Protecting Children from the Dangers of Pornography

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In this episode, we explore how to protect your family from online pornography. Learn about the importance of internet filtering software, recommendations for Christian families, and practical steps to develop internal safeguards in your children's hearts and minds.

Resources Mentioned:

• Internet Filters for Families
• God's Good Design Curriculum
• Smartphones Podcast

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello, friends. Today's podcast question says, "we need help knowing where to start and protecting our family from pornography online. How crucial is it to use internet filtering software? There seems to be so many options. We would love advice on which one is best for Christian families without breaking the bank, if possible." Really important question for us to think through as we think through protecting the hearts and minds of our children and making sure that we are decreasing the risk of exposure to pornography.

So this is the question we're going to dive down deep into today on the Foundation Worldview Podcast, where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz and I'm thrilled that you've joined me today. And if you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast.

Now, the first thing I want to say in response to this questioner is, you are so wise to be thinking proactively in this area that we know that pornography is predatory. So we have to take proactive steps to protect our children and to protect ourselves. So internet filtering is an external filter, so a filter that we have outside of our children, and it can be something that is very, very valuable. It is wise to have an external filter because as I just mentioned, pornography is predatory. It's not like when you think of the internet that there are just these pornographic sites and oh, our kids may stumble across them. It's not like these sites are just sitting out there and as our children are navigating through the web, they might accidentally bump into them. That is not what pornography is like. Pornography is like a tiger that is searching for our children that is stalking low in the grass, waiting to pounce because specifically the porn industry is trying to create more porn addicts. So it goes after us, specifically our children. So the question of our children encountering pornography online is not if, but when.

Now when we think about pornography, there is a wide range of what pornography can be. When we think of the very extreme, incredibly, incredibly evil pornography, we think of child pornography or pornography that is showing abuse and violence against its victims, where then there's everything from that to soft porn, which would be like the old school Victoria's Secrets ads, even just pictures of women or men who are scantily clad. And so all of those things would be included in the category of pornography. So our children, they will eventually encounter pornography online, but they will encounter it much less frequently with an external filter in place. So to this questioner and to all other parents who are listening, we are wise to use an internet filtering software.

Now, in preparation for this podcast, I did do some research on the different internet filtering systems that are available. However, I am not an expert in this, and so in the small amount of research that I did, I really don't feel equipped to pass along a recommendation to tell you what I think is the best simply because I have not used these different internet filtering softwares. And so I can't tell you the pluses or minuses or how easy it is to use or how good of a job that they do protecting. So what I'm going to do is in the show notes, we are actually going to link to an article that just gives a guide to different filtering software so that you can read that article and you can see the benefits and the drawbacks of different softwares.

I do also know just from being at homeschooling conferences in the past, I am familiar with Covenant Eyes and I know that Covenant Eyes has a version specifically for families. So it has things that can be put on parents' devices and things that can be put on devices where children are going to access. So while I have never used that software from being at homeschool conferences, I am familiar with Covenant Eyes as a Christian organization that is specifically seeking to help protect children within families.

Just as a side note, as we're talking about having this external filter, this internet filter on all family devices at Foundation Worldview, we highly, highly, highly, highly, highly, I can't say that enough, highly recommend that you do not give your child or your children smartphones until they're at least 16. Now, in this short podcast, I don't have time to go into all of the reasons why. However, we do have an entire podcast dedicated to that subject. So highly recommend you check out our podcast on smartphone use for preteens to understand why we highly recommend that you do not give your child a smartphone until he or she's at least 16. Now, specifically as this relates to pornography, giving a child a smartphone exponentially increases their risk of early exposure to pornography. So that is just one huge reason not to give a child a smartphone, but just for our comprehensive explanation of why it is unwise to give a child a smartphone before the age of 16. Check out that podcast that we've done previously.

Now, I keep mentioning that an internet is an external filter, and what I mean by that is that is something that is outside of our child, it's outside of their heart, outside of their mind, outside of their being that we put to protect our children from pornography. And it is very wise for us to establish an external filter because like I said, pornography is not something that they're just going to accidentally bump into. The porn industry is like a tiger that is hunting down our children. So having that external filter is very important. It would be like if we lived in India or another country where there were actually tigers in certain regions, it would be very wise for us to have a wall outside of our home so that when our children are playing outside, there is this wall. So if there is ever a tiger in the area, it can't just come and grab them. However, having an external filter is not enough.

