Earlier this week, we highlighted how important it is for us to install parental controls on all Internet-enabled devices, but to continue to drive that point home (since so many parents continue to postpone using these protective measures!), we wanted to highlight some new stats and an excerpt from an article in the Daily Mail:

  • Web security firm Kaspersky said 23 percent of blocked searches conducted by teenagers in the UK were for porn.  They also recorded 25 million attemps to access porn globally.
  • Other potentially harmful content was also blocked, including gaming, social networking sites and information aout weapons.
Parents: please understand: it’s only a matter of time before your son or daughter starts looking for harmful, pornographic or mature content online.  And pornographic content can be incredible damaging to a young mind and is highly addictive.  As reported in The Mail, John Woods, a psychotherapist at the NHS Portman Clinic in London who treats young men and women addicted to porn, told the audience about a 16-year-old patient who sexually assaulted his younger next-door neighbour after becoming addicted to porn.  ‘All day he was thinking about the imagery,’ he said. ‘He felt he was losing touch with reality. The relief only came when he switched his computer back on again.’  
I hear story after story of kids who lose interest in school, friends, sports and life offline because of their online porn addiction.  Additionally, kids often will imitate or want to “act out” what they see in pornography, and so the offline implications, as mentioned by Josh Woods, can be horrific.  I hope that you will take action today by installing filters and parentral controls on all of your Internet-connected devices.