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Written by PTC | Published July 1, 2016
The most common use of the internet is one that endangers children.
Technology is moving forward at lightning speed, and so are its associated uses and dangers. Technology itself isn’t the problem, but how we use it can be. By an order of magnitude, the number one use of the internet is accessing pornography. Shockingly, many experts now say the average age a child is first exposed to porn is between six and ten years old.
Unleashed, this plague has found it's way into the hands, hearts, minds, and lives of our children. All of us now bear witness to a plethora of destructive outcomes that continually play out in the news, the seeds of which were likely planted long ago. Like Stanford, Vanderbilt, Tennessee is in the spotlight over a student rape case (an unconscious student was gang-raped by football players in a campus dormitory). Ironically, technology not only contributed to the Vanderbilt assault (in the form of pornography viewing during the rape), it also helped bring the perpetrators to justice via video and cell phone evidence.
Increasingly, the light of the truth is beginning to dawn. Utah recently passed legislation calling porn a public health crisis. Time magazine made the dangers of porn a recent cover story. Experts who once defended porn, or called it harmless, are now lining up to recant in light of scientific findings that show how damaging porn is. As science has shown, because porn rewires the brain, children are even more vulnerable because their brains are still developing (and our brain is our biggest sex organ). The memory hormone norepinephrine attaches in about a second in children- eleven times faster than adults.
Child sexual abuse is defined as “any age-inappropriate sexual exposure that alters normal healthy development.” Pornography is easily the number one form of child sexual abuse today -- and technology is now it's primary delivery system.
Anyone who thinks the issue of kids and technology is mostly about managing screen time is either naive or deceived. Children depend on adults to put their health, welfare, and safety first -- and based on results, we are failing them miserably.