Keeping children from porn can be difficult
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By COREY TAULE
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ctaule@postregister.com
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Buell |
WARNING: This Website contains adult explicit material. You may only enter this Website if you are at least 18 years of age, or at least the age of majority in the jurisdiction where you reside or from which you access this Website. If you do not meet these requirements, then you do not have permission to use this Website. That's all that is standing between your child and YouPorn.com. Responsible parents, of course, will put up additional barriers. They may place a filter on a computer, intended to block access to Web sites such as the one listed above. But kids are smart, and they grew up with computers. A recent study conducted by Australian Flinders University reports that teens spend about 13 hours a week online. Mention the term "proxy site" to most parents and you'll get a blank stare in return. Their kids, meanwhile, would probably chuckle. These commonly used sites allow users to get around Web filters. Jeremy Buell, Idaho Falls School District 91's network administrator, knows all about proxy sites. In charge of roughly 4,000 computers, Buell said his job is to stay ahead of students' efforts to get around the filter. And that's a daily struggle. "I find that if somebody's getting around it, they've definitely had to do some hunting and searching," Buell said. "You can't just pull up Playboy.com."
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One thing a parent can do at home is to place the computer in a family room, where everyone can see it. But Bonneville County Deputy Prosecutor Bruce Pickett said he recently attended a conference where a picture was shown of a young man flipping back and forth between a porn site and clean site while his mother sat nearby. Despite parents' best intentions, young people view porn online. Lots of them. It's estimated that nine of 10 kids aged 8 to 16 have viewed porn online. The CP80 Foundation, a Utah-based nonprofit group attempting to limit kids' access to online porn, estimates that roughly 190 million U.S. children have viewed online porn, and the number grows by about one per second. "Kids are having their first sexual awareness in an environment where, with one click of a mouse, they can see anyone doing anything at any time," Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Harvard Medical School's Centre on Media and Child Health, recently told the Age, an Australian newspaper. Parents, said Janet Allen, clinical director at Creekside Counseling in Idaho Falls, need to get current. Talk to your kids about what's out there and the consequences of viewing it. Learn to check the computer's "history," a rundown of sites visited. "It's probably not even responsible to have a computer in your home if you don't understand the computer," she said. Stephen Yagielowicz, a California man who designed adult Web sites for a decade, said that tools such as filters and warning pages don't keep kids from seeing porn.
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A bill currently before Congress would require people entering adult Web sites to enter a date of birth. But that's just as easy to get around, he said. "Any kid who wants to see porn is going to put that he was born in 1900 and click enter," Yagielowicz said. The only solution, he argues, is to hold parents accountable "for their actions or inactions." Even the National Academy of Sciences, in a study called "Youth, Pornography and the Internet," appeared to throw up its hands: "Parents must balance their concerns about harmful things on the Internet against benefits gained from exposure to positive things on the Internet, and the question of how children can learn to handle and defend themselves becomes the primary issue." But the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that minors do not have the same rights as adults because they are considered more vulnerable and they do not have the ability to make critical decisions in an informed and reasonable manner. Laws keep kids from purchasing cigarettes and booze. They don't have to "defend themselves" against either. Laws keep kids from placing bets on football games. The problem, mental health counselors say, is that porn shocks the brain. And when porn shocks a developing brain, a lot of things can go wrong. "This is very, very sad that we as a society don't step up and do something," said Chip Snowden, an Idaho Falls-based counselor who treats kids suffering from sexual addiction.
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Dr. Judith Reisman, who has been studying the impact of porn on the brain for decades, said the same process occurs when an adult and a child looks at porn. Both get aroused. Testosterone and other drugs flood the body. The mind processes the image as reality and stores it as memory. But adults, Reisman said, have a sense of history that keeps them from going too far. They have kids to raise, bills to pay, a job to get to. Kids exist entirely in that moment. "The 15-year-old is so overwhelmed," she said. Just as kids are more easily addicted to cigarettes because their brains are still forming, so it is with pornography, Allen said. So, if a pornographer can hook a kid early, he's got a customer for life. And the child, through repeated viewings, gets a distorted and dangerous view of the world. "People lose their humanity," Allen said. "They lose their compassion. They lose their ability to care. They lose their ability to empathize." Most frightening for parents is that their kids will likely see online pornography even if they aren't looking for it. Direct e-mails from porn sites arrive in inboxes every day. Spam and pop-ups make porn almost impossible to avoid. And while the Supreme Court has repeatedly shot down laws intended to protect kids because of free speech concerns, Reisman said this bombardment of kids with addictive content actually subverts speech because it impairs the ability to reason.
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"That has absolutely removed choice," she said. Tips to keep kids safe The CP80 Foundation is a Utah-based group working to keep kids from viewing online porn. For more information, check out CP80.org. The foundation has some suggestions for parents struggling to keep up with their tech-savvy kids. 1. Emphasize to your kids that the Internet is not family friendly. "The Internet is for adults only -- treat it with the same caution you would a loaded firearm, poison or any other harmful substance you might have in your household." 2. Become tech savvy. "If you want to protect your family, you must understand the basics of the Internet and the devices that can be used to access it -- which now includes computers, cell phones, PDAs, digital music devices, portable game devices and much more." 3. Become Internet Access Aware. "You need to be aware of where, when and how members of your family can access the Internet in your home and throughout the community in which you live." 4. Create a family-use Internet policy. 5. Deploy a filter, but understand its limitations. 6. Supervise Internet access. 7. Educate your children. "Your inability to manage and control the Internet in your home and community means that you need to discuss the Internet and what your children might find on it as soon as they are capable of accessing it." 8. Monitor offline access. "Once an individual has downloaded an inappropriate image or file from the Internet, it can be transferred to a number of devices that do not need Internet access in order to view."
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