by Courtney Hollingsworth, LPC
We protect our kids from germs, strangers, bullies, curse words, sunburns, violent movies, car accidents, trips and falls, traumatic news stories, mosquitos, too much sugar, a chill in the air. We go to great lengths to keep them safe. And yet many of us are overlooking an ever present danger. In fact, we are handing it to them.
Would you let your kid wander around an adult video or book store? Of course not! The impact could cause a great deal of harm to such a young, impressionable mind. It certainly would not be the way you’d like your child introduced to sexuality or be educated on what mature naked bodies look like or on how babies are made.
That is essentially what you are doing when you give your child a phone, tablet, or any other device that has access to a search engine without any filters or parental controls.
You may think this is an exaggeration, and perhaps it is, though not a big one. The generation raising kids at this moment in history did not grow up with the world at our fingertips, which is quite literally the reality for kids today. With a few simple taps of their fingers kids can see images, videos, and words of pretty much anything in the world. Anything. And kids know it. Curious about something? Overhear other kids talking about something you don’t know about? Have a question you don’t want to ask an adult? Google it! Kids are curious by nature and they have easy and immediate access to more information than probably all the generations before them combined!
Unlike the web search history on a browser, you cannot erase the images from your child’s mind they will readily find.
The vast amount of sexual material readily available on the internet is astounding. Kids are more and more, younger and younger, stumbling across pornography without even know what it is. They simply take their curiosity to the place they’ve already learned holds all the answers, the internet. Unfortunately, the internet does not provide child appropriate, parent approved, or even accurate images and information for their curiosity.
If you wait until your child comes to you asking about sex, pornography, girls and boys kissing, girls and girls kissing, boys and boys kissing, where babies come from, the sexual anatomy of the opposite sex, or any other sexually related thing they may be curious about or have overheard, it will be too late. If you wait until you catch them looking at sexually explicit images or videos on the internet, it is too late. Talk to them BEFORE this happens. Add filters and parental controls BEFORE this happens. Protect your kids from the stuff that isn’t good for them BEFORE they find it without even knowing what they’re doing.
The next blog will introduce some resources that might be helpful with regards to these topics.