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Last month, Lori talked to two mothers dealing with now teenage daughters who started to view online porn at seven and younger. When I say view I don’t mean were exposed, I mean they sought it out on their own. And it didn’t stop there, it progressed to sexting and masturbating online with others. The two incidents are unrelated. One is free of porn, the other is still struggling with it. These girls didn’t have neglectful parents. The parents had taken what they considered age-appropriate steps to prevent what happened.

If you think this is some rare exception you’re sadly mistaken. Because of what we do Lori and I are more likely to hear about this kind of thing, but it’s all too common. I could give you statistics, but there are none based on well-done research. Aside from the moral issues of asking kids about their porn exposure, they would lie. The best numbers we have come from talking to young adults. However, this relies on memories of things that happened when they were teens or younger. It also doesn’t take into account the fact that accessing porn is easier now than a decade ago.

It’s safe to assume your daughters will have seen porn by the age of fifteen. I’m not talking about still images, they have seen or will see up close videos of all kinds of sex acts. Very few girls will make it to 18 before being exposed. Far more than that will be exposed before their first period.

If I’ve scared you, good. I hate doing this post, but I hate what porn does to young girls even more. When parents don’t know the risk, porn has the upper hand. This post is about changing that.

Short of putting out their eyes, you will not keep your kids from seeing porn. All it takes is one acquaintance with a smartphone. In order to minimise both the exposure and the negative effects, you have to accept the sad reality that it will happen. 

Helping your kids deal with porn means telling them about it before they see it. It also means warning them that most of what they see is not representative of how loving couples have sex. Rough treatment of the woman by the man is common. Porn can make it seem like anal sex is the norm, and everyone is into oral sex. Then there are things like bestiality and BDSM. And worse.

Warn your daughters that many of the women in porn have been surgically altered, with things like breast augmentation and reduction of the labia. Also, warn her that they are pretending to want and enjoy what they are doing. It’s fake and it should not be seen as educational.

You protect your children from porn by warning them about what it is and why it’s harmful. I’m all for telling them it’s wrong with God, but most teens are more responsive to hearing how it will hurt them and their future marriages. Doing that requires an ongoing open dialogue. The child who can ask you what oral sex is will be less likely to go looking for the answer online.

Keeping your kids away from porn is neither easy nor foolproof. Computer-based filter programs are easily bypassed. If you want to keep young children from accidentally seeing porn, they will do the job. But there are plenty of nine-year-olds who can get around them faster than you can install them. Your best bet is to use OpenDNS on your router. This is free, they have good tutorials and good support. With OpenDNS your home network won’t connect to porn sites. That protects computers, tablets, smartphones, the Xbox, and everything else. When you set it up, be sure to block Proxy/Anonymizer sites to eliminate a common bypass. OpenDNS can be bypassed by installing a VPN on a device. There are ways to block a VPN, but that is beyond this article. My suggestion is to routinely check devices for software.

Another good tool is a Parental Control Router. In addition to filtering, these can limit internet access by time of day, or give each child a set number of minutes per day. If you are concerned about screen time (and you should be) this is useful. Livewire has an article on this kind of router. You can get a decent one on Amazon for less than $100.

I’ve focused this post on young girls because a lot of parents have no idea how common it is for them to find porn. Prior to puberty, the issue is about the same for boys and girls. At puberty both boys and girls will be more interested in all things sexual, but as a group boys are more driven to use porn. That doesn’t mean girls don’t use it, they do. It just means most boys are doing more porn than most girls.

~ Paul – I’m XY, and I just hid porn magazines in my room when I was a kid.

A post worth reading:

Shaunti Feldhahn | A Tale of Two Men—And What It Means for You ◄ Sometimes an offer of help is just an offer of help!

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