I’m at the end of my two week series of sex, porn and children’s ministry and I want to cram in a few last bits of information. A friend of mine who heard about this series sent me some links to share. She’s continuing to track down some additional resources, but she remember when studying marketing in college a few years ago she learned how the porn industry strategically marketed toward 11-17 year olds knowing that they were the largest user base and that if they got hooked (addicted) as a teenager, they’d be a customer for life. She remember reading how the porn industry used school textbooks to learn what kids would be searching for when working on projects to optimize search results so that kids would likely stumble across their content. I don’t have the study or documentation to back that up, but my friend is looking for that resource now.

Anyway, she did send me this link, a compilation of statistical and survey results by Covenant Eyes, the company that helps protect computers from pornographic content. It’s a massive document with great information about the dangers as well as prevalence of pornography. Click here to download the document.

There are many great stats to use if making a presentation to parents or your church about the need for parent intervention. Here were a few points that I wanted to highlight.

When a child or adolescent is directly exposed to pornography the following effects have been documented:
  1. Lasting negative or traumatic emotional responses.
  2. Earlier onset of first sexual intercourse, thereby increasing the risk of STD’s over the lifespan.
  3. The belief that superior sexual satisfaction is attainable without having affection for one’s partner,
  4. thereby reinforcing the commoditization of sex and the objectification of humans.
  5. The belief that being married or having a family are unattractive prospects.
  6. Increased risk for developing sexual compulsions and addictive behavior.
  7. Increased risk of exposure to incorrect information about human sexuality long before a minor is able to
  8. contextualize this information in ways an adult brain could.
  9. And overestimating the prevalence of less common practices (e.g., group sex, bestiality, or sadomasochistic activity).

So, all of this is good reason for the church and parents to make sure our kids are safe, right?