Metmom, take a look, this affects homeschoolers as well.
Posted on 10/21/2014 10:05:39 AM PDT by Morgana
I live in a quiet subdivision in rural Ontario. I mean very quiet—all summer long, I rarely saw any kids outside biking or playing street hockey or running flimsy lemonade stands or just roughhousing around outside. Then, the day school started, I was shocked when I left my house in the morning and I saw kids everywhere, backpacks in tow, heading to bus stops and walking to the nearby school. This many kids live in my neighborhood? I thought to myself. Where were they all summer?
There are a number of possible answers, of course. Some were probably on vacation. Some were probably shipped off to camp by their parents. But many of them were likely inside the house, glued to screens. One recent Canadian overview found that, “10- to 16-year-olds in Canada get an average of 6 hours and 37 minutes of screen time per day. The largest source of screen time is television (2 hours and 39 min) followed by computers (2 hours and 7 min) and video games (1 hour and 51 min).”
I’ve met more teens than I can count whose first exposure to porn—and not just “normal” porn but dark, violent porn that in 2014 is now mainstream—was at the ages of ten or eleven.
The problems apparent in these numbers go far beyond stunted creativity, childhood obesity, and, I would argue, the fact that these children are being deprived of a childhood by zoning out in front of screens. The problem is that many, many of these children will end up finding and looking at pornography. That pornography will shape the way they view sex as they grow older. Those views will shape how they treat themselves and others. Keep in mind that that the average boy, for example, is first exposed to pornography at the age of eleven.
I speak on sex and pornography in high schools quite often, and every time I do I’m faced with a dilemma: The adults in the room are likely to be shocked, horrified, and even upset when I confront the students with the reality of what online porn is and why it is so dangerous. However, the teenagers for the most part are not even remotely shocked. Most of them have seen the things I’m talking about. Increasingly, and chillingly, they have even been coerced or pressured into trying the dark perversions they see unfolding on their iPad, computer, and smartphone screens. It’s gotten to the point where I’m relieved when teenagers are shocked by one of my presentations—it means that they’ve heard the information in time to avoid the clutching webs of the Internet porn industry.
I’m quite often accused of being an alarmist by adults and church leaders who can’t quite believe just how pervasive porn use and porn exposure is among the very young. I’m often told that this is the reason that having a presentation on pornography would be “too controversial.” Quite frankly, I wish they were right. But consider just a few of these statistics:
35% of teen boys say they have viewed pornographic videos “more times than they can count.”
15% of boys and 9% of girls have seen child pornography.
32% of boys and 18% of girls have seen bestiality online. Advertisement
39% of boys and 23% of girls have seen sexual bondage online.
83% of boys and 57% of girls have seen group sex online.
I’ve met more teens than I can count whose first exposure to porn—and not just “normal” porn but dark, violent porn that in 2014 is now mainstream—was at the ages of ten or eleven. I’ve met parents who tell me how relieved they are that their children never had a porn problem, when I’ve spoken to their children and I know that their children did, in fact, struggle with porn. After one presentation, I even had an anonymous letter sent to me by a wife and mother who revealed that throughout my presentation on pornography, she felt relieved that her husband would never look at such things. She found out a short time later that he had been looking at pornography for a long time.
It is not alarmist to say that this problem is everywhere. It’s a grim fact.
Last week I spoke at a high school conference for Christian schools. One of the things I like to do to show the teachers and other adults just how essential it is to provide teens with the truth about pornography is to hold an open forum—let the students write down any and all questions they have about the topic and submit them to be answered. Every time, teachers are shocked by what the students are asking as they realize just how far this menace has spread and how badly it has infected our schools.
At the last conference, for example, I had a fourteen-year-old girl ask me what girls should do when their boyfriends pressure them into anal sex (hugely popular in mainstream porn right now.) I had teen boys asking me how to deal with their masturbation problems. I was asked why porn sites were so addicting. I was asked by one girl why so many boys were demanding oral sex. And I was even asked questions about bestiality in porn, questions I even had a hard time believing teens of that age could be asking.
With access to the Internet everywhere, it is not simply enough to filter the Internet in our homes and install accountability software on our electronic devices, although all of these steps are absolutely essential. In today’s day and age, where kids and teens are going to find porn if they want to or if they’re curious, they have to be spoken to honestly about what pornography is and why it will destroy their minds, their relationships, and their souls. They need to know why so much of what they see in porn is dark and evil, and why these things have no place in the context of a loving relationship.
I read a column from Anthony Esolen called “What they will never know” a few years back, and he beautifully highlights what the teens of today are being robbed of: “Our teenagers who know so much about the mechanics of copulation miss the sweetness of simple humanity. People used to sing merrily about holding a girl’s hand while walking home from the dance—holding a hand. With that touch, they knew the thrill, perhaps for the first time, of being deemed worthy of love. What is it like, to be a boy or a girl who could be made dizzyingly happy by so simple a touch? We will never know.”
The porn plague has spread far and dizzyingly fast. But if we talk to teens openly, and show them not only why the darkness of pornography is so dangerous but why the alternative of healthy human sexuality is so beautiful, then this generation will still have a chance. It is up to us to provide that chance.
