity and an inability to delay gratification — alarmingly similar to what happens in drug addiction.

Daughters, who typically consume less porn but are just as affected by its prevalence, might need some specific information.

• Consent: It isn’t just about protecting herself; she can initiate and agree to sexual activity. But it also means she can say no to a specific sexual activity and yes to others, and most importantly she can change her mind and say yes and then no; and that in real life no means no. The pornographic fantasy of domineering men and submissive women is not helpful for the development of a girl’s healthy sexual self-esteem.
• Not everyone is like that: Not all guys have “bought in” to the ideas about sex in most pornography. Porn may be everywhere, but her values and confidence and individuality are still important.
• Learn your own boundaries: There can be a lot of pressure in male/female relationships and it’s important for parents to have an open dialogue with their daughters to help them learn their own boundaries, understand how they want to make decisions and know what they want from romantic relationships. That dialogue is too important to leave to pornography

You need to let them know that an interest in pornography is natural, but that the greater enjoyment will be good sex and healthy relationships in the real world. We’re fortunate that we don’t live in the days when seeking out pornography was a seedy, if not dangerous, thing to do. But now that porn is coming into our homes, parents need to be responsible for educating their sons and daughters in parallel to this influence. Porn makes sex a fantasy, which can be O.K. You need to teach your son that sex is also normal, real, and it takes some work. And that’s what makes it special.

What Does the Bible Say About Pornography? Is Cybersex Wrong?

The Bible does not directly mention pornography, cybersex, or similar activities. However, the Bible is very clear on how God feels about actions that promote sex outside marriage or a distorted view of sex. Consider these Bible verses:

• “Deaden, therefore, your body members that are upon the earth as respects fornication, uncleanness, sexual appetite.” (Colossians 3:5) Rather than deadening wrong desires, viewing pornography inflames them. It makes one unclean, or dirty, in God’s eyes.
• “Everyone that keeps on looking at a woman so as to have a passion for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:28) Images of immoral sexual practices trigger wrong thoughts that lead to wrong actions.
• “Let fornication and uncleanness of every sort or greediness not even be mentioned among you.” (Ephesians 5:3) We shouldn’t for pleasure even mention immoral sex, much less watch or read about it.
• “The works of the flesh are manifest, and they are fornication, uncleanness, . . . and things like these. As to these things I am forewarning you, the same way as I did forewarn you, that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s kingdom.” (Galatians 5:19-21) God views those who use pornography or engage in cybersex, phone sex, or sexting as being unclean, morally contaminated. If we were to make a practice of such things, we could completely lose God’s favor.

Definitions

• Pornography: Erotic videos, pictures, or writing designed to cause sexual excitement.
• Cybersex: Sex-oriented messages or conversations over the Internet for the purpose of sexual excitement.
• Phone sex: Using a phone to have improper sexual conversations or to listen to explicit erotic messages.
• Sexting: Sending sexually explicit images or messages by cell phone.

Does the Bible condemn pornography?

“Everyone that keeps on looking at a woman so as to have a passion for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”—Matthew 5:28.

WHY IT MATTERS

Today pornography is more popular and accessible than ever before. If you wish to please God and live a happier life, you should know how God feels about pornography.

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS

The Bible does not mention pornography specifically. Still, the use of pornography is in direct conflict with many Bible principles.

For instance, the Bible pointedly states that when a married man “keeps on looking at a woman” to whom he is not married, nurturing a desire to have sex with her, it can lead to adultery. The principle behind this Bible statement would apply to anyone, married or single, who “keeps on looking” at pornographic images with the desire to engage in sexual immorality. Such behavior is clearly offensive to God.

 Is pornography wrong even when it does not lead to sexually immoral acts?

“Deaden, therefore, your body members . . . as respects fornication, uncleanness, sexual appetite, hurtful desire, and covetousness.”—Colossians 3:5.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY

Some researchers doubt that there is a significant link between pornography and real acts of sexually offensive behavior. Yet, is the use of pornography in itself immoral?

