Protecting from Pornography
What’s available for free and sometimes delivered without asking for it is not just airbrushed naked women anymore–it’s very clear pictures of people actually engaging in various types of sex, bestiality, and adults molesting children.
Like the tobacco industry used to, the pornography industry aggressively targets young children as consumers. They position their Web sites to be found in seemingly innocent searches using words like toys, Disney, Nintendo, or dolls. According to NetValue, children spent 64.9 percent more time on pornography sites than they did on game sites in September 2000. Over one quarter (27.5%) of children age 17 and under visited an adult Web site, which represents 3 million unique underage visitors.{1}
But they are not the only ones struggling with easy and anonymous access to pornography–over 200,000 Americans, classified as “cybersex compulsives,” are hopelessly addicted to e-porn. The study, conducted by psychologists at Stanford and Duquesne universities, appears in the March 2001 issue of the journal Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity.
We personally know of people now in jail for stealing to support their porn addiction. Pastors are hearing from scores of people in their congregations who are secretly addicted to e-porn. Exposure to pornography, for some, escalates into more perverse and dehumanizing images. Online pornography is so strongly graphic, sending a hormonal power surge through the brain, that it has been called “electronic crack cocaine.”
Protection from online pornography is essential. Parental involvement is the first line of defense. And Internet filters will add an additional layer of security in the home. Whether a filtered Internet service provider, a filtering software program, or even hardware filters just recently available, some level of filtering is better than none, but none are perfect. The technology is developing every day and filters are far more effective and less intrusive than a couple of years ago.
Many organizations have tested filtering technologies, and their evaluations and experience is available to parents. The Center for Decency (www.centerfordecency.org), the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families (www.filterreview.org) and a combination of several organizations at www.getnetwise.org are excellent resources.
Those sites will also provide excellent advice to parents about monitoring their children or spouse’s online activities as well as provide resources to deal with situations that arise if pornography is a problem in the home.
Put your computer in a public place in your home where anyone can see what’s on the screen. Determine how much time children can spend online. Some families link screen time to reading time: a half-hour of reading earns you 30 minutes of Internet time. Talk to your children about the dangers of pornography. We warned our boys about “mind dirt,” the kind of mental images that can’t be washed out of memory like the mud that was ground into their soccer uniforms. Talk about why pornography is wrong: because it destroys the dignity that God gives people made in His image, and because it fuels our flesh instead of our spirits.{2}
Protecting our families from Internet pornography in our homes, businesses, schools, and libraries is one of the most loving and important things we can do for them.
Protecting from Predators
Several years ago when my son was about eight or nine, we had a memorable conversation when he decided he was going to run away from home. I used all the arguments from reason to try and dissuade him, but he was determined to leave. He was quite confident that if he met any bad guys, he’d just “beat ’em up,” and that would be the end of that. I had to tell him about the real bad guys who are out there looking for vulnerable runaways, alone and defenseless, who either capture or lure them to places where they make horrible videos of grownups doing horrible things to kids–or worse. Thankfully, he decided to stay home.
As parents, of course we want to protect our kids from predators “out there” in the world; but it’s just as important to protect them from predators online. Evil people and pedophiles know how to find children who don’t know enough to be suspicious and self-protective, and they often rationalize their actions by saying that if parents don’t protect their kids, then they deserve whatever happens.
One of the most unsafe places on the Internet is chat rooms. Conversations start out in a group, but one person can invite another into a private conversation. Anyone can initiate a private conversation, called an “instant message” or IM, with any other computer user once they know their nickname or screen name. I strongly suggest you teach your kids not to go into chat rooms or have private conversations unless you are supervising. Some “kids” they meet in chat rooms or IM’s may not be kids at all, but adults with bad intentions.
It’s essential to set down safety rules for our families. Teach your kids never to give out personal information like their age, phone number, school, or your town or city. Don’t even let them use their real names. Kids must never call or meet an online friend in person unless a parent is there. And it would be wise also not to have a personal profile, which is a big part of the America Online community, but also Web sites like Yahoo (www.yahoo.com). Predators prowl the profiles looking for likely victims.
Donna Rice Hughes,{3} a children’s Internet safety advocate, suggests some excellent questions to ask your kids who spend time online:
- Have you seen any pornographic pictures?
