Protecting Your Family From Porn

Children and teenagers are naturally curious when they see something startling and unusual.

Karen Holford is a qualified family therapist and the family ministries director for the Trans-European Division. She has heard many stories of the devastating effect that pornography has had on marriages, families, relationships, and lives.

 PORNOGRAPHY IS NOT AN EASY topic to talk about. It would be nicer to pretend it isn’t an issue and never appears in Christian homes, especially in the homes of pastoral families. But it does—and more often than we might imagine. In one study, 57 percent of pastors admitted to struggling with pornography currently or in the past.*

Porn has the power to destroy relationships, lives, marriages, and families. Some people believe it’s not harmful, arguing that it’s not real intimacy, that the people involved are doing it willingly, and, because they are watching it for free, they are not contributing financially to the industry. Some say they are using it for “educational” purposes, or even that it helps them to unwind after a stressful day. But it slowly and insidiously rewires the brain; destroys people’s ability to focus on important matters; lowers the threshold of acceptable violence in intimate relationships; creates highly unrealistic expectations about the kinds of intimacy that their spouses, or future partners, will be happy to engage in; and often reinforces ideas of male dominance and control over women.

I have seen porn tear marriages apart as one partner demands more extreme acts of intimacy and their spouse feels that they are constantly being compared with the airbrushed and highly experimental, or dominated, actors in the videos. The more vulnerable partner begins to feel unacceptable and unattractive and that their wishes are not valued.

The internet has given everyone easy access to porn. It is being seen by younger and younger children. Many of them accidentally encounter it when playing on an adult’s phone or when searching for something on the internet. And it can be extremely distressing for them. We have powerful internet filters on in our home, but the only time I have ever seen porn was when I was researching Adventist children’s websites. I discovered that an innocent website of children’s Bible studies had been hacked so that clicking on the site took unsuspecting visitors straight to porn.

Children and teenagers are naturally curious when they see something startling and unusual. They may watch, often in horror, and then feel so ashamed that they dare not talk to their parents about it. Some children might keep on watching and see all kinds of inappropriate content and even develop an addiction. They are often exposed to increasingly extreme content, which quickly becomes “normalized” in their minds. This can lead to the abuse of others and distorted thinking about their own sexuality.


WHAT CAN YOU DO?
You must work together as parents to protect your family from the dangers of porn. The North American Division has created a series of excellent resources to help people understand the dangers of porn addiction at www.newfreedomtolove.org. The more you understand the issues around porn, the better equipped you will be to protect your family.

Besides staying informed, be a good example. Model healthy attitudes to sexuality and mutual respect, kindness, and acceptance of each other as a couple. Set good boundaries on the use of devices and the internet in your home. Help your children develop positive hobbies and habits, and talk to them about the issues of porn and addiction. Pray for your family and ask God for wisdom as you deal with this delicate area.


TALKING TO YOUNG CHILDREN
Porn may not be something you really want to discuss with your young child. But it’s vital that you talk about it before they access porn by themselves. Even if you manage and minimize their use of the internet, they can still be exposed in other ways, and they need to understand the issues before they ever glimpse it on a screen. When we simply explain what it is and what the dangers are, we give our children a much better chance of making positive choices.

Good Pictures Bad Pictures is an excellent book to help you talk about porn with your child (ages 3-9) in a warm, easy, and sensitive way. The book teaches children why porn can be damaging, how we become addicted, and what children CAN DO to prevent being affected by porn:

  • C Close my eyes and look away to minimize the effect.
  • A Always tell a trusted adult what happened—they want to help keep me safe.
  • N Name porn when I see it so that I know to leave it
  • D Distract myself by doing something fun that takes all my attention for a while.
  • O Order my thinking brain by choosing not to view porn, rather than letting my curious and feeling brain take over.

 

TALKING TO TEENS
One of the best ways to talk about porn with teens is to look for a natural discussion starter. This could be a news item or the latest research on the dangers of porn. It’s best if you are sitting or walking side by side so that you don’t have to make eye contact during the conversation. Or talk when you are working on a project together so that you both have something to look at and something to do with your hands. Another way to open up the topic is to forward a useful article or comment in a private message on their phone, and then ask them what they think about it.

Porn is not the easiest thing to discuss with anyone, especially your teenager. It’s OK to say that you feel a bit awkward about bringing up the topic but that it’s really important to you. Use tasteful humor to help you both relax. Make sure everything about your body language and tone of voice lets your teen know that you accept them, whatever experiences they have already had with porn, and that you are not going to blame or shame them. They need to feel that they can be open and honest with you. Try a “little and often” approach rather than having a big, intense conversation. Make it normal to share things you have learned about porn, or watch a helpful video together.

Many teens are curious about porn, and it’s easy for them to have a look and see what it’s all about. When researchers wanted to find some college-age boys who had never watched porn to create a control group, they couldn’t find enough non-watchers, and they had to change the structure of their research project. Focus on the long-term goals your teenagers have for their life and explore how becoming addicted to porn can seriously affect their brains, their ability to concentrate on their studies and work, their mental health, and their relationships, especially their future marriage and family life. Watch the series “Brain, Heart, World” together, or watch it separately and then discuss the issues together (see resource list for website).

Work together with your teen on an accountability plan, in which you can both be honest with each other about your challenges and set up safe systems to help protect each other from temptations and addictions. Use systems that show each other which websites you have been to and pixelated screenshots of any adult sites that have been visited. Set up boundaries about the use of devices in private spaces and during the night, or make compliance with safety rules a condition of owning their own device.

If you discover that your children are struggling with porn, be kind, accepting, and forgiving. Being critical and judgmental can encourage them to become even more secretive. Buy Ben Dyer’s book Applying the Handbrake. This resource will help them discover practical, Christian advice for living safely and wisely in the world today. Teens need warm, healthy, loving relationships with their parents, and they need to know that their loving Father in heaven will always forgive them and love them too.


WHERE CAN I GO FOR HELP?
www.newfreedomtolove.org – North American Division website with a five-part series to explore the issues around porn. It is designed to use with the whole church.
www.protectyoungminds.org – A website to help you prepare and protect your children, help them heal if they have been exposed or addicted, and help you both speak about the issues in your community.
www.thenakedtruthproject.com – A British website designed to educate people about the dangers of porn.
www.brainheartworld.org – A series of
three 30-minute videos exploring how porn addiction affects the brain, relationships, and the vulnerable people who are caught up in the industry.
www.axis.org – Discussion guides for Christian parents and their teens on key issues of life and faith.
Ben Dyer, Applying the Handbrake: A Teenage Boy’s Honest Account About God and Porn (Naked Truth Resources, 2018).
Kristen A. Jenson, Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids (Kennewick, WA: Glen Cove Press, 2014).

 

* www.barna.com/the-porn-phenomenon