How To Talk With Our Children About Pornography

Disclaimer: This story contains sensitive content that may not be safe for young ears. Consider putting in earbuds if you have kids present.

How do we best protect our children from pornography in a tech world? The answer may surprise you.

Yes, we take preventative measures like filtering and building hedges around our tech, but those aren’t enough. What we need to do is talk about pornography with our children.

But how?!

That’s where Sam Black comes in. Sam has spent the last 16 years as the Director of Recovery Education at Covenant Eyes, a screen accountability software program. He recently published The Healing Church which deals with the tough conversations around pornography and the American church, and he’s with us today to talk about how we can raise porn-resilient children in a tech world.

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Transcription:

Nathan:

Heavenly Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for Sam and his work both for and with families. I pray for just open ears and hearts as we share both the gospel and the hope of the gospel. When it comes to pornography, would you help us speak clearly and would you help families hear well what Sam has to say? Would they be encouraged and equipped to raise up healthy youth in this tech world? In your name, Amen.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland, and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today, we have with us Sam Black, who for the last 16 years has been Director of Recovery Education at Covenant Eyes and just recently published a book called The Healing Church, helping churches have the discussion and discernment around the area of pornography and how to find hope and peace in that area and freedom, specifically, in Christ. So thank you, Sam, for being here with us today.

Sam:

It is an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

Nathan:

For those of you who are regular listeners, you’ll remember that episode 182, Sam joined us back in July. So We’re extending that conversation today from what does it look like for the church and for families in general to specifically raising up kids in a tech world. Sam, in this specific area, I guess I want to just launch the conversation. Big picture. What do parents need to know about porn when raising up young kids in a tech world?

Sam:

This is an important topic. We often worry that if we say anything about these kinds of issues that maybe will cause too much curiosity, but we really need to lean into this. So when I wrote The Healing Church: What Churches Get Wrong About Pornography and How to Fix IT, I did include one, a chapter about how do people, adults get stuck. Well, it usually starts in childhood. Another chapter in there really outlines the importance and value of the church taking some lead on this and helping equip parents because parents really need some help and understanding the impact of pornography on our kids today.

Nathan:

Yeah, and I love that you point out the fear aspect because a lot of us have bumped into it somewhere, either personal journeys or we know someone who’s struggled at this point. In my point in life, I don’t know a single family who doesn’t have someone who’s wrestled with this historically. So we have this fear, we don’t want our kids to experience it, we don’t want to raise up unhealthy curiosity. Is that a reasonable fear for us as parents or are we doing more harm than good and trying to tuck this topic away?

Sam:

The more we tuck it away, the more difficulty our kids are having. So it is not the conversations and equipping them that is the problem, it is that we’re saying too little, especially too late. What I have often found is that parents decide, “Hey, I’ll wait and have this conversation when my kids are old enough to understand,” and that usually means they’re waiting till their teen years and suddenly the teen is all embarrassed because they’ve not had these kind of conversations with their parent before. Once the kid gets embarrassed, the parent gets embarrassed, and it all comes to a screeching halt and nothing really happens.

Nathan:

We’ve all been there, right? We all remember that conversation like, “No, no, no, please no more. Don’t say anymore.” So then what can we do?

Sam:

So we start early, we start young, we start having these conversations. I think we need some perspective first. We need to understand that kids are being exposed at young ages, and depending on the study you’re looking at, it’s somewhere between the ages of eight and 12, but typically, what is happening is we’re asking adults, “Do you recall the first time that you were exposed to pornography?” So we’re out of date before we even get the data, but also, how open and honest is our general consumers today, and we’re talking about averages, so boys and girls together with that.

So our kids are being exposed early for one. We need to understand that, and what I found that even in the most protective communities and Christian communities where they’re doing their very best to guard their homes, what’s appearing on their television sets, what’s happening on the devices, even keeping devices away from their kids, their children are still being exposed to pornography.

So I not so long ago did a tour of speaking at homeschool events, and these are rather large events. If You’ve never been to a homeschool event in Florida, there’s about 16,000 people who show up there.