- Has anyone online talked dirty to you?
- Have you met anyone online whom you don’t know?
- Has anyone asked you for personal information?
- Has anyone asked to meet you in person?
Ask the questions, and watch their body language for clues that anything has happened. We need to stay alert. We need to protect our kids from predators.
Protecting Ourselves Emotionally
The Internet has opened an almost literal Pandora’s box of emotional disasters for huge numbers of people.
An innocent looking computer screen or television set, for those with Web TV, turns out to be a portal to enormously addictive and powerful relationships with people we would never otherwise meet. People can be overwhelmed by the sense of truly connecting with people in an intense, compelling way. It can be a shock and a thrill to get a computer for doing mundane tasks like word processing or bookkeeping and discover that when it connects to the Internet, there are live people on the other side of the screen! The nature of online communication is different from the face-to-face or telephone communication we’re used to in real life (or “RL” in net-speak). For one thing, people can project themselves as they wish to be. The painfully shy introvert can become a witty conversationalist, the charismatic center of attention in a chat room. Overweight, slovenly people can pretend to be buff and beautiful. Middle-aged men can–and do–present themselves as young girls.
This means that online communication so often isn’t between people as much as between personas. Add to that the development of a dizzily rapid sense of intimacy, and you have the potential for people to get hurt by not guarding their hearts as Proverbs 4:23 tells us to do.
For instance, one young man met disaster when, lonely after his divorce, he thought he fell in love with a young lady he met in a chat room. They started talking by phone. He professed his love for her; she professed her love for him. She visited him for a romantic weekend tryst. But it turns out she was a fourteen-year-old runaway, not eighteen as she had said, and when her parents tracked her down they had him arrested as a sex offender.{4}
Many married people have discovered how intrusive the Internet can be when their spouses start spending hours online in chat rooms and private conversation. Many marriages have broken up over online affairs. It doesn’t matter if the relationships become physical or not; when people give their affections to another person, it’s adultery of the heart.
How do we protect ourselves emotionally?
First, pre-decide to guard your heart (Prov. 4:23). If you start to think and daydream about someone in a way that you would be embarrassed if others knew what you were thinking, pull back. You’re probably spending too much time online and spending too much emotional energy on that person. Redirect your thoughts to ones that are more righteous.
Second, if you’re married, shore up your relationship. Spend at least as much time building into your marriage as you do with online friends. Resolve not to take your spouse for granted or compare him or her to your image of your online friends. Remember that we tend to project onto online friends the qualities we want them to have, and it’s not fair to compare the reality of the person you’re married to with the fantasy of the persona on the other side of the screen. Consider that it is extremely rare, and frankly unwise, for married people to have close friends of the opposite sex.
Third, watch how much of your heart you share with people online. They are, after all, strangers. Our emotions follow our hearts, and when we give chunks of our hearts away by sharing our hopes and dreams and feelings, our affections are tied to those pieces of our hearts. I’ve heard it called “emotional fornication,” and for good reason.
It’s important to realize how quickly and easily we can fall into the false and fast intimacy of online relationships. We need to remember that the intimacy is not real, but the pain that might come from forgetting that is very real.
Protecting Ourselves Financially
Every year, more and more people are buying and selling on the Internet. That means more opportunity for fraud, mischief and flat-out evil intentions. How do we protect ourselves financially?{5}
First, protect your online identity. Identity theft is a growing problem, and the Internet has only made it easier. Don’t store your personal information or credit card numbers with online retailers. Reputable merchants will ask if you want them to keep track of your personal information so you don’t have to enter it every time. It’s not that hard or time-consuming, and it’s a good way to protect yourself. Don’t give out more information than is necessary, especially your social security number. You’re not being paranoid. You’re being wise.
Now let’s talk about making a purchase online. You don’t have to be afraid to do this if you’re dealing with a reputable company or organization. Be sure you’re dealing with a real company or organization. Look for a physical address and at least one customer service number. (Call it to make sure it’s active.) Check out the company online at the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org).
Before entering personal information, make sure you’re using a secure, or encrypted, connection. Look at the site’s Web address. If it changed to “https,” the ‘s’ shows that it’s secure. Although, not all secure connections use the https designation. The one thing you absolutely must see is that the padlock icon on your Web browser is locked.