Using that same analogy, it wouldn't be enough just to have a wall. We would actually have to explain to our children why they should not go outside of that wall alone. So they would need to have an internal filter because if we have that wall but our children have this burning desire to go outside and to see that tiger, they're not actually going to be protected. So our children actually need an internal filter as well. A really sad example that I was thinking about as I was preparing for this podcast is I know many of our listeners are probably familiar with the Duggar family who previously had the show 19 kids and counting and then counting on where the oldest son Josh Dugger, was just convicted of being in possession and distributing child pornography. Actually, I might have spoken wrong, he might not have gotten convicted for distributing it. It might have just been possession. But previously he had been caught in different sex scandals and he had internet filtering software on all of his devices. He had people that he was accountable to, so he had all of the right external filters in place, but the internal filter, the change of heart, the desire to actually remain sexually faithful to his wife, to honor God in this area of his life that was not there. And so here now he's convicted of this heinous crime of being in possession of child pornography.

So when we think of our children and helping to develop an internal filter for them, we need to remember that only God can change hearts. We can put these great external filters up, we can put all of the right elements for growth in place, but only God can change our children's hearts. So it's so important that we be praying for them in this and specifically in regard to this area of pornography, praying that God would protect them from it externally, but also that he would give them a heart that is not turned towards that or towards anything else that is vile.

So some of the elements for growth that we need to put in place for our children to try to help develop this internal filter is first we need to give them a biblical understanding of why pornography is wrong, of why pornography is evil. Then we need to give them practical steps for what to do when they encounter pornography because they will eventually encounter it. And so they're going to need some practical steps. And then we need to make sure that we are starting this training at a young age. We need to make sure that we're starting this training before our children are at risk of encountering pornography. Now, for those of you who have listened to other webinars or podcasts that I have led on the topic of pornography, that I've shared stories of how students in my class were exposed to pornography, I had students that were exposed to it accidentally online. Then even in this wonderful Christian school that I taught at, and I mean this is a great Christian school. It's not just Christian by name, it's Christian and all that it does. Even in that great Christian school, there were situations where students in my class went over to the house of another student in my class and that student exposed them to pornography. So we need to start this training at a much younger age than we think we need to.

Now recently at Foundation Worldview, we released a curriculum called God's Good Design. It's a curriculum for children four on up, and really this curriculum could probably be used with children even up to the age of nine. If you have children that are like four or five or six and you have older ones, you could probably even go up to the age of 10 with this. We don't recommend you do it with a 10-year-old by themselves, but if you're in a family with multiple aged children, you could even include a 10-year-old in this. And this is a curriculum that's just building a biblical argument for God's good design for identity, gender, sexuality, marriage and family. And in this curriculum, we do cover the topic of pornography. Now, we don't ever call it pornography, we just call it bad pictures, but I'm going to walk you through what we do in this curriculum so that then you'll have some tools to do these two steps that I just mentioned. First, giving our kids a biblical understanding of why pornography is wrong and then giving them practical steps for what to do when they encounter pornography.

So several truths that we cover in this curriculum before we get to the topic of pornography are the first truth is, well, it's not the first truths we cover, but it's one of the truths we cover before this is God is good, therefore his design is good, that we want to just instill in our children this knowledge of the goodness of God's design. And as parents, this is something that we can do in just talking about the goodness of God's design in everyday life as we're sitting down to eat breakfast together. Isn't it amazing how God designed our mouths to taste food? God could have designed us like cars. We could have a little hole in the side of us, or we could screw something into our belly button and then be refueled that way, but instead God gave us a mouth that can taste amazing food. Isn't that incredible? Or when we're cleaning up the toys in the toy room saying, isn't it amazing that God gave us five fingers on each hand and how these fingers move so that we can pick up toys? Can you imagine if we didn't have fingers on our hands that would be so hard to do anything with them. So just to talk about the goodness of God's design so that truth, God is good, therefore his design is good. Then another truth we cover is sin corrupts God's good design, and we talk about how sin is missing the mark. It's like someone pointing an arrow at a target and missing that mark and how sin corrupts God's good design. Then we go into the truth that Jesus defeated the power and punishment of sin so we could never live up to God's perfect standard in our fallen state. But Jesus lived up to that standard for us, and he defeated the power that sin has over us, and he defeated the punishment that should be ours because of our sin.