Nathan:

Wow, that’s a lot.

Sam:

In Minneapolis, St. Paul area, about 10,000 to 12,000 people show up there, 10,000 in Texas and Virginia. They’re all over the place. So here’s these families that are coming together and they’ve selected to do some homeschooling for any number of reasons, but among them is that they want to create a more protective environment so our kids aren’t being exposed to what’s happening on the school bus or what other kids are doing on their devices or on the playground, all these kinds of things that happen on a regular basis that they may fear, and yet their children were being exposed to pornography too.

Here’s just some stats of what I polled from people that we communicated with there. 40% of homeschool parents who attended our session came to our booth, et cetera, when we surveyed them, 40% of them said they knew that their child had seen pornography, that they were aware of it. So 2% were between the ages of two and four. More than 21% of kids were ages five to 8. Over 37% were nine to 12 and 31% were 13 to 15. So there’s a huge … Isn’t that crazy? 21% five to eight years old, that’s the ones their parents absolutely knew that this was the case.

Now, we have to understand that we have to balance this with the idea that 71% of kids told us, statisticians, that they hide what they do from their parents because they don’t want their … It’s their secret, they’re going to get their device taken away, any number of reasons why you might hide what you’re doing on your device other than pornography, but that could be part of it too.

Separately, most parents have believe five myths. Myth number one is, “My kid is a good kid. They would never be curious like I was curious.” Now, I was exposed when I was 10 years old back when it was still magazines and there was no internet, right?”

Nathan:

Right. Yeah.

Sam:

So we just think that our kids wouldn’t be naturally curious, but that’s true. All kids are naturally curious about what people look like without clothes on, but today, they don’t see just nudity, they see typically video, it’s hardcore, demeaning, shocking, frightening, and that can have a big impact on the brain, and maybe we’ll come back to that.

Number two, myth number two is, “My child saw it, they would just look away.” They don’t realize the impact of their neurology and how …” That natural curiosity is there. I certainly didn’t look away when I was exposed at 10. I took a step forward to get a closer look.

Number three, “The measures I have in place are good enough.” Typically, what parents are doing is looking over their kid’s shoulder. What are they doing on the computer? “Oh, we keep our computer in an open spot,” but now that doesn’t work anymore because all of our computers are mobile devices in a sense, whether they’re laptops or pads or phones. So that idea of doing that didn’t work when it was attached to a tower and it’s definitely not working now. The good old days when things were attached to a tower and we had to keep it in an open spot, now it’s just going everywhere.

Number four, “We don’t have to worry about our boys,” or, “We only have to worry about our boys. We don’t need to worry about our girls.” I was at an event and a 15-year-old girl brought her mom and dad to the Covenant Eyes booth and said, “I brought my mom and dad here because when I was eight years old, I heard some boys say some words that I didn’t understand. So I asked my dad for his phone and he gave it to me knowing my innocence, and I looked those words up, and that was my first exposure to pornography. I was so taken by it and couldn’t stop clicking and I didn’t know why until I understood more …” When she came to our session and really began, “Oh, this is the neurology. It wasn’t impacting me even as an eight-year-old, that I would go back to my mom and dad intentionally, intentionally to look at pornography and I’d ask for their phones, but they thought, ‘Hey, she’s a girl, she’s young, she’s only eight,” but she’s essentially going to look for pornography and hiding, and only by accident did her parents discover it when she was going on 11.

Nathan:

So those are five myths that we as parents need to be aware of which are-

Sam:

That’s four and number five-

Nathan:

Oh, that’s four. What’s number five? Yeah, thank you.

Sam:

Five is, “If I talk to my child about pornography, I’ll just pique their curiosity and they’ll go looking for it.” What we say found over and over, professionals throughout this field, counselors throughout this field, that giving good solid information to our kids, we can actually help them protect themselves. They become our allies in helping protect them. So we’re not doing all the protecting, they’re actually assisting us in doing that.

