On-line porn is a money making business. Money buys influence and exerts power. Shutting down the porn industry by attacking it directly would be like trying to shut down all organized crime and petty theft too. It is a Hydra. You cut off one head and 10 more grow in its place.
So we try to block our access and our kid’s access to the damaging stuff. Trying to block it for ourselves is a bit like the fox watching the hen house. You say, “Okay, it’s too late for me but maybe I can keep my kid from being exposed to what caught me. I’ll put filters or blocks on adult content on their phone, our TV, our internet, etc.” Well guess what, you can’t block the kid at school who found porn on his phone and loves to show it around to all his buddies. You can’t keep your child from finding a friend’s father’s stash of porn in his garage. You can’t monitor his college roommate’s choices. You can’t lock yourself or your child away in a temptation safe utopia world.
This article talks about 4 ISPs that offer parental controls for their service. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15252128 This is a service that is already available; these ISPs are just going to overtly offer them to new customers instead of waiting for the customers to ask if there is anything like that available. Check out the comments posted. Lots of people are crying, “CENSORSHIP, BIG BROTHER, CONSPIRACY!!!!” Hmmm? I wonder how many of those folks are porn addicts.
There are also many comments that parents are the ones who should take the responsibility to monitor their children’s activities and teach them moral responsibility and wise choice making. I say, “Hear, hear!” How many of us never were taught by a respected and responsible adult such as a parent what is good and right about sex and the dangers we would face and how to deal with our own lusts and desires in a mature, self-controlled way? I never got “the talk”. I suppose growing up on a ranch my parents figured I would figure it out by watching the animals. I figured it out all right! I figured out how to use sex for my own selfish pleasure! Who needs the internet to be selfish and sexually active in inappropriate ways?
I wish my dad had talked to me about his own experience, feelings, and struggles with sex. I wish he had told me what a gift sex is when used to bring about a deeply intimate relationship with my wife. Maybe he didn’t know about that himself. I wish I had talked with my children when they were young. I can now but it would have been better earlier.
So you missed that talk too. Find someone you can trust and start the conversation yourself. And, be a safe person for someone else.
Just so it is clear, I am not saying to not use every bit of technology at your disposal to put up safeguards. These things act like guardrails for us. They draw lines that tell us when we are going off the road. They don’t keep us from going off the road if we try hard enough but they do inform us and give us the opportunity to turn away.
Dan