Can Kids Be "Ethical Users" of Porn?
*Warning: The content below and in the linked articles contains some explicit content.
The world has gone absolutely crazy. (Unfortunately, your kids see it as totally normal.) Here's what has me so troubled:
A sex educator at a prestigious Manhattan school was fired earlier this year because she taught high school students how to view porn ethically. (That means the porn was created fully with consent and that it encouraged healthy behaviors in the viewers.)
What she taught (and the reason she was fired) can be explored in detail HERE. In a nutshell, parents were ticked off that their kids were taught this content without parental consent. They were right to be upset. (See the headline below.)
The content she taught the teenagers was troubling, but not for the reasons you would think. It's not just troubling that she taught it. It's troubling that what she taught is true.
She shared details about online porn that most adults would be shocked by. (Mainly, what sorts of things you might encounter when exploring a porn site.) What stands out the most in the story is that the teenagers weren't shocked. A common phrase they uttered in a New York Post story on this issue was, "We all know about this stuff. Why are we having to miss an important AP class to talk about it?"
What parents should be concerned about.
Parents have a right to be in an uproar when their kids are taught sexual content without their permission. But there are two things in this story that concern me even more.
First, there is an epic divide between what parents know about modern porn and what the average teenager knows about it.
When most parents think about porn, their mind goes to Playboy magazine. Today's porn is primarily video: moving bodies showing the most explicit and deviant behaviors imaginable. (One porn site, PornHub, had 7 million new videos uploaded in 2019. That one site had 115 million visits PER DAY in 2019. That's more traffic than Instagram and Twitter.)
Twenty years ago, it was parents trying to protect their teens from explicit content. Today, it's teenagers trying to insulate their parents from what they are encountering online.
In New York, parents were mad that their kids were taught about porn when, in fact, the vast majority of teenagers are viewing it on a regular basis. It is changing how they view their sexuality, their self-image, and what is considered normal behavior. Today's porn (and it's accessibility on the phones that every kid in America has) is truly and irreparably messing up an entire generation.
As I wrote in The Young Man's Guide to Awesomeness, "Learning about sex by watching porn is like learning to drive by playing Mario Kart. It’s so far removed from reality that it’s not even helpful." Unfortunately, there are tens of millions of kids who are learning about sex by watching porn. And they are getting a terrible education.
The second big concern is the suggestion that there is "good and ethical pornography."
The educator who was fired believed what many in our culture believe today: some porn is good, normal, and healthy. (As long as it is created with full consent and if it leads to healthy behaviors in the viewer.) If our goal is to help our kids to one day experience a healthy, selfless sexuality within a covenant marriage (which it should be), then any and all porn use undermines that. Here’s why:
*Porn teaches selfishness over sacrifice.
*Porn trains people to be lazy, as sex happens without any investment into a relationship.
*Porn focuses exclusively on a physical act when sex in marriage is so much more multi-dimensional than that. Emotional intimacy? Forget it.
*Porn overwhelms the brain with endless variety when marriage will require them to find ultimate joy with one partner for life.
*Porn use is destructive at every level, undermining an eventual sexual relationship within marriage.
Sadly, many teens (and even children) get exposed to porn without any guidance on what to do when they see it. And it impacts them for life. This should keep every parent up at night. Is it keeping you up at night? What are you doing to educate your kids on the dangers of porn and to insulate them from it's impact?
Far and away, the number one place that our kids view porn is on their smartphones. Your kids probably have access to a smartphone. If you're not regularly talking about this with your kids, I hate to say this, but you are failing them.