Nathan:

Yes, which I love. So we’re not just building up high enough walls and going, “Hey, if these walls are tall enough, if I’m a good enough parent, then this will never happen to you.” We instead are going, “No, I can actually have … We can be on a team. We can fight for you, not just with you when it comes to this.”

Sam:

That’s right.

Nathan:

So then how can we do that? These myths are prevalent. I’m reading these and I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” I have nine, seven, four. “Oh, he’s nine years old. He’s just a little tyke. He’s not interested in this stuff,” but we know from personal experience those are myths. I had a very similar, I think arc to you, I was maybe two years older but sixth grade. So what can we do as parents?

Sam:

I think before we what can we do, I think we still need to dive a little bit more into the problem.

Nathan:

Let’s do it.

Sam:

Because when we think about a child seeing pornography for the first time, you go and see them, “I don’t believe you, I think my child would look away. They’d never really be curious about that [inaudible 00:11:12] the impact on them.” So we really do need to understand a little bit of the neurology, a little bit of the natural curiosity that’s going on. So one, again, kids are naturally curious, but two, even before they understand what they are feeling, even before they know even the basics of sex … In fact, when I was exposed at 10 years old, I didn’t even know the basic mechanics of sex. I didn’t even understand how babies were born. That probably is not as happening as quite as much as today, but that’s where I was.

Yet something I felt attracted to it and focused my attention to the point that I can tell you a full story about it. So I was 10 years old. I’m walking out of my Florida home. My brother is leaning against his car with his friend and they’re looking at a magazine sideways and that didn’t make any sense, “How can you read sideways?” So I said, “What are you guys looking at?” They turned it around and then his friend makes a crude remark and unfolds the rest of it, but I didn’t get it because I didn’t even understand the basic mechanics of sex. Alls I knew that I was naturally attracted to this, and instead of turning away, I stepped forward.

Now, I just told you a full story. I can’t tell you anything else about that day. Now, dopamine fires off when those sexual cues are picked up even though I don’t understand what I’m feeling. In God’s design, dopamine focuses your attention to the point of tunnel vision when you’re with your spouse. God’s design, right? Pornography is not sex. It’s a hijacking of what God created, but the same dopamine is firing off and focusing attention to the point of tunnel vision for pornography as well for that child.

Then there’s also some shock. Some, “Hey, maybe this isn’t quite right. I’m looking at something forbidden. Maybe some other things going on,” and today’s pornography is startling for a child who doesn’t even know the basics. It is violent and demeaning and hardcore and video and it’s showing that … When children see, might be curious, and they might look at other children’s bodies, and that’s just curiosity. That’s pretty natural and that’s usually about as far as that curiosity goes, but now It’s gone from seeing not just children’s body, but seeing adult bodies doing what seems outrageous and shocking.

So norepinephrine can kick off, which is associated with fight or flight. With dopamine and norepinephrine working together, it helps burn those emotional memories into the brain. That’s why if you ask about every adult, “Tell me about the first time you saw pornography as a child,” if they were exposed as a child, they can tell you a full story even though they can’t tell you anything about that day.

Then we go, so the child maybe hides it or we don’t have that atmosphere where we’re talking about these kinds of issues. So now it’s become secret and begins continued use through adolescence when we know that teenagers among most prolific users of pornography, yet we’re not talking to our kids about it, our teens about it. If there’s been any pain or trauma or other things going on in life, that can have a significant impact where pornography then becomes escapism and they’re dealing, and that can expand to things like boredom and frustration or anger or whatever it is, and so than when those triggers kick off, they go running the pornography.

That’s why we see adults being stuck today and being stuck in a porn rut where they’re very sensitive to sexualized media. So they’re easily attracted to it, but also desensitized where they keep going for harder and worse content over time, and that they are easily pushed into it by any number of triggers.

Now, what I call social emotional environmental triggers. So hey, we’ve hit a lot there, but that repetitive use, so the early exposure, the ongoing and repetitive use, which helps burn those neural pathways in the brain where our brain is considered more plastic than ceramics, so that’s why it’s called neuroplasticity and helps burn those neural pathways in the brain that begin craving pornography more and more.

