Questions

My son is from Honduras and recently went to Christ for the Nations. When he came back from his first semester, he confessed to me that he had been struggling with a porn addiction since sixth grade and that he had found help at CFNI. He asked me to be one of his accountability partners and he put xxx filters on his computer. For the next year I got the notices and it always said that he had not visited any questionable sites. He no longer has a computer but has an i-phone which he uses a lot. He has no filters on this i-phone and I am worried that he may fall back into the patterns he had before. When I asked him if he thought it might be a good idea to get a filter, he said that it cost $10/month to put it on the i-phone and that he couldn’t afford that. I don’t want to judge him but I also want to be wise. Any suggestions you might have would be very welcome.

I just recently learned that Twitter (and possibly instagram/tumbler/etc…) do not filter explicit content the way Facebook does. People are allowed to post nude photos and even hardcore porn vines, and anyone can look at them without actually following the twitter feed. I also, in doing some research (basically typing “nude” into the search bar) I saw several options; one twitter is annonymous nudes and people can email themselves to an email account and they will have their own nude photos tweeted out, annonymously. Further, you can type other words, and find many more options. Is there anyway to keep kids from going to any of these explicit feeds (obviously you can see who they follow, but if they aren’t following the person they can still view the content)? Or can it be discovered what they are looking at? I know how to monitor browsers via xwatch but what about social media (since the actual site “twitter” is not pornographic)?

My oldest (14 y-o boy) shared with me that his friends, starting just recently, are now openly talking about pornography and masturbation. He feels so much pressure from them and, now, from his natural urges. He asked me last night for help in resisting the temptation to look. He said he feels such a desire as he’s seen some images before but feels like he made a commitment to himself not to look at porn. He even told his friends that (met with astonishment). He’s asking for help and guidance. Q – What would be the best way to start this conversation/guidance so that he knows I/we love him and can help? (I want to be realistic…I want to equip him to be strong to resist and make wise decisions, not just “ban” him as that seems to be a recipe for guilt and self loathing). Thanks