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS

The Bible describes “obscene jesting” as unacceptable and immoral. (Ephesians 5:3, 4) How could pornography be any less objectionable? Today’s pornography often includes the visual recording of real acts of adultery, homosexuality, and other forms of fornication. Surely, the lascivious viewing of such sexually immoral acts is significantly more offensive to God than obscene speech.

Researchers continue to debate the likelihood of people acting out fantasies fueled by pornography. But the Bible clearly supports the notion that the use of pornography is in itself spiritually destructive and highly offensive to God. The Bible gives this admonition: “Deaden, therefore, your body members . . . as respects fornication [and] sexual appetite.” (Colossians 3:5) Users of pornography do exactly the opposite—rather than deadening such desires, they nurture and inflame them.

What can help you to avoid the use of pornography?

“Search for what is good, and not what is bad . . . Hate what is bad, and love what is good.”—Amos 5:14, 15.

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS

The Bible speaks of sexually promiscuous people, drunkards, and thieves, who were able to quit their destructive behavior. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) How? By applying the wisdom found in God’s Word, they learned to hate what is bad.

It is possible to learn to hate pornography by giving careful thought to the terrible consequences of this harmful vice. A recent study published by Utah State University revealed that some pornography users experience “depression, social isolation, damaged relationships,” and other sad consequences. What is more, because, as explained earlier, the viewing of pornography is offensive to God, it does something far more harmful. It alienates humans from their Creator.

The Bible can help us learn to love what is good. The more we read the Bible, the deeper our love for its moral standards will grow. That love will help us to take a firm stand against pornography and to feel the way the psalmist did who wrote: “I shall not set in front of my eyes any good-for-nothing thing.”—Psalm 101:3.

What does the Bible say about pornography?

By far, the most searched for terms on the internet are related to pornography. Pornography is rampant in the world today. Perhaps more than anything else, Satan has succeeded in twisting and perverting sex. He has taken what is good and right (loving sex between a husband and wife) and replaced it with lust, pornography, adultery, rape, and homosexuality. Pornography can be the first step on a very slippery slope of ever-increasing wickedness and immorality (Romans 6:19). The addictive nature of pornography is well documented. Just as a drug user must consume greater quantities of drugs or more powerful drugs to achieve the same “high,” pornography drags a person deeper and deeper into hard-core sexual addictions and ungodly desires. 

The three main categories of sin are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). Pornography definitely causes us to lust after flesh, and it is undeniably a lust of the eyes. Pornography definitely does not qualify as one of the things we are to think about, according to Philippians 4:8. Pornography is addictive (1 Corinthians 6:12; 2 Peter 2:19), and destructive (Proverbs 6:25-28; Ezekiel 20:30; Ephesians 4:19). Lusting after other people in our minds, which is the essence of pornography, is offensive to God (Matthew 5:28). When habitual devotion to pornography characterizes a person’s life and he continues in sin without seeking help, making no attempt to stop or feeling no desire to change his behavior, it demonstrates the person may not be saved (1 Corinthians 6:9).

For those involved in pornography, God can and will give the victory. Are you involved with pornography and desire freedom from it? Here are some steps to victory: 1) Confess your sin to God (1 John 1:9). 2) Ask God to cleanse, renew, and transform your mind (Romans 12:2). 3) Ask God to fill your mind with things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable (Philippians 4:8). 4) Learn to possess your body in holiness (1 Thessalonians 4:3-4). 5) Understand the proper meaning of sex and rely on your spouse alone to meet that need (1 Corinthians 7:1-5). 6) Realize that if you walk in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). 7) Take practical steps to reduce your exposure to graphic images. Install pornography blockers on your computer, limit television and video usage, and find another Christian who will pray for you and help keep you accountable.

6 Bible Truths About Pornography

The Bible is clear about pornography use, even though it doesn't call it by name.

The Bible is the "word of truth." It's mankind's user manual. It's the blueprint, even in suffering, for a joyful and fulfilled existence in this life, and an incomprehensibly glorious eternity in the next. The total truths and precepts inherent within the Judeo-Christian scriptures are both timeless and universally applicable to all people and peoples across the globe, be they Christian, Jew or pagan.