If we’ve kept all this secret, we live in a family that we can’t talk about such things, then we’re in a tough spot, that child is in a tough spot. So we want to get our kids out of the tough spot by being able to have age appropriate conversations over time. So one thing we really need to do is be a safe parent. So let me pause there and let me see if you have some questions there.

Nathan:

I have lots of questions, but I think for our listeners, what would be, I think, best just for our recall here, then we are talking about something that’s prevalent for young people. I’m going to try to recap this. We’re talking about something that’s prevalent for young people, talking stats showing eight to 12 years old is average exposure. That early exposure produces a reaction in our brains that absolutely explodes our five myths that we say, “Well, they’re a good kid, they would look away.” What to say? I can’t even … what’s the third one?

Sam:

Those measures I have in place are good enough. I’m just-

Nathan:

Measures are good enough. We’ve already blocked that. My walls are strong. I’ve got firewalls and I’ve got passwords and I always make sure I check their search history, that it’s only a boy problem and I’m worried that if I mention the word pornography, they’re going to go Google it just like that little girl, right? She heard a word and she’s like, “I got to go Google this. I’m going to go to the public library. I’m going to go find mom and Dad’s phone. I’m going to do this,” and yet what you’re saying is, “Nope,” because they’re wiring, we’ve been wired for sexual reproduction, it’s a gift from God, this is a thing between a married man and woman, and yet norepinephrine and these other bodily chemicals, dopamine, will scorch this memory into the brain. I absolutely can remember the first time. I remember the day, I remember all the context around it, very similar, and this experience-

Sam:

You can’t remember anything else about that day.

Nathan:

No, no, but I do remember it, and I remember my dad was onto us. He just couldn’t quite figure it out. My dad was like, “There’s something wrong right here. What’s going on?” I won’t give any kids any ideas on how to be sneaky, but we were sneaky, and guess what? Kids will be. So now we have the spot where if I was a parent listening to this and I was actively dealing with it, I would’ve broken a sweat partway through what you were explaining because you’re absolutely exposing the situation of, “Okay, this is what I need.” This is everything a parent is scared of is everything you just said. Now, we find ourselves there and you mentioned right at the very end, age appropriate, clear, loving conversations. I think the only question I’ve got then from that is, what age and what can the beginning of those age appropriate conversations look like?

Sam:

Many parents have probably been raised in some shaming about their body or how we might, especially if we’ve … We had no talk culture sometimes within church families or Christian families. Hey, we don’t talk about certain things. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve talked to who said, “Sam, I’ve never had a conversation with my parents when I was growing up about sex that was meaningful, so I don’t know. It was just, ‘Don’t do it.'”

In fact, one woman said to me, “When I was 16 years old, my dad said to me, this is the only conversation I had with either of my parents about sex was, ‘Do you know what sex is?'” and she said, “Yes,” and he says, “Okay. Don’t do it.” That was all of the instruction she had ever received.

So we can do better than that. We can plan ahead. We can be more resourceful. So one, we do start early, and that sounds frightening to parents, “Hey, I’m just going to leave them in an unknowing state and that’s okay.” What does that look like? We start early by naming our body parts their appropriate names so they know what they are. I’ve served on a coalition for trafficking within my region and served as state police, et cetera, on that effort. What they have told me over and over, they said, “Sam, sometimes we can’t prosecute because a child can’t say what happened to them because they don’t even know the names of their body parts.”

So we don’t want to teach nicknames. We use the names of the correct anatomical names for our body parts. That’s okay. God’s not ashamed of that. He made it. He made our bodies. So the more shame we attach to it, then the more shaming that it becomes for the child as well. So there’s certain. We need to teach our kids boundaries, so having those age appropriate conversations and that again starts at a young age.

I’ll come back. So let give you four steps. We start early, age appropriate conversations, have a specific topic at least every other month. You say, “Wait, just every other month, Sam? That’s all I have to do this?” Well, here’s what I’ve often found is if you write it on a calendar and you prepare for that conversation, you’ll come for that conversation more prepared and ready to have a meaningful conversation with your child. If you don’t put it on a calendar, it’s likely that six months will go by or a year will go by and you go, “I haven’t really said anything worthwhile to my kids about this topic.” It just slips by. Then have many conversations as time allows and time provides.

