Keeping Children safe from porn

To be honest, if I did have children, I would talk to them about the effects it has on their physical and mental health. Porn is everywhere , if you block it in your home, they'll be more likely to find out about it through friends and view it elsewhere.If the child is smart enough to view porn and hack their way through and watch it , they are smart enough to try and change their life around.Take a look in the Under 20s forum, you will be surprised how many kids are on there trying to reverse their life.
Long story short - I would discuss the problems porn brings at the age of 10 or 11.If I notice they are using it severely, I will limit electronic time down to 1-2hrs a day while supervising.

 

I think a good way to let them realise that PMO can effect them in a bad way, is by educating them about it. They aren't going to hear it from anybody else!

 

From my own personal experience (as a kid), trying to block it will just make them more curious. Forbidden fruit is the sweetest and all that. If they're super determined, they WILL find a way around whatever filters you put in place, or at the very least find a way to view it elsewhere (at school, at a friend's house, etc.)

It's tricky because kids, especially teenagers, seem hard-wired to try and rebel against their parents. If you tell them not to do something because it's bad, that'll instantly make them think it's cool and want to do it. Ultimately I think the best bet is to be straight with them about what porn does. If there's one thing teenagers care about more than being cool, it's trying to get sex. If you explain how porn can completely ruin your sex life and give you all kinds of dysfunctions that'll turn women off them, that might get through to their hormone-riddled mind.

 

It's something i care about deeply, i believe a lot of harm is done to individuals who have access to online porn when they are too young to understand. I would force the governments of this world to offer harsh punishments to those websites who promote free content (in order to hook users so that they pay later on) something similar is being trialed in the UK but in my opinion it has to be a global approach since so many web sites are hosted in obscure places in the world with very lax laws about indecency etc.

This is a problem that in the 21st century is becomming severe and affecting humanity as a whole, as Dr Patrick Carnes says 'online porn is a social experiment with unknown quantities and outcomes and the casualty in almost all cases he sees from a therapists perspective is intimacy'

It's no longer about 'freedom of speech' or being free to express your sexuality, all that is fine but today it comes at the expense of creating mental slaves to porn and victims on both sides of the spectrum from the performers/sex trafficking victims/ to the user, that's not freedom when a person grows up feeling like they have to seek out the most disturbing acts on the internet just to get the same sense of excitement they got before and miss out on real life encounters which have meaning and substance to them.

Online porn is so vast and so deep that it sucks people in and spits them out, people become complicit in their own destruction believing the myths that porn companies peddle about their users sexuality etc when all the user is doing is consuming another persons take on sexuality.

I think schools need to be brave and make sex education not just about what bit goes where and how to make a baby, but in this day and age should be talking about the problems that people face from things like sex trafficking, sex crime, addiction, consent.

 

Pornography is an enemey that is very hard to beat. Most people still deem it harmless entertainment, sure a guy that is known to be addicted is frowned upon but within 'moderation' it is even more accepted than alcohol is. How do you keep your children from this? Answer it is damn near impossible without becoming a tyranic parent. Id say educate them about the dangers of it, keep an open mind and try to raise them in such a way that they will be open to talk to you. Even so it will be hard to avoid any of this... I know my parents strict ways to keep pe from any form of porn partially let to my addiction. The moment i had a smartphone it was like that world opened for me, the fact that it was deemed wrong only made it better

 

one of my life principle is to not correct someone........ofcourse we should tell the negative effects of addiction....but i think we should often guard ourselves more than correcting others.......as it is an old saying ......experience is the best teacher

 

"the nofap community would agree that our kids should never get near porn, the same way you wouldn't let them smoke, drink or do drugs."

Some of you will not like what I am about to say. But I believe that when you say to your children "You should not do that!" it makes it way more attractive to try it. Instead they should be able to learn from their own mistakes and that will be much more educational than someone saying "You should not watch porn, it is bad for you!". How much have our parents told us to not do something and just because they said we weren't allowed to do it, we wanted to do it so badly. (Like the person in a post above this: You are creating a forbidden fruit.)

My parents never said that I wasn't allowed to do something, I just had to be responsible. They have allowed me to try alcohol, porn (ofcourse they never said something about this, but they knew it), drugs (soft & hard) and I'm not addicted. I even like to stay sober. I learned my own lessons and I believe that has learned me more than always listening to my parents.

Sometimes breaking the rules gives you a lot opportunity to develop knowledge and life lessons. The wisest person will not always have been the most well-behaved.

To conclude: Do not prevent your kids from watching it, they should learn from their own mistakes and make their own decisions. But if you do, don't expect them to never watch it, kids will find a way. Instead of forbidding it, create an open relationship, talk about it, talk about your own past and give them the opportunity to decide for themselves. So that they are able to learn from it.

Again some of you may not agree.

Keep it up!
Thomas

 

I kind of have a different perspective on addiction. I have no argument against neural pathways, they are science based and correfd. But I do not believe they are the reason for addiction. I believe that addiction always arises from you having a negative belief about yourself, a bad relationship with yourself or when you are running away from something.

You see when you started watching porn, porn wasn't the problem. The substance is never the problem, it is you using it to make yourself feel better. "You feel stressed, no problem porn will fix that."

Every time you use porn (or any substance) to get rid of a feeling or something unwanted, you say to yourself that you are not good enough as you are. Which will make the feeling stronger in the future. And will make you crave porn even more.

I have tried the "just stay away from porn for 90 days, you will be rewired" advice for 3 years. I never got rid of porn addiction. It was only when I got intouch with myself, that I was able to deal with porn addicton.

I even started fapping and watching porn again when I was at day 110 to test it out. I didn't like the feeling, so got back to nopmo without any real effort. No battle.

Porn wasn't the problem, it was that I didn't want to feel my feelings, feel the pain of life, feel lonely, feel sad, feel anxious. I didn't want to feel it so I indulged in porn, alcohol, games, self-help, girls...

Get intouch with yourself, overcome porn addiction.

Keep it up.
Thomas

(An intresting question: If you have to look out that you never watch porn again, for the rest of your life, are you then even recoverd? Or have you dealt with the symptoms, but not the problem?)