And then after we've established those three truths, the next truth we cover is because of sin. Not all pictures are good pictures. And so now we're expecting that children as young as four are going to be going through these materials. And so the way that we explain it just in a very developmentally appropriate way is we say, first we talk about all of the good pictures that there are in the videos. I show so many good pictures that I have. I show pictures of family and friends and pictures that remind me of good memories. And I say, I bet you have a lot of good pictures too. And then we say, well, you know what? Because of sin, not all pictures are good pictures. And the way we explain it is we say, think about when you're going to the beach or to the pool, you wear a bathing suit and that bathing suit covers up special parts of your body that no one else should see unless your parents are helping care for you or a doctor is examining you. And then we say, and sometimes people take pictures of those special parts of a body that bathing suits cover, and so then we tell them those are bad pictures. So we explain that those are bad pictures, and the way we explain it was we say, those pictures are not treating that person who is in them or you who is viewing them as someone who bears God's image. And that really is one of the main evils of pornography. That pornography is not treating those who are involved in it as those who bear God's image, nor is it treating those who are partaking in it through viewing as those who bear God's image. It is creating in other people lust.

Now, we don't explain that to kids, but we just focus on the image bearing part of it. So giving them that biblical understanding of why it is that bad pictures are bad pictures. Then we give the kids three action steps. We say, if you see a bad picture, the first thing you need to do is stop. The second thing you need to do is run to your parents or the nearest safe adult. And the third thing you need to do is tell them what happened. So stop, run, tell. So we give kids those three steps, and then in the curriculum we play a game giving them examples of good pictures and bad pictures. And you might be thinking, oh my goodness, giving examples of bad pictures, let me clarify. We do not show them good pictures versus bad pictures. What we do is we explain what a picture is, and we're making sure that in these games, we're giving more examples of good pictures than bad pictures because we want the main focus to be on what a good picture is. So we give so many examples of good pictures. You're at your grandparents' house and your grandmother pulls out her wedding album, which is from when her and your grandfather got married. Are these good pictures or bad pictures? These are good pictures. Then we talk about you go on a family walk and you take pictures of flowers in the woods. Are these good pictures are bad pictures? These are good pictures. So we give so many examples of good pictures. Then with the bad pictures, we are vague. So we'll say, you see you're playing a math game on your mom's phone when all of a sudden pictures pop up showing body parts that bathing shoots should cover, or these good pictures are bad pictures. These are bad pictures, and we don't just leave it there because we don't want them to focus on these bad pictures. We say, okay, what are the three things you need to do? That's right. You need to stop, run and tell.

Another example we give is we say you're watching a show with your brother on a tablet, and all of a sudden a picture pops up of people without enough clothes on. So you see how we're not giving them great detail, we're just giving vague detail. Then we're having them think through, these are bad pictures, and then we immediately go into, what should you do? That's right, you should stop, run and tell. So we're not having their minds dwell there. We're immediately moving to the action point that what is the action point? You stop what you're doing, you run to your parent and you tell them exactly what happened. And as I said, again, we want to give more examples of good pictures than examples of bad pictures so that the game is mostly positive. And then what we do in the God's Good Design curriculum is we always close that game with an example of a good picture because that's what we want to leave in their mind. We want to leave the image of the good picture. So that's something you can do with your kids being very vague about what the bad pictures are. Then immediately moving to the action steps so they're not focusing on the bad picture and closing it with a good picture.

Another thing we do in that curriculum is we explain that when they see a bad picture, they might feel curious and want to see more, or they might feel embarrassed by what they saw and they won't want to tell you, but we say, whether you feel curious or embarrassed or any other feeling, you stop. You run and you tell. And when you do this, your mom and your dad will be so proud of you. And when you do that, that helps them protect you from seeing any more bad pictures.

So those are just some activities you can do with your kids first to, to give them the biblical foundation of why pornography is wrong, and then to give them practical steps for what they should do when they encounter pornography. If you have yet to check out our God's Good Design curriculum, highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend that you check this out. I don't know that we've ever released a curriculum that's just more timely in the cultural moment in which we live, and this curriculum is laying just the positive biblical foundation for the goodness of God's design and helping protect our children from the corruptions of that good design, including predatory pornography in our culture.

So just to summarize what we've talked about in this podcast, it is so important for us to work to have both external and internal filters to protect our children from pornography, that the external filters are going to be that internet filtering software that you look through. It's also going to be making sure that we are not giving our children smartphones under the age of 16. And then the internal filter, we cannot guarantee that there will be an internal filter because we cannot change our children's hearts. Only God can do that, but we can pray for that, and we can also put the elements for growth that are needed. We can give them a solid understanding of the biblical reason why pornography is evil, and then give them some action steps to take to protect themselves for when they do encounter pornography.

As we wrap up today, if you have found the content of this podcast beneficial, please, please, please take the two seconds that are involved in giving us a rating. It really just helps us with all of the algorithms that we face online to push this content out. If you can give us a rating and as we end our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the children, God is placed in your care, find yourselves that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good. By using all things to conform you more into the image of His Son. I see you next time.