So here, you don’t have to do this all on your own. There’s a lot of great tools that are available and that are out there. At Covenant Eyes, we provide a tool called Equipped in our Covenant Eyes Educational Resources that can help you begin having that conversation. There’s another resource that I really love. I highly recommend it all the time. So I’ve done this a number of my sessions where, in fact, I talked to the author yesterday and this is called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures Jr.

Nathan:

It’s amazing. Love that.

Sam:

This is for three to seven years old, three to seven-year-olds, and you’re like, “What? Three to four years old are seeing this?” Well, it’s a read along book and it helps you understand that … We have pictures of our family and our pets and we hang them on our walls and these are good pictures, and even when we go on vacation, sometimes we go to the beach and we have a great time there. When we go to the beach, we wear our bathing suits. So now we understand where our bathing suit area is and that it’s private, and what does private mean and why should we do that? Every part of our body is good, but we don’t allow anybody to take pictures of us without our clothes on, and that if we see pictures like that, we need … Because some things can make us sick, we don’t want to do things that take things that are bad for us. We want to keep that away from us. So we want to make sure we’re doing this well, right?

So then you get on to the end and there’s the instructions of what do I do if I see a picture without the bathing suit covered? You turn, run, and tell, turn, run, and tell. So does this work? I was doing a session at an event, and a mom was there for the second year in a row and she comes booking up to my table, and she is yelling my name across the way and she goes, “Sam, I just had to let you know. My seven-year-old was just exposed to pornography, my seven-year-old boy,” except she’s excited about it, right?

She goes, “Well, we did what said to do. We began monitoring all our devices, not just filtering but actually monitoring so we know what’s happening on our devices, but also having age-appropriate conversation. I began marking out on my calendar the different things I can talk about and research and I prepared for that. I used the Good Pictures, Bad Pictures book and they just loved it. They thought that was fun. My seven-year-old son was at my neighbor’s house and their seven-year-old boy had just gotten an iPad for his birthday, and he has found pornography on his own, and then he has taken this device and says to the other child, ‘Look what I found,’ and puts it right up in his face, but the boy who’s been trained goes, ‘No. That’s pornography.’ He gets up, walks home, and tells his mom and dad what had happened.” Oh, they gave him praise and excitement. They’re really proud of him, but, hey, we want to let the other parents know what happened.

So the other parents were flabbergasted. They had never thought that their child would be curious, that they’d only go to good sites, that nothing like that would happen. They began investigating a little deeper and they find that their seven-year-old son has exposed kids throughout the neighborhood to pornography, seven, eight, nine, and 11-year-olds throughout the neighborhood. The only child who said anything, the only child who helped protect themselves was the child who had been trained. All the others kept it their secret. Maybe it seemed a little shameful, maybe they were shocked by what they saw. Maybe it was their little secret that they wouldn’t tell anybody else. For whatever reason, the only child who said anything was the one who was trained.

Nathan:

That’s amazing and so encouraging as a parent. That book, first of all, two things.

Sam:

Imagine that mom come running up the table like, “Yeah, my seven-year-old has been exposed to pornography.”

Nathan:

You’re like, “What is happening right now?”

Sam:

That’s right.

Nathan:

That idea, I love. So Chris McKenna, Protect Young Eyes, loves to say that we celebrate like they just got straight As. This kid just saw something traumatic, that’s terrible, that we hate and responded to it in health and love and trust and we go nuts. I love that. As a parent, I actually have that book set aside for this week to go through with my nine-year-old before he goes into fourth grade again. We’ve read it before, but it’s the next one. That’s the junior version. There’s Good Picture, Bad Picture.

Sam:

That one it’s a little more mature and helps them understand their thinking brain versus their feeling brain and why they may feel some sensations and how they can respond to that, and really helps them, again, turn away, turn, run, and tell, and we want to help them do that.

