In case you missed the previous Ten Year post you can read that here. XXXchurch started off focused on youth. The only thing that has changed over the years is that these kids became our kids. We started dealing with young people from our youth groups and conferences and now most of us have kids and these issues and conversations are now in our homes.
Cris Clapp wrote this article for us.
As parents, we want to instill our own personal values about relationships, sex, intimacy, love and marriage in our children. Unfortunately, we are intimidated, overwhelmed or feel powerless or embarrassed when it comes to doing the hard work of parenting on issues regarding sex.
Many parents think that their own children are good enough to stay away from Internet pornography, and so they aren’t using filters or parental controls to help prevent their kids from having exposure to pornography. As a result, the powerful, misleading messages portrayed in Internet pornography are often taking the lead in educating children about sex. As many teenagers have shared with me, they don’t need to talk to their parents or a teacher to learn about sex; kids today are going online, to Internet pornography to learn what to do and how to do it. Just as a 30-second commercial can influence whether we choose one popular soft drink over another, exposure to pornography shapes our attitudes, values and even our behavior, and studies have indicated that as many as seven out of ten kids accidentally encounter pornography online, and almost 80 percent of this exposure occurs in the home. Teenagers are the highest consumers of Internet pornography.
Some of you may not get why this is a big deal. Perhaps you stumbled across a Playboy magazine as a youngster and you don’t feel damaged as a result. If you’ve only been exposed to the soft-core images of the ‘70s and ‘80s, it’s critical to understand that pornography has dramatically changed with the advent of the Internet. Kids now have easy access to hardcore, explicit content, filled with violence, fetishes, multiple penetrations, group sex and more. Pornography supplies mis-information about a child’s sexuality, sense of self, and body, and often leads a child down a rabbit hole of harmful content and behaviors. And, in a time when children as young as eight are regularly accessing pornography, we are seeing an increase in the amount of young kids engaging in sexually abusive acts against other kids.
Parents are often shocked by the amount of images, videos and content that their own kids have absorbed about sex through the Internet, through sexually charged music videos and magazines. The emotional, physical and social health of our children is at stake due to the pornification of our culture, and it’s critical that parents are educated, involved and empowered with resources to help stem the tide of this assault.
This is one of the reasons why it is a joy for me, as a child safety advocate, to be involved with the ministry of XXXchurch. XXXchurch has prioritized educational initiatives, speaking engagements, resources, blogs, video content and more that can help equip parents to be involved in safeguarding their children. By casting light on the realities of pornography addiction, teen online life and the sexualization of youth, XXXchurch is sparking honest dialogue on both the parent-to-parent and parent-to-child level. XXXchurch also provides the technical resources key to blocking exposure to pornography and increasing accountability and relational accountability through their X3watch PRO software, helping families and individuals pursue online integrity by fighting against pornography addiction. If you’re a parent, I hope that for the sake of your children’s freedom and sexual health, you will take the opportunity today, to utilize these resources and support the mission of XXXchurch.com.
Check out the parents section on XXXchurch.com