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Listen to thisOnline ‘dark’ porn ensnaring teens, pre-teens at epidemic rate
It’s a fact that most parents don’t want to come to terms with, but must address within their homes – internet porn is invading their children’s lives through the very electronic devices they’ve purchased … at an alarming rate. (Caution: This story contains terms that some may find offensive.)
As a lecturer on the topic, Jonathon van Maren attempts to clue in children and adults alike on the true dangers of online porn and the strong grasp it has on a majority of youth. Today, children’s exposure to porn isn’t just greater because of easy access to electronic devices such as cellphones, tablets, computers and gaming systems; it’s darker, as well, he explains.
“I’ve met more teens than I can count whose first exposure to porn – and not just ‘normal’ porn but dark, violent porn that in 2014 is now mainstream – was at the ages of 10 or 11,” van Maren expressed on LifeSiteNews. Van Maren brings up recent stats from Canada to bring to light the severity of youngsters' exposure to massive amounts of destructive online porn.
“One recent Canadian overview found that, ‘10- to 16-year-olds in Canada get an average of 6 hours and 37 minutes of screen time per day,’” van Maren relayed from research published by ActiveHealthyKids. “’The largest source of screen time is television (2 hours and 39 minutes) followed by computers (2 hours and 7 minutes) and video games (1 hour and 51 minutes).’”
According to van Maren, internet porn is the epidemic schools should be targeting – far and above other deterrent programs public education is currently targeting.
“The problems apparent in these numbers go far beyond stunted creativity, childhood obesity, and, I would argue, the fact that these children are being deprived of a childhood by zoning out in front of screens,” van Maren asserts. “The problem is that many, many of these children will end up finding and looking at pornography.”
Foreboding figures
When speaking on the issue, van Maren is surprised to find that most people he’s encountered still believe pornography isn’t really that formidable of a problem for youth today.
“I’m quite often accused of being an alarmist by adults and church leaders who can’t quite believe just how pervasive porn use and porn exposure is among the very young,” van Maren points out. “I’m often told that this is the reason that having a presentation on pornography would be ‘too controversial.’ Quite frankly, I wish they were right.”
He proceeded to present disturbing stats one after the other, uncovering the prevalence of pornography in the lives of today’s teens, marking a new era of porn that is more graphic and explicit than ever before:
83 percent of boys and 57 percent of girls have seen group sex online
39 percent of boys and 23 percent of girls have seen sexual bondage online
35 percent of teen boys say they have viewed pornographic videos “more times than they can count”
32 percent of boys and 18 percent of girls have seen bestiality online
15 percent of boys and 9 percent of girls have seen child pornography
Van Maren stresses how damaging these introductions to demented sexuality can be on children as they are forming their mindsets about something that will follow them throughout their lives.
“That pornography will shape the way they view sex as they grow older,” van Maren warns. “Those views will shape how they treat themselves and others. Keep in mind that that the average boy, for example, is first exposed to pornography at the age of 11.”
Wake-up call
With pornography often being a taboo topic in homes for many parents who want to believe that their children have managed to steer clear from the porn frenzy online – made easily available on virtually any electronic device they can get their hands onto – van Maren still witnesses many who are in denial that children are entrenched in this debilitating form of entertainment.
“I speak on sex and pornography in high schools quite often, and every time I do I’m faced with a dilemma,” van Maren shared. “The adults in the room are likely to be shocked, horrified and even upset when I confront the students with the reality of what online porn is and why it is so dangerous.”
Conversely, teens overwhelmingly meet van Maren’s words of warning with apathy, seeing internet porn as just another rite of passage for today’s youth.
“However, the teenagers for the most part are not even remotely shocked,” van Maren added. “Most of them have seen the things I’m talking about. Increasingly, and chillingly, they have even been coerced or pressured into trying the dark perversions they see unfolding on their iPad, computer and smartphone screens.”
Van Maren wishes that teens didn’t lose their innocence at such early ages so that they can enjoy sexuality later in life as God intended.