Nathan:

Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Sam:

We’re often very difficult, “Okay. We got to get real serious with this conversation.” I think we have to be very careful as we’re talking to our kids. We don’t want to lecture. We want to be very approachable. We want to make it safe. We need to be the safest person in their life and that nothing is off limits. So I stole what I call the freakout dad game from our counselor. I played it with my kids, with my son, and this is how it goes. I would say, “Okay. I want you to go in the other room and I want you to think of a good story that you think you can really freak me out about. Just it’s got to be shocking and something you think-”

Nathan:

Real life or fictional?

Sam:

I left it up to him, but it was … The idea behind it was, “This is probably fictional, it’s okay. You can just make up whatever you want, but your ideas, you’re going to come and see if you can freak me out. Can you do that?” “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I can freak you out, dad.” So he comes out of his room, “Dad, I want to tell you a story.” I was like, “Oh, what happened?” He says, “Well, we were …” Yada yada yada, whatever it was, I think one time the practice was, “Me and some boys were down at the store and one of them had a phone and they were looking and showing pictures to each other and something.” Anyway, whatever it was, I was like, “Oh, well, tell me more about that and how did that make you feel and what was your reaction to that? Oh, I’m so glad you told me about that.” It just became a conversation and I didn’t go, “What? What have you been doing?” that kind of thing. It became a natural conversation, and when you practice it, then they know how to react and they know that you’re safe.

So it becomes a clearing way for you to have that ongoing every other month conversation, but also for those many conversations that happen along the way. Sometimes it can be really funny. I remember driving in our minivan and my son asking me, “Dad, what’s a condom?” and I think he’s six or seven years old, whatever. So the most important thing you can ask is, “Where did you hear that?” and, “Can you tell me more?” Tell me what you know about that.”

So one, you need to set some … You’re getting a frame from where they’ve heard it, how much they know about it, so you can have the appropriate conversation to meet the need. Now in this case, he goes, “Yeah, we’re going to go to see Aunt Annie and she lives in that some place that’s says …” “Oh, you mean a condominium. That’s what you mean?” So that was an easier conversation than where I thought it was going to go.

So you always ask, “Where did you hear that? Tell me more. What do you know? Tell me what you know so far,” and then you can build off that so you can have age appropriate conversation without going too far, farther than where they need to be, but they’re not going to do that if they have some fear of talking to you. So I have this terrible wrinkle right here in the center of my forehead that has been around since my 20s. When I think, I frown. So my wife will tell me, “Hey, Sam, you’re frowning,” and I’ll try to lift that frown.

Nathan:

Look surprised.

Sam:

So we need to be conscious of our body language because not only are the words … We want to say the right things, but sometimes our tone and how we’re talking and what our body language is saying is so important for that child and our arms crossed or are we open and is our face welcoming or is it about the lecture or do you feel uncomfortable having a conversation with your child or are you coming there with ease. They’re going to pick up on all that, and so you want to do as much you can to make these conversations go with ease and comfort. You’re training your child in the way they should grow up, they’ll not soon depart from it, right?

Nathan:

Proverbs 22:6 in them.

Sam:

One of the things that I found that you could do to lighten up the conversation is bring something that either you both enjoy or at least the child really enjoys, whether it’s a frozen Coke or ice cream or whatever else that we can crack some jokes, it’s okay for them to do it too, and laugh a little bit. Even though It’s a serious conversation, we want to keep it lighten up where they feel welcome to do the conversation. My son loved root beer as a kid. He’s not a big fan of it now as an adult, but when he is a kid he loved root beer. So I’d go out of my way to buy not just the regular old A&W or whatever else. It was the Craft root beer that comes in a four pack, right?

Nathan:

Yeah, for $8.

Sam:

We would talk about the different notes of the root beer and how that was, how sweet it is or whatever it was.

Nathan:

That’s amazing.

