When You Protect Your Child from the Porn Industry, You Also Protect Mine

My ten year old daughter was surveying the crowd at a recent hometown football game. She watches football games the way I do: she doesn’t watch them. She looks for people she knows. She watches the cheerleaders. She draws. She chats with friends. After awhile she spotted a group of slightly older girls and asked if she could go say hello. I turned around to look at the little crowd of sweet girls and I noticed that they are also fans of not watching the game. They were sitting in a little circle in the bleachers, some even chatting with their backs turned to the football field. And, some of their beautiful little faces were lit by the glow of their phone screens as they texted or checked Instagram or whatever they were doing.

When I saw the phones, I hesitated. I instructed Adelade to go and say a quick hello, but I told her in no uncertain terms not to look at any phones. I watched her scale the bleachers and greet the girls, and in a few minutes she was back by my side. She immediately sat down and said, I didn’t look at any phones.

I don’t know if those precious little girls have internet filters on their phones or not. Their parents may have all kinds of protections on their kids’ phones so that they can’t see all of the objectifying and mind-altering pornography that is trying to reach them through their devices. They probably do have protections in place. But, I don’t know that. So, I try to keep Adelade aware that there is a world of dangerous and harmful stuff on the internet, which is why she isn’t allowed to be on it without our knowledge and presence.

But, I know that Adelade won’t stay ten forever. The older she gets, the more she will be around kids with phones and tablets and all of the world wide web in their back pockets. Well-meaning parents give their kids access to all of the knowledge, encouragement, and fun of the internet. But, they forget that when they do so, they also give them an invitation to enter into the dark world of the pornography industry, where boys learn that women are nothing but objects who exist to please sexually, where girls learn that they are worth little more than their breast size and their willingness to put out, where children and adults alike are used and abused and treated like they have no value whatsoever.

I will never forget when a friend was helping out in a youth service at his church one night, and he walked up behind a young teenager who was sitting in the crowd. The boy had his phone out, and my friend could clearly see pornography on the screen. This young man was so desensitized to the pornographic images that he had no doubt incessantly been viewing on the phone his parents had bought for him, that he even glanced at them during a worship service. I doubt this was what his parents had in mind when they had blessed him with that shiny new phone earlier that year. Yet, because they didn’t take steps to make sure he couldn’t access pornography on his phone, he had obviously been caught in the grips of that abhorrent industry.

The pornographers are actively working to try to get to our children. They are constantly trying to figure out new and more despicable ways to get another generation hooked on the smut that they produce. Our kids don’t have phones and won’t for a long time for this very reason. It’s just too easy. But, if the porn industry can’t reach my kids through their phones, it will certainly try to reach them through your kids’ phones. So, yes, I do worry about Adelade, and all of my children. Because when you fail to protect your children from internet pornography, you also fail to protect mine.

Parents, we’re in this together. Please put filters on your kids’ devices. Don’t assume that they won’t encounter pornography when you give them a phone; in fact, assume that they will unless you take intentional steps to keep them from accessing it. Your kids may see pornography someplace, but don’t let it be in your home or on the devices that you provide for them. And, when you send the message to your children that you care about what they put into their hearts and minds, you are also helping to protect my children. If we would all take steps to restrict access to internet pornography in our homes and on all of our families’ devices, we really could make a dent in the profits of this multi-million dollar industry. And, that would be a good thing for human beings everywhere.

One accountability and filtering company that we trust is Covenant Eyes. We use their accountability software on all of our devices at work and at home. But, there are plenty of good filtering services out there. Find one. Use it. Protect your family and mine.