Pornography has no place in your home. Like a thief poised to steal your most valuable possessions, internet pornography is trying to steal your family. While we lock our doors against intruders we often allow porn to enter through the front door. It’s time to lock up!

In previous articles we have detailed the [cref internet-pornography growth] and the [cref internet-pornography-why-it-matters danger] of internet pornography. It is vital to keep this lurking monster out of homes and out of our lives.

Keep the computer in a busy room of the house.

This may be the easiest solution to pornography. By putting computers in a busy, open room of the house, you take away the secrecy, anonymity and privacy of viewing explicit materials. Make sure the screen is turned toward the center of the room so that anyone passing through the room can see the screen. This is especially true for children who often become victims of internet predators. Children should not have an internet connected computer in their bedroom.

Use a Buddy System

Admittedly more inconvenient this idea will help keep internet users on the straight and narrow. Commit that you will not use the internet for any reason unless your buddy is present.  Again, this is especially useful for children who can be pared with an adult for supervision.

Establish No-Use Times for the Internet

Set certain times that the internet cannot be used. For example, the internet is off-limits if there are no adults present. Adults can commit to the same policy if necessary. In addition, very early hours and very late, when others are still sleeping, should be made off-limits too.

Engage and Examine Browser Tracking

By default, most internet browsers record a history of what sites have been visited and when. These histories can be easily turned off or otherwise disabled by the youngest users. Set a policy that histories must never be disabled. Then visit the history listing at least once a week to see when the computer was on the internet and what sites were visited. This is not a perfect solution. Individual entries in the history list can be deleted but this is a start.

Use Internet Filtering Software

This solution takes a little more work and will cost as much as $50-$75 per year. However it is well worth the investment. Many different filtering packages are available but they should include, at a minimum, the following capabilities:

• Web Based System. These systems essentially route your viewing through their servers and so monitor where your computer is linking. This is a far more secure system and less likely to be bypassed.
• Password Protected. A password is required to make changes to the system and to bypass blocks. Even when bypassed, the system records that event.
• Notification of Accountability Partners. This may be the most important criteria. The best filtering software will send a report to people you designate each week. By causing a report to be emailed to your spouse, your minister or some person you deeply respect, you will create a great deterrence to viewing porn or other undesirable sites.
• Schedule Internet Use and Total Time Online. Choose a package that will allow you to schedule times when the internet can be accessed. Other times will be blocked. You should also be able to set the total time per day that the internet can be accessed. When a user consumes the preset amount of time he will be blocked.
• Email and Chat Monitoring. Select a package that will monitor and even record online chats through AIM or Messenger.

In my judgment, the very best program available is SafeEyes. This program is highly tested and recommended. User support is available. The cost is $49.95 per year. More extensive packages are available.

Please remember. There is no such thing as a perfect solution. Vigilance is required. These solutions will help.

Thursday we will look at other resources for those dealing with pornography.

What do you think? Do you have experiences or ideas to share? Please leave them here for everyone to see.

Pornography is not a harmless distraction. [cref internet-pornography Internet pornography continues to grow rapidly and has already fully infiltrated our culture.]  Families are suffering from its effects even when its usage is hidden. While some view the occasional, or even frequent, use of the internet to find and view porn as a harmless pastime, the truth is terrible consequences will arise.

Read on to learn why the practice is not harmless but horrible.

Internet Pornography Delivers Horrible Spiritual Consequences

The Bible is plain that sexual behavior belongs only in the context of the marriage relationship. In what is probably the most universally accepted moral code, the 10 Commandments, adultery is forbidden. Jesus said that adultery even includes lust apart from physical contact (Matthew 5:28). Of course adultery and a variety of other sexual sins are included in the lists of Galatians 5:19-21. The eternal consequences are severe.

Beyond the eternal penalties, one suffers in the present as well. Feelings of deep guilt are often reported, especially after one has become addicted to the habit of viewing pornography. The user knows that something just isn’t right yet feels driven to participate in the viewing.

Such guilt also contributes to feelings of estrangement from God. For a person who has previously lived his life in accordance with God’s will, such estrangement is particularly painful. All of this because of a supposedly harmless habit.

Internet Pornography Delivers Horrible Family Consequences

The consequences within the family are especially painful. Counselors report that clients often enter counseling because they have been discovered by another family member. The embarrassment is surely extreme.

At the root of the family consequence is the destruction of trust. Spouses have a right to expect that their partners will be exclusive to them. Any relationship that besets the marital one must be ended. Yet those entrapped in internet pornography return again and again to their “virtual affair.” As one writer said it, faithful spouses are forced to share their bed with a porn model.

Counselors also report that persons caught up in porn tend to drift away from the intimacies normal in marriage. Although the person viewing the porn does not intend to become estranged from their spouse they almost always do. They soon lose the desire and the drive that once marked their marriages. The object of their desires is replaced by a virtual friend.

Perhaps one of the most frightening consequences for many is the impact on children. Children tend to follow in the steps of parents. Those who see or are constantly aware of pornography in the home will tend to view it as normal. Usual growth and development will be marred by this abnormal addition to their lives.