Obviously, neither pornography nor pornography use, in the modern sense, was around during ancient biblical times. Still, since all time is biblical time, and since the Bible transcends time and space, God, in His boundless love and wisdom, has given us specific truths that directly apply to the use and abuse of modern pornography in all its ugly forms.

Studies indicate that at least 70 percent of American men and 30 percent of American women regularly view online pornography. The numbers aren't much better among Christians with a 2011 ChristiaNet survey finding that 50 percent of Christian men and 20 percent of Christian women regularly use porn.

The following is in no way a comprehensive analysis of the devastating medical, mental, spiritual and societal pitfalls associated with porn use. Neither is it a complete examination of what the Holy Scriptures have to say on the subject. Still, here are six specific truths, from the word of truth, about pornography use:

1) Pornography use is always wrong.

Like adultery, fornication, homosexuality, incest, bestiality and other forms of sexual immorality, the use of pornography, too, is sin.

1 Thessalonians 5:22 admonishes us to "abstain from every form of evil." As we will further develop in the subsequent "porn truths" below, porn use is evil. "Do not desire her beauty in your heart, nor let her capture you with her eyelids" (Prov. 6:25).

"Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality..." (Galatians 5:19).

When you use pornography, you engage "the deeds of the flesh" and grieve the Holy Spirit. "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30).

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2) Married? Pornography use is adultery. Not married? Pornography use is fornication.

"[B]ut I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matt. 5:28).

Husbands, I realize that you tell yourself, "I'd never cheat on my wife."

Using pornography?

You already have.

You also don't have much sense.

"The one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking sense; He who would destroy himself does it. Wounds and disgrace he will find, and his reproach will not be blotted out" (Prov. 6:32-33).

Using porn? Knock it off, repent and ask God's forgiveness. You're destroying yourself and your marriage.

"Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge" (Heb. 13:4).

Hear that, single guys? If you're using porn, you're committing fornication. You're sinning against God, your future wife and God's precious daughters featured in the images after which you lust.

Again, knock it off, repent and ask God's forgiveness. Then save yourself, from now on, for your wife. That's what your Creator both expects and demands.

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3) Pornography use leads to death.

"But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death" (James 1:14-15).

People often say that pornography use is a "victimless crime." Nonsense. Both the subjects of pornography, the men, women and children featured in it and objectified through it, as well as those who consume it, are hurt by pornography.

Pornography use is a cancerous epidemic in America. It's destroying lives, souls, children, marriages and families.

It's also destroying our culture.

Porn use leads to death – spiritual, emotional, marital, familial and societal death.

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4) Pornography use is demonic.

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world" (1 John 2:16).

Porn use typifies all of this and more. Porn is "of the world."

Scripture calls Satan the "prince of the world" and the "father of lies."

Pornography, which is "from the world," is the wicked, destructive, deceptive and deadly brainchild of the "prince of the world."

"Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret" (Eph. 5:11-12).

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5) You must flee pornography.

"Flee [sexual] immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body" (1 Cor. 6:18).

Flee pornography while you still can. You will be discovered. Many falsely believe that porn use is a personal, harmless form of entertainment. They think that what they do, they do in secret. Nothing is done in secret. More often than not, your loved ones will discover you. As scripture warns: "[Y]ou may be sure that your sin will find you out."

Either way, God knows.

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6) You can be free from pornography use.

"No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it" (1 Cor. 10:13).

The way of escape is available in and through the person of Jesus Christ, His holy word, the Holy Spirit and the full armor of God:

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Eph. 6:13-18).

Begin reading.

"How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments" (Psalm 119:9-10).

I second the Apostle Peter's plea: "Dear friends, I urge you ... to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul" (1 Peter 2:11).

Even if you feel you cannot stop using pornography under your own power, you can stop under the power of the Holy Spirit. Ask Jesus—keep asking Jesus—and He willhelp you.

If you screw up, then stop, ask His forgiveness and then ask Him again for help.

Because a soul is a terrible thing to waste.