“It’s gotten to the point where I’m relieved when teenagers are shocked by one of my presentations,” van Maren explained. “It means that they’ve heard the information in time to avoid the clutching webs of the Internet porn industry.”
Taking it to another level
The days of pre-teens having their first encounter with porn by discovering unwholesome material in a public restroom are over. Van Maren declares that the amount and explicit nature of porn viewed by youth today is nothing like what children were exposed to in decades past – before the onset of the internet age.
“I’ve met parents who tell me how relieved they are that their children never had a porn problem, when I’ve spoken to their children and I know that their children did, in fact, struggle with porn," he shares.
Van Maren divulges that many families have no idea that porn has battered down their front doors until the issue is brought up outside the home. And this doesn’t only go for porn viewed by children – but spouses, as well.
“After one presentation, I even had an anonymous letter sent to me by a wife and mother who revealed that throughout my presentation on pornography, she felt relieved that her husband would never look at such things,” the speaker from Ontario, Canada, informed. “She found out a short time later that he had been looking at pornography for a long time.”
And van Maren doesn’t believe that the porn problem across the North American continent is being blown out of proportion by any means. To fight the epidemic, he holds regular forums for schools on how to identify and deal with porn in students’ lives through question-and-answer sessions.
“It is not alarmist to say that this problem is everywhere; it’s a grim fact,” van Maren continued. “Last week I spoke at a high school conference for Christian schools … every time, teachers are shocked by what the students are asking as they realize just how far this menace has spread and how badly it has infected our schools.”
Van Maren personally knows from his conferences how early exposure to porn opens up the floodgates to a plethora of sexual problems and situations that teens shouldn’t be going through at their age.
“I had a 14-year-old girl ask me what girls should do when their boyfriends pressure them into anal sex (hugely popular in mainstream porn right now),” van Maren noted. “I had teen boys asking me how to deal with their masturbation problems. I was asked why porn sites were so addicting. I was asked by one girl why so many boys were demanding oral sex. And I was even asked questions about bestiality in porn, questions I even had a hard time believing teens of that age could be asking.”
Hitting the problem head-on
Using technology to block children’s exposure to porn doesn’t do the trick, says van Maren, who knows that parents have to be straight-up with their children if they truly want to protect them from the vices of pornography.
“With access to the internet everywhere, it is not simply enough to filter the internet in our homes and install accountability software on our electronic devices, although all of these steps are absolutely essential,” van Maren argues. “In today’s day and age, where kids and teens are going to find porn if they want to or if they’re curious, they have to be spoken to honestly about what pornography is and why it will destroy their minds, their relationships, and their souls. They need to know why so much of what they see in porn is dark and evil, and why these things have no place in the context of a loving relationship.”
Van Maren wishes he could rewind the times for children so that they could experience the euphoria youth experienced in an age of innocence when everything wasn’t over-sexualized – before the onset of the ensnaring internet.
“I read a column from Anthony Esolen called ‘What they will never know’ a few years back, and he beautifully highlights what the teens of today are being robbed of: ‘Our teenagers who know so much about the mechanics of copulation miss the sweetness of simple humanity,’” van Maren recalled. “’People used to sing merrily about holding a girl’s hand while walking home from the dance – holding a hand. With that touch, they knew the thrill, perhaps for the first time, of being deemed worthy of love. What is it like, to be a boy or a girl who could be made dizzyingly happy by so simple a touch? We will never know.’”
To truly counter the problem in which online porn has immersed today’s youth, van Maren attests that parents cannot just fight technology with technology via internet filters or even closer monitoring of kids on devices. He says there’s no substitute for an old-fashioned heart-to-heart talk – parent-to-child – about the tragic result that exposure to pornography can have on their children’s lives … in the present and the future.
“The porn plague has spread far and dizzyingly fast,” van Maren concludes. “But if we talk to teens openly, and show them not only why the darkness of pornography is so dangerous, but why the alternative of healthy human sexuality is so beautiful, then this generation will still have a chance. It is up to us to provide that chance.”
Michael F. Haverluck
27 October 2014