Finally, divorce is often the end of pornographic encounters. Researchers have observed that an addiction to porn is much like an addiction to a drug. There is an increasing demand for more and more in order to achieve the “high” that viewing porn can produce. Often, users report moving from simply viewing pictures to watching videos and then to engaging in online “chat” with the models. Others move toward chat rooms where they begin to talk with others who may be bored in their relationships and are looking for more. Before long the “harmless” pastime of viewing pornography has grown into a full affair. Marital failure is imminent.

Internet Pornography Delivers Horrible Personal Consequences

Issues of self esteem are common in any addiction. The man or woman caught up in this horrible sin slowly begin to descend into a deeper and deeper morass of self defilement and decreasing esteem. The shame associated with  the inability to control one’s own actions is great. Even faced with the very real possibility of loosing a family, those addicted continue to pursue one more thrill and soon find themselves confronted with the embarrassment of public discovery, loss of family and perhaps loss of income.

No one who begins tampering with this harmless pastime ever expects the consequences it brings. Internet pornography is not a harmless distraction.

Tomorrow we will offer suggestions on avoiding this problem so that it never takes hold in your lives. Parents will especially be interested in how to protect their children from internet pornography.

As always your comments are most welcomed. Please leave them below.

Someone you know views internet pornography.

Accurate statistics are almost impossible to find but there is considerable evidence that internet pornography is growing both in volume and in the damage it is doing to men and women. Indirect evidence shows that more and more people are indulging in the viewing of porn and they doing it for longer and longer periods of time.

The Growing Internet Pornography Problem

Careful observations of recent trends demonstrates the problem.

1. More and more pornography sites on the web. The increasing number of porn sites is evident by the frequency in which they appear in otherwise innocent internet search results. Search engines like Google and Yahoo are careful to prevent trash sites from popping up in searches but the sheer number seems to be more than the engines can keep up with. Searches for some medical problems or a search to find information about a celebrity are almost certain to generate porn sites included in the listings.
2. More and more pornographic spam email. How often do you find odd emails sent to you from people and places you do not know? Many times these emails promote internet sites that specialize in various forms of adultery or pornography. The fact that they are being sent so frequently suggests the technique works; that people actually open and respond to the messages.
3. Increases in internet pornography as a component of marital discord. Marital counselors are seeing more and more clients where addictive internet pornography viewing is at least a part of the problem. Men and women steal intimacies from their spouses by consorting with internet porn sites.
4. Corporate IT departments verify rising pornography viewing on the job. Businesses are spending more and more time and money preventing the viewing of pornography on their corporate networks. Businessmen are concerned about the vast amount of time spent on such sites and the damage such viewing can bring to their employees.

There can be little question that internet pornography is growing. Some estimates suggest that web-based porn generates more revenue than that from ABC, CBS and NBC combined. It is big business and it is growing.

20 to 33 percent of internet users go online for sexual purposes according to studies done as recently as 2005. ((Cooper, A., Delmonico, D. & Burg, R., 2000 )), ((Dew, B., 2005)) Those same studies, and others, report that up to 17% of users actually fit definitions of sexual addictions. In almost all cases, both users and their partners report a change or chilling in their intimate relationships after the obsession with internet porn began.

The New York Times published an article almost ten years ago that documents the growth of the industry back then. If anything, it is larger today.

Spurred by changes in technology that make pornography easier to order into the home than pizza, and court decisions that offer broad legal protection, the business of selling sexual desire through images has become a $10 billion annual industry in the United States, according to Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass., and the industry’s own Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

$10 billion in 2000? Can you imagine what that has grown to today?

Even the federal government is not exempt from employees using government computers for porn access. Just a month ago, two United States Senators took the National Science Foundation to task for failing to properly discipline employees who used  taxpayer equipment to view porn. “In one case, a senior staff member used his agency computer to view live sexual performances and engage in sex-oriented online “chatting” with performers,” the report alleged.

Internet Pornography Is An Easy Addiction

Few addictive behaviors have grown as quickly as internet pornography. In past decades, one had to search for pornographic magazines in sleazy shops in a bad part of town or behind the counter in some convenience store. Today internet pornography has changed all that.

Internet porn is especially powerful for three key reasons. Some have called these three reasons a “triple engine” effect.

1. Internet pornography is cheap or free. Many porn sites offer free images or videos. Often the provider hopes to draw in a user by teasing them with samples. Often porn sites offer subscriptions to their raunchiest material for a few dollars a month to anyone with a credit card, debit card or access to an online payment service.
2. Internet pornography is instant gratification. Someone searching for internet porn can find it with a single one word search on Google or Yahoo. Within minutes, a user will be deep into pornography. There is little or no time delay between the decision to engage in viewing porn and the moment it is actually found. Our culture preaches instant gratification in many areas of life and the internet makes it supremely possible.
3. Internet pornography is anonymous. Gone are the days of slipping into that sleazy shop and trying to buy a video or magazine without being seen by someone. Now one can surf the waves of internet porn with hardly a trace.

These three components, free, instant and anonymous, make internet porn a sure bet to attract and hold many people. In the coming days, we will publish daily articles on pornography. Be sure and follow along. You will learn much and hopefully prevent problems in your own life from this insidious temptation.

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