Once you make your purchase, print a copy of your online order and keep it for the length of the return or warranty period. Your printed copy may be the only proof of your purchase.
Use a credit card instead of a debit card. Credit cards give you bargaining leverage if you need to dispute a charge–for instance, if the item never arrived. With debit cards, it’s like spending cash; once the money is out of your account, it’s gone.
If you participate in online auctions like eBay or Amazon.com, be aware that auctions are the number one online scam today.{6} If you don’t want to gamble, you can use a third-party escrow service where the seller doesn’t get paid until the buyer receives and approves his purchase. The most money lost in Internet scamming is through the Nigerian money offers.{7} “These offers, which used to come by airmail but now are increasingly arriving by email, promise millions of dollars in exchange for allowing your bank account to be used to safeguard someone else’s riches. But the real intent is to take money out of your account, not put money in it.”{8}
We need to be just as good stewards of God’s money online as we do every other place.
Protecting Ourselves from Unnecessary Losses
The rise of the Internet has opened new doors to all kinds of unnecessary losses from which the wise person protects himself or herself. Probably the biggest loss is time. And probably the biggest time-waster is chat rooms. They are not productive, and many are not safe because predators prowl there. They encourage a false sense of intimacy and community. Chat rooms are a way to spend time, but when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, one wonders how much of that activity will withstand the fiery test and endure into eternity? (1 Cor. 3:12-15)
Another consumer of time is e-mail. The problem with this is that, like handwritten letters, some e-mail is valuable for true communication. And like newspapers, some is valuable for disseminating information. But a lot of time is spent forwarding messages that are actually hoaxes and urban legends. Like fake virus warnings, for instance. I get several of these a week, and often per day, urging me to forward the letter to everyone in my address book. Please, before passing on a virus warning, check it out at one of the sites that expose virus warning hoaxes, like www.Vmyths.com. And please don’t waste your time or anybody else’s by passing on e-mails that promise goodies in exchange for forwarding the message to a certain number of people. There is no such thing as e-mail tracking. Nobody will know if you forwarded the message, and you won’t ever get the goodies.
But real viruses are a true threat, and they can wipe out data on your computer. That is a completely unnecessary loss because of the excellent virus-protection software available today, such as Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee VirusScan. Don’t open e-mail attachments if you don’t know what they are or if you don’t know the person who sent them. (You generally{9} don’t need to worry about opening the e-mail message itself, though. It’s the attachments you need to be concerned about.) Many programs infect a person’s computer and send out copies of themselves to people in their address books and the sender doesn’t even know it’s happening. I regularly receive messages containing viruses and worms from people I don’t know because I’m the one who sends out our online newsletter, the Probe-Alert, and some people’s infected e-mail programs automatically reply back with nasty surprises for my computer.
In this article we’ve looked at ways to protect ourselves and our families from online pornography and online predators. We suggested how to prevent emotional and financial disasters. And finally we’ve examined some unnecessary losses. Hopefully, you’ve found something that will help you pursue the worthy scriptural goal of “doing all to the glory of God,” (1 Cor. 10:31) even in your online life.
Notes
1. “The NetValue Report on Minors Online,” Business Wire, December 19, 2000.
2. I enthusiastically recommend two Web sites for people addicted to porn and those who love them. The first is divided into two sections, targeted at both groups of people, with different articles on each. www.pureintimacy.org. The second is www.settingcaptivesfree.com, which features an online Bible study program (“Pure Freedom”) through which many have found freedom from sexual addiction for the first time in their lives.
4. http://www.ozarkcountry.com/jerry.
5. The Kim Komando National Talkradio Show E-Zine, May 26, 2001.
6. http://www.natlconsumersleague.org/susantestimony52301.html
7. http://www.fraud.org/scamsagainstbusinesses/tips/nigerian.htm
8. http://www.natlconsumersleague.org/susantestimony52301.html
9. There are exceptions, such as the Wscript.Kakworm that someone sent me. According to the Symantec web site, “The worm utilizes a known Microsoft Outlook Express security hole so that a viral file is created on the system without having to run any attachment. Simply reading the received email message causes the virus to be placed on the system.” This shows the importance of running an up-to-date virus protection program, because I was alerted to the presence of the worm as soon as it arrived in my inbox and before I opened the e-mail message that contained it.
2001 Probe Ministries.