Sam:

That helps lighten the conversation. Again, our tone, we don’t do all the talking and when we listen, we really listen with our body and our tone and we want to always want to say the right things, but sometimes just how we say it is the most important thing that we can do. It’s okay, and this is especially good for teens is, “Hey, I don’t know.” When they ask you a question like, “I don’t really know the answer to that right now, but what I’ll do is I’ll find out more.”

Now, that really wins points with your kids when you say, “Hey, mom and dad are being vulnerable enough to say, ‘I don’t really know, but I’ll listen. find out and I’ll come back and we’ll talk about this. Let’s do it tomorrow. Would that be okay?'” or you state whatever day you’re going to do it, then do it that time. So that’s just a way to get this training started.

Nathan:

Well, that’s amazing. So we’re starting younger than we’d expect with open conversations and open body language using age appropriate content, some resources like Good Picture, Bad Picture Jr or the original, just Good Picture, Bad Picture, and not freaking out when they tell us things that we should feel feelings about. I should feel angry that my child was exposed, but I’m not going to act in anger. That anger is my warning, it’s my flag. I’m going, “Hey, something’s wrong,” and I’m acting in love or I should feel fear that this could hurt my child because it can. It’s a wild beast that will just ravage their hearts, and yet I’m not acting out of fear. I’m acting out of the hope I have for them. I love the way you’ve emphasized that.

There’s here’s so many ways we could take this, but I want to put a pin on this for the parents who are listening so this stays applicable. I guess I just have two questions and the first, I actually don’t know which one should be first. So I’ll just tackle them in any old order. Smartphones, you mentioned that multiple times, iPads and smartphones, those are typically the ways kids are getting into this. Do you have an age that you suggest for kids, for parents to give their children smartphones or a way to process that?

Sam:

We were talking just earlier about Chris McKenna from Protect Young Eyes and I provided you a link that provides really variety of tools and monitoring and parental controls that you can do on a number of devices, and so that link leads you to Protect Young Eyes and that page for that.

Nathan:

Perfect.

Sam:

Because we need different tools for different ages. Say the question again. I got lost.

Nathan:

Oh, no, you’re good, you’re good. With smartphones, specifically, was the first one.

Sam:

So where I went from that is Chris McKenna, I’ve heard of them say this over and over again and I wholeheartedly agree is wait to eight. You can remember it. Wait to eighth grade, not eight years old. Wait till eighth grade for a device. Kids younger and younger are having smartphones and smart devices. So they’re going to bug you and pester you about, “Hey, I’ve got phone shame.” You can just be okay with them having found shame if they have a flip phone or a device that doesn’t connect to the internet, that they can only make a phone call to you if that’s what you want to do.

In other words, if you want to let them have a phone at all, but we also need to protect our own devices just because we’re not giving a device to our kids. I can’t tell you the number of times where I’ve talked to parents who said, “I was on a road trip or this happened on my watch in my kitchen, in my living room and in my car.” I was talking to a mom and she says, “My mother and I, so my kid’s grandparent was in the front seat, I’m driving and we’re on the way to a park, a state park. My son asked if he could look up something on my phone about the park we’re going to. So I handed my phone over the backseat and they were like, ‘Oh, can we play this game?’ Hey, we want to pacify for a little while and they’re eight years old and the one cousin says to her son, ‘Hey, I dare you to look this up,’ and that became his first exposure to pornography in the backseat of their car on the way to the family trip.”

So we need to protect our own devices as well. Lead by example. Be accountable for how we’re using our devices. I think leading by example is one of the best things that you can do to model this for your kids.

Nathan:

That leads into my final question, which is a lot of us have history. You and I are talking about this like, “We’ve seen pornography.” It’s not something we relish talking about with our kids. There’s parents who are actively processing this in their own personal relationship, their marriage, friends they have, their church. There’s a lot of hurt here. How do we address this with our kids if it’s an area We’re still seeking victory or super sensitive we have victory, but man, it’s not a fun walk and we’re just personally tied in with this particular conversation?

