I realize some parents might not have grown up with the Internet, so it may be difficult for them to grasp the gravity of the pornography industry and the real possibility of kids being exposed today. Since the invention of the internet in the early 1990s, the pornography industry has exploded into a multibillion dollar industry. This huge industry is continually growing. Every 39 minutes, a new pornographic video is being created in the United States and the Internet contains over 4 million pornographic websites. [1] Now we could go on and on with statistics telling how huge this industry is; and we could fall into despair thinking about all the ways we could try and fail to take down the goliath porn industry. Instead of trying to take the industry down, let’s focus on not letting the porn industry take us down. As someone who was exposed to pornography at an early age –and became addicted to it for nearly 10 years – I understand how easy it is to get pulled into the world of pornography. The average age of pornography exposure is 11 years old[2] and 9/10 boys are exposed to porn before they turn 18 years of age.[3] Kids can be exposed to pornography from a friend or family member, but the internet has a wealth of porn traps set in place for the innocent. One sneaky technique used by the internet porn industry is focused on website domain names. Some porn companies use website names that a child might accidentally visit while searching for their favorite video game. Another common technique used by the internet companies is to buy recently expired domain names and put pornography on them. Here are 3 examples of this: 1. “Whitehouse.com” Someone purchased this website domain name and put porn on it. (The real white house website ends in .gov) This website caused myself and a number of my classmates to be exposed to porn in the middle of my Catholic grade school computer class while researching for a government project. The person who operated this site refused to take it down even after they received an official letter from the white house staff asking him to take the site down. The site was finally removed in 2004.[4] 2. Boy Scout Troop 216 of Roanoke County had a troop website and they forgot to renew the domain name. The name went to auction and quickly was sold to someone who placed German pornography on it. [5] 3. Middletown, Ohio Youth Soccer organizers forgot to renew their website name and it was quickly snatched up and taken over by a Russian porn site. Needless to say, parents were quite shocked when looking for their kid's soccer schedule. [6] Apparently this whole “domain game” has even got celebrities on their heels. Taylor Swift was recently reported to have purchased all the porn domain names that contained her name. She did this in an effort to get them off the market and not let the porn companies lead her fans astray. [7] I think parents of junior high and high school age kids need to take a deep breath and come to grips with the possibility that their child has likely been exposed to pornographic material. Maybe your child is part of that ever shrinking percentage of teenagers that hasn’t been exposed, but honestly I talk with thousands of [Catholic] teenagers a year about this topic and a lot of 7th graders share the fact that they have seen pornography. Kids might find themselves trapped in a deadly cycle of sin that –quite honestly- they weren't looking for. Porn is actively searching for its next victim and it is very easy to stumble upon. Addressing this topic with our children is a must. “A warm and communicative parent-child relationship is the most important factor [in reducing porn use among children].” Do you have any questions about this topic? Please feel free to contact me by clicking here. (No name required to ask a question) –Dr. Patricia M. Greenfield [8] (Children’s Digital Media Center and Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA) Notes: 1 J. Ropelato, “Internet Pornography Statistics,” Top Ten Reviews (2015) http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html 2 Ibid. 3 Covenanteyes.com 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehouse.com 5 http://archive.wusa9.com/news/article/48468/0/Cub-Scouts-Lose-Website-To-Porn-Promoter 6 http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/butler-county/middletown/middletown-youth-soccer-website-taken-over-by-pornography 7 http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2015/03/23/taylor-swift-buys-up-porn-domain-names/ 8. Patricia M. Greenfield, “Inadvertent exposure to pornography on the Internet: Implications of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks for child development and families,” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 25 (Nov/Dec 2004): 741-750.
Comments
|