You may recall from your history class a famous quote from Benjamin Franklin who said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Speaking to parents on porn I have heard my share of stories from parents who thought that their kids were “as pure as the wind driven snow” when it came to porn only to find out that they were in deep. Sadly they didn’t do even the simplest of things to protect their children from this menace. Good old Ben has some insight into this mentality as well saying, “A little neglect may breed great mischief” and boy was he right. I have talked to parents whose kids ended up in therapy over their online porn activities, parents whose kids were sexually exploited online and parents whose kids lost their innocence at a young age because of porn. And their parent’s neglect on the issue of porn played a major role. So the stakes are very high.
Oh what an ounce of prevention could have done! (Tweet This!)
Parents no matter how perfect you think your kids may be (and they may be incredibly good kids) that doesn’t mean you can ignore the incredible temptation of porn and pretend that it’s not an issue. Taking steps to protect your children from Internet dangers is not something you do once your child has discovered it and gets sucked into its addictive world. It’s a bit late at the point as much damage has already been done. The idea is to prevent them from slipping into that world in the first place.
Prevention isn’t just about trying to stop porn from getting into your home or onto your kids mobile devices by using filters like X3watch (which I highly recommend) it’s also having an open dialog about sex. The birds and the bees talk wasn’t the beginning and end of your conversations with your kids about sex. (Tweet This!) I know these conversations can be awkward but trust me it gets easier. They have to understand sex, God’s design for it and that porn will take an incredible thing God created for a husband and wife to experience and ruin it. Ultimately you want them to avoid porn not because you told them not to look but because they know it’s not good for them. When they have that belief in their heart that’s the ultimate porn prevention tool.
Benjamin Franklin On Porn Prevention by Kevin Outland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.