I thought I would follow up my last post with advice for parents on how to protect our kids from porn. Well, I hate to admit it but the title of this post is a lie. You can’t.
What I mean is that we live in a society in which kids will see pornography. It’s heart-breaking but it’s the truth. I see pornography nearly every time I drive down the highway. There are women in their underwear on giant signs next to the highway. Nearly every time I watch a football game with my kids in the room I am forced to dive for the remote and frantically punch buttons until the Victoria’s Secret commercial disappears. Just the other day my son sprinted down the driveway from the mailbox waving a catalog featuring a woman in a bra and undies on the back cover.
This is what I mean. Even if you protect your kids in every possible way, encapsulating them in porn proof bubble wrap, it will somehow find them–probably on the back cover of some benign department store catalog. I guess we can never go shopping again.
In my experience, parents often fall into one of two different camps when it comes to pornography. The first camp essentially doesn’t try. Kids will be kids. They’ll figure it out. I survived, so will they. The problem with this approach is that the pervasiveness of pornography in our culture is fundamentally different from anything we have ever seen. When I was a kid pornography existed but it lived in VHS tapes, magazines and grimy mechanic shop pin ups.
My point is that back in the day you had to go looking for porn and take risky steps to secure it. There was always the possibility that your mom would find the magazine. Today, pornography lives in a tiny device that fits in your pocket. It’s easy to hide and easier yet to cover your tracks. Don’t worry about hiding the dirty magazine under your bed, just delete your search history.
In addition, younger and younger kids are becoming addicted to pornography because it is so easily accessible. For many in my generation, we saw pornography a handful of times during childhood and it deeply affected the way we think about the opposite sex and sexuality in general. Many kids these days are looking at pornography daily. Research is beginning to show how massively destructive this immersion is to a developing mind. It’s scary stuff.
The second camp is the iron curtain of culture. Parents become so panicked about pornography that they basically unplug and retreat to the woods. While I applaud their zealousness, I don’t believe this is the answer. After all, Jesus did call us to be “in the world but not of it.” We can’t fight for the kingdom if we refuse to interact with culture.
Instead of throwing up our hands or running to the woods we need a different approach. We need to teach our kids wisdom. They need to learn to choose the right paths on their own. This is why I suggest internet filters for young kids but not for older kids. I can hear you shouting at me. Calm down and let me finish. Around 7th or 8th grade I recommend switching from internet filters to accountability software. The point is dialogue. Listen, I’ve worked with teenagers for a long time now. Your kids will see pornography. Sadly, it’s inevitable. The question is, what are they going to do when they see it? Better yet, what will you do when they see it?
When my son stumbles on pornography, I will know because I’ll receive a monthly email outlining any sketchy websites he visited on one of my computers or his phone. Yes, this technology exists. We live in the future. When this happens, we’ll go for a walk. I’ll tell him that he isn’t the only one tempted to look at porn. A woman’s body is basically the most beautiful thing in all of creation and we can’t help but be drawn to it. But, we’ll talk about what porn did to my mind. We’ll talk about the value of women. We’ll talk about God’s design for sex and I’ll help him visualize the future he wants. We’re create boundaries and expectations and move forward. This is what I mean by dialogue. If I keep filters on the internet I’ll never catch him and perhaps more importantly, when he moves out of my house we won’t know how to handle the “real” internet.
So, when your kid stumbles on porn what will you do? What’s your plan?
If you’re interested, here are the tools I mentioned.
X3watch is an accountability software
Mobicip is a browser filter for younger kids.
photo credited to Simon Yeo via Flickr
