Protecting Your Children from Internet Pornography by John D. Foubert

Author:John D. Foubert [Foubert, John D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Addiction and Shame

Some children move beyond casual use of pornography into full-blown addictions. Dr. Kevin Skinner is a therapist who counsels teens addicted to pornography. Most addicts, he says, begin their involvement with pornography between ages ten and fourteen. He further reports that parents of porn-addicted teens tend to be either very rigid and controlling or completely disinterested and disengaged. Thus, it would seem that a good parenting strategy would be to be somewhere in the middle of the continuum—engaged and caring, but not controlling. Teens with controlling parents tend to experience shame, which leads them to behaviors they find comforting to lessen the feeling of rejection by their parents. He also says that addiction is a likely result for kids who use pornography and are either isolated or feel lonely.9

Relatedly, one caution Dr. Chioco-Conroy offers is to not jump to the conclusion that just because our kids have been exposed to pornography, they are addicted. She notes that if we maintain the mindset that our kids are addicted, it can be very discouraging to our children. Such discouragement can lead to despair, helplessness, and hopelessness. Instead, she says that we should focus on empowering our kids to protect themselves from pornography as they get older—and encourage them that there really is help. As parents we do have the power to protect our kids from pornography—whatever their age.

Dr. Chioco-Conroy recommends that we avoid shaming our children because it makes us into an unsafe person to talk with and leads to our kids not talking with us about things that are important. She adds that we can acknowledge the guilt that our children feel and teach them that guilt can motivate us to try to figure out what the right thing to do is.

So how dangerous is pornography to tweens and teens? In a study of early adolescent use of pornography, two thirds of boys and one third of the girls had seen sexually explicit media during the last year. Those whose parents were less educated and those who were higher on sensation-seeking were more likely to have viewed pornography. Boys who viewed pornography at an earlier age than average were more likely to have sexually harassed a peer.10

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