Recently, I was talking with a group of fourth grade children about online etiquette and being safe online. Part of the presentation included a discussion of “scary stuff” online, essentially a gentle way to open dialogue about any inappropriate images, content or contact that these little ones experience online. I leave it up to them to direct the conversation so as not to over-expose or introduce any concepts that they are not prepared for.
In this particular presentation, the children had recently completed a project on various occupations. One child started to explain that he was writing his project on a post office worker, but that as part of his search (which included an image search for a mailman) he came across pictures that scared him. A little girl shared that she was doing her project on being a secretary; she also came across a confusing video. More and more of these little kids started talking about how they encountered upsetting content while completing their occupation-related research project.
Following the presentation, I joined the children one-by-one with their teacher and a school counselor to better understand what they had seen. These girls and boys were writing papers on dancers, models, secretaries, postal workers, super-heroes, and the like, and time and time again, helpful educational content was scattered in between pseudo-pornographic, erotic and pornographic videos and images. A little boy told me how he came across a video of a “MILF and a mailman” during his project. A little girl came across a site of “naked teen models” in her web search on modeling. Another girl came across a whole site filled with naughty secretary videos when she was looking up executive assistants.
It broke my heart to see a mix of curiosity, anxiety, fear and shame in the little eyes of so many children. They didn’t know how to process what they had seen. I later learned that several of them had seen similar images and content online at friends’ homes. Some of these children were already beginning to go back and visit these pornographic sites regularly.
These are stories that I hear far too often. This early exposure transforms young minds. Little girls start to think that they need to look like the porn stars they see online; I’ve talked with fifth grade girls that are already thinking about boob jobs and how to perform a perfect blowjob because of exposure to pornography. The combination of free and easy access to pornography and a load of parents who aren’t using filters and parental controls means that in my day-to-day, I talk with more and more little boys and little girls becoming addicted to pornography. Later in life, these boys become men who start to rely on pornography to get them through their day. These men and women become callous to the impact of porn on their lives. Fantasy becomes a seemingly greater sexual reality than real relationships. They have a hard time relating to real-life sexual partners. I’ve seen pornography break apart marriages, expose children, create addicts and destroy careers, and, frankly, it pisses me off. Please, please, please, if you are a parent reading this, take a few moments to install parental controls (like SafeEyes) or a strong filter and accountability package (like our X3watchPRO) on all of your Internet-enabled devices to help prevent early exposure. Enage with your kids–have regular conversations about sexuality and pornography–or the lies that pornography tells will win out in their lives. We have a number of helpful resources that I hope you will look at today to help.