Any parent that lets a kid have a PC/laptop NOT in the living room where it can be monitored is asking for trouble.
Likewise the cell phone/PDA history, etc, should be checked twice a week at least.
Metmom, take a look, this affects homeschoolers as well.
While I agree, that ship has long since sailed. I go to the mall, gym, where ever and see kids with hand held computer devices. The genie is out of the bottle. Time to form a new battle plan.
Decimation of the schools, destruction of the Church and moral structure, and degradation of the youth. This was all part of the KGB’s massive cultural infiltration from 1958 through the late 1980s. When “the wall fell” we thought we won the Cold War. But we lost completely. They destroyed America from within, and those leading our nation now were Soviet acolytes then. It would take another 40 year purge to remove all the tentacles from education, entertainment, and the civil service. Americans have no idea whatsoever how deeply we were betrayed.
Thank you Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky! (sarc/off)
>>While I agree, that ship has long since sailed. I go to the mall, gym, where ever and see kids with hand held computer devices. The genie is out of the bottle. Time to form a new battle plan.<<
Sadly, you are right. But what would the battle plan be, besides instilling moral values into kids?
Remember, nearly 1/2 of the country is democrat so we know that morality is not a large part of the landscape...
Schools are giving out IPADS here. argh
I don’t think any “kid” should have their own of any of this “technology”. No “phones”, either. All they do is waste time and think how cool they are that they are talking to some faceless people all the time while ignoring real people.
I don’t want to hear “but it’s safer to have a phone!”
BS. Probably just invites scum into their lives.
I don’t want my son constantly on the computer, especially with “connected” software. No computer for him. No matter what any over-indulgent busybodies may say in his life.
“Thank you Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky! (sarc/off)”
Oh I have to agree with you on that one! I can still hear that today on prime time TV: “Oral Sex is not sex”. I knew then this would not end well.
I can also remember people arguing that every president slept around, esp Kennedy. Well at least it was not front page news about Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and Kim Novak. As much as J. Edgar Hoover hated the Kennedys he had better class then to go publish the sex lives of the president.
Yeah, my private school, too.
But I have NEVER seen anything illegal regarding children or animals.
Of course, I've never sought out such garbage, so I don't know what's available to those who do seek out illegal stuff.
There is lots of porn which is illegal in the US but legal in the UK. Restraint with penetration, for instance.
I don't have any problem with adults accessing porn involving other consenting adults, but children obviously cannot consent, so that sort of thing I would think would be illegal in virtually any country.
In the US, they will nail someone to the wall for possessing illegal images, and, as a staunch libertarian, I say deservedly so.
Libertarians are not anarchists. They believe in Unalienable rights, and that certainly includes fiercely protecting the innocent (such as children) from having their rights violated.
There are plenty of "law and order" libertarians out there.
“Schools are giving out IPADS here. argh”
Some public schools are giving out computers. They are also doing away with textbooks. They are switching to that thing called “kindle”? Where books are downloaded. It’s cheaper and are just erased at the end of the semester. College textbooks can be done that way too, I hear.
On this “kindle” I’m not sure what else may be downloaded, so you FReepers who are Techno Geeks are going to have to fill me in.
Show them a few pictures of STD’s...might stem the curiosity.
“Where were they all summer?”
No, they weren’t all sitting at home. Lots of them are shipped off to every damn “activity” in desperate pursuit of being “rounded” and “learning teamwork” and “hard work”. Not just “camp” as in overnight, but simply every day driving there.
None of this has worked, obviously. Total BS. We are more dysfunctional than ever, and this kind of thing has been rampant for 30 years now.
In my ‘hood, which has plenty of kids, Summer can be pretty quiet, too. But school time is really amazing. The most you will see kids having free play outside is AFTER school, literally. Weekends, silence. No kids - they are shipped off to basketball and lacrosse and all that garbage.
Anything to avoid them learning to a) calm down, be peaceful b) live with family and every-day issues, and for the parents to have to deal with them directly.
But I have to tell you I am 52 and our parents were on us like white on rice. The Catholic School helped too.
LOL
We all have our trials.
“Show them a few pictures of STD’s...”
Preferably that of their favorite promiscuous and predatory teachers.
“Weekends, silence. No kids - they are shipped off to basketball and lacrosse and all that garbage.”
That is garbage. I went to an actual 1950’s style camp and that was in the 1980’s I was blessed.
Books are still much better.
Kindle and the like are harder to sift through, find things instantly that you already know where they are physically in the book, etc. It’s very easy to flip pages or just open it about the right place. Typing in the search is NOT easier and faster.
Overrated, as most technology is. Fine for just reading a fiction narrative, but not the best for anything else (waiting to get pelted by all the techno-obsessed here).
Relying on “technology” is really just smoke&mirrors for looking smart. Having it does not make one smart, or easier to teach.
I guarantee as long as other fundamentals are not changed BACK to timeless principles, having all these bells and whistles will not put the US back up on the achievement list.
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