Parent Alert! Now Parents Are Making Porn for Their Kids?!

“Mums Make Porn” - British Reality TV Shocker

Try to wrap your mind around this one.

A group of five presumably well-meaning moms in the UK are disgusted by the violence they discover when researching the porn film industry.

They are rightly concerned about how easy it is for children to access porn and its twisted messages.

So, the moms resolve to come up with a solution. Their idea?

Create “ethical porn” for kids.

In other words, produce porn in a way that will educate young people about what consensual and “healthy” sexual relationships look like.

The result of this crazy and twisted logic? A three-part documentary called Mums Make Porn that aired on Channel 4. The last episode features the moms showing their 12-minute porn film to their family, friends, and industry professionals! Including their own children.

One of the moms dropped out of the project early on, admitting that while she supported the concept, she didn’t want to be known as a porn producer.

Fortunately, many reasonable people do see how bizarre and unsound this phenomenon is:

"Using porn to promote 'healthy attitudes toward sex' doesn’t seem like much of a solution, let alone even possible in the first place." Tré Goins-Phillips, Faithwire

What can we take away from this?

• Don’t assume that you are on the “same page” with other parents when it comes to porn. I personally talked to one mom who gave her son videos on how to masturbate so that he would know how to “do it properly.” He was about nine years old at the time! This came up during a conversation about when and how to introduce sex education. Make sure you get to know the parents of your kids’ friends.
• Start the conversations with your children early and often. The mom who dropped out of the porn project early on wrote: “Due to my cultural background, I had found it impossible to talk to my teenage daughter about sex. Sex was a taboo subject when I was growing up.” No matter what our own experience was, we can start a new, healthier conversation in our families.
• Know why porn is bad and be able to communicate that. Half the battle is fighting against such destructive ideas in our culture. The other half is protecting your children from these harmful ideas. We’ve got some great resources to help you with both.

“Strong and Thriving Families” - National Child Abuse Prevention Month

What a great theme for the 2019 National Child Abuse Prevention Month! One full of hope and promise as we move into the spring season.

The initiative promotes awareness of child abuse in all forms – emotional, physical, verbal, and sexual. Communities commit to building stronger and safer environments for children.

April is a great month to consider what proactive steps you will take to help your family be strong and thrive in all situations.

Some tips to consider:

• Take this free online parent course from Prevent Child Abuse Utah. It only takes 30 minutes! Make the promise to protect.
• Does your child’s church, sports team, or other organization practice the Rule of Two? This means minimal or no one-on-one contact between a child and adult volunteer, coach, or helper. If travel is involved, make sure you know how children will be supervised. As well, no coach or adult volunteer should be contacting your minor child on social media privately!
• Do you know who your child is talking to online? Look through their friend lists on social media, their cell phones, and other devices. Ask about any people you don’t recognize, especially if they appear to be new contacts. Teach them to block and/or unfriend followers they don’t know or are uncomfortable with.
• Model how technology should be used. If our kids are going to use digital media responsibly, then we need to show them how to do that. Let your kids see you disconnect from screens and talk through your own decisions to manage technology. Invest in non-digital family time during dinner to reconnect as a family. Have fun together playing board games, going on hikes, or volunteering as a family.

“As a Nation, we must do everything within our power to stop child abuse and neglect before they occur. The best defense against these menaces is a strong family led by loving and caring parents.” Proclamation on National Child Abuse Prevention Month, 2019

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YouTube: The Problem That Keeps on Growing

We’ve kept you up-to-date on YouTube’s porn and pedophile problem in previous posts.

There’s still much more to add to this conversation.

For one thing, as parents, we can’t ignore YouTube. It’s simply become a large part of nearly all kids’ media consumption.

YouTube has made numerous promises to consumers groups and parents over the years to scrub the illegal and unethical content. But kids continue to see violent imagery, sexually suggestive cartoons, drug references and other inappropriate videos. The Washington Post is just one of many sources revealing the troubling content that parents worry about.

Last month, the disturbing Momo videos stressed many parents out as they scrambled to sort out the truth from fiction in this viral challenge.

James Steyer, Chief Executive of Common Sense Media sums up perfectly the parental dilemma with YouTube:

"YouTube is the biggest pain point for parents today … Kids just stumble into completely inappropriate content constantly because it’s algorithmically driven."

Has the problem become too large for YouTube to handle through their own policy and technology controls?

Leonore Reiser, a mother from Oakland was shocked to find that her nine-year-old son’s YouTube viewing history had sexually explicit content. She realized that he had looked through YouTube unattended at one point, had searched for a profanity, and then received explicit “recommended videos” as a result.

Her conclusion?

"Because of all the creepy, weird stuff he’s finding, we’re actually watching YouTube less. I deleted it from the TV, and I’m deleting it from my iPhone."

So what’s the answer for keeping kids safe in a YouTube world?

For some parents, deleting the app for a while, or longer, may be the solution in their families - especially for those with younger children..

For everyone, vigilance is key. Strengthen and monitor your family rules for YouTube. And above all, help your kids build their “internal filter” and practice what to do when they see bad content. This may be the biggest line of defense that we can give them!