Sam:

One, we always want to be winsome regardless. We have to deal with our issues and not push our issues often to them. I struggled with compulsive behavior with pornography because I just told you a bit of my story. So I got to become into recovery when my kids were very young and that was, I’m grateful for that. I didn’t have a lot of worries for them. I want to protect their devices, et cetera, but we began having these conversations and they’re both winsome and they didn’t need to carry my weight. They didn’t need to carry around all those issues. So I wasn’t open with them about that at that time because they didn’t need to be. Now they’re adults and they can know about dad’s struggle. In fact, they each have a copy of my book, The Healing Church: What Churches Get Wrong About Pornography and How to Fix It. So they know my story behind it, but at that age, they didn’t need to carry that weight.

So we’re here to show our kids love, know that we’re on their side, that we’re giving them information and tools because we love them and we care about them. We understand that some kids are getting things that they’re not and that’s okay, but I can also say that when there were young kids, eight, 10 years old coming into my home with a device in their hand and I had a basket at the door and I’d say, “Hey, we’re just going to leave that here. Oh, what you got? That’s a cool device,” and back then they weren’t as good with their passwords and the guards being able to see a device and I’ve sweep open a device and it would be covered in pornography at eight, 10 years old walking to my house with a device and says, “Hey, listen, I just want you to know everything’s okay. I’m going to keep your device here. We’ll talk to you. I want you to feel welcome and loved and know that … Hey, you’re going to have a good time tonight. Let’s just leave this here and I’ll talk with your dad tomorrow. Is that okay? I won’t make you do that by yourself. We’ll do that together.” I said, “Okay?”

I remember a kid, one specific kid doing that, that it happened with. I scooped up his device and he was 10. It’s just as soon as I had swept open the screen, he goes, “My brother’s been home from the Navy and I don’t know what he’s been doing on my device.” So I knew what I was going to find and it was hardcore, it was tough, but I didn’t shame him for that. I just said, “Hey, it’s okay. I want you to come in. Don’t worry about this. You’re going to have a good time tonight. I’m just going to keep this device here and we’ll talk to your dad later.”

He would come up to me at church and, “Mr. Sam, how are you doing?” because the shaming teaches kids to hide. I tell parents, if you ever want to teach your kids to hide better, then shame them, and that shame also is a big deal when it comes to kids really getting stuck in their teen years and as adults. So we want to get rid of the shame. We want to show love and kindness. We don’t want to be winsome as parents and give them good information that they can use.

Nathan:

Yeah, without making excuses. I love that example you shared like, “Hey, I’m not going to excuse this behavior, but I’m not going to just drop the hammer on you and expect you to be better. There’s a process and we can do it.” I love that encouragement of our kids don’t need to carry our weight That’s our process, we’re going to deal with that with God and with our family and with our counselors and whatever aid we need, and we also know what’s healthy for our kids. So That’s amazing. Sam, thank you so much for your time and for your expertise in this area. If parents need or have any questions, how can they find you? You mentioned a lot of resources. We’ll have the ones you mentioned in the show notes, the book, the link to Chris McKenna and Protect Young Eyes for some device and privacy setting stuff, and then The Healing Church, your book on how to process this as a community. Are there any other resources that we should tell families about?

Sam:

Wow, that’s a lot of resources right there.

Nathan:

That’s a lot.

Sam:

You can find a lot of great blogs, other resources at covenanteyes.com. You can download the chapter, the first chapter of the book at thehealingchurch.com as well.

Nathan:

Beautiful. Well, thank you for being with us and thank you for your time.

Sam:

It is an honor to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Nathan:

Parents, I hope you are encouraged and feel equipped to have this conversation with your children. Wherever you’re at in the process of raising them up in this digital world, to know that you have the questions you can ask, that there are resources out there to help you begin these conversations, whether it’s Good picture, Bad Picture or something like Covenant Eyes for beginning the accountability process, and that if you’re actively processing this, you’ll check out some of the other resources like maybe Sam’s book, The Healing Church. So if you have any questions or you want other resources, you can check out the show notes, you can check out or excuse me, you can email me, [email protected]. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Love God Use Tech. I hope You’ll join us next week as we continue this conversation about how we can love God and use tech.