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Jewish World Review Nov. 11, 2005 / 9 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766 What are your kids watching on the Web? By Lori Borgman
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The Internet has aptly been compared to an ocean filled with beautiful pearls waiting to be discovered. For children, it can also be an ocean filled with sharks in the form of pornography.
A report on children and pornography by Third Way, a progressive strategy group, is both enlightening and sobering. Test your knowledge by answering the following:
Question: What is the average age at which children are first exposed to Internet pornography?
A: Age 11.
Q: In 1998, there were 14 million individual pornographic Web pages. How many are there today?
A: 420 million, with estimates that porn pages will soon reach 1 billion.
Q: What is the single largest group viewing on-line pornography?
A: You were probably thinking young men in the 18-25 demographic or middle-age men, but the answer is children ages 12-17.
Those would be young people with minds and morals still forming, kids so inexperienced at life that they begin to believe deviate pornographic behavior is normal and acceptable. For many of those young men, pornography changes the way they think and behave, and their expectations of young women. What an uphill battle for young females with any self-respect left.
The stigma of shame once attached to pornography is disappearing. Porn has become a laugh line for family-time sitcoms.
Though sexual in nature, the porn industry is not driven by a lust for sex; it is driven by unadulterated greed.
In 2000, there was a company that sold more pornographic films than Larry Flynt of Hustler. Would you guess that company was Playboy or, oh, let's say something wacky like General Motors? Odd choice, you say.
In 2000, DirecTV, a subsidiary of General Motors, sold more pornographic films than Flynt himself. How ironic that GM, concerned about air bags, anti-lock brakes and your family's safety, owned another company capable of pulverizing your family's hearts and minds. In 2003 GM sold its stake in DirecTV to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Other corporations making ‘obscene profits’ on adult pay-per-view include AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Marriott International, Holiday Inn, Sheraton and Hilton. You won't read about this in their annual reports, but if a good share of your profits came from porn, you probably wouldn't publicize it either. To their credit, Omni Hotels quit offering adult pay-per-view several years ago.
The pornography lobby, also known as the Free Speech Coalition attempts to persuade politicians that the $12 billion annual porn profit is good for America. Funny, the e-mails I receive from people whose lives have been devastated by porn addiction would indicate it is anything but good.
Accessibility to porn is notoriously easy. Nearly all porn sites use the honor system. (Porn and honor in the same sentence — what s not to make your head explode?) The honor system consists of asking visitors to check a box affirming that they are at least 18 or 21, depending on the state. It's so easy a child can do it. Oh right, that s part of the plan. Hook 'em young.
Then there's porn-napping, a programming strategy designed to lure children who misspell a domain name like Disneyland, Pokemon or Teletubbies. One wrong keystroke and kids can find themselves diverted to raunchy adult sites.
In the time it took to read this column, several hundred more porn pages were posted on the Internet, all of which leads to the final question:
What are the kids in your house viewing on-line and what is your plan of action?
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JWR contributor Lori Borgman is the author of , most recently, "Pass the Faith, Please" (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) and I Was a Better Mother Before I Had Kids To comment, please click here. To visit her website click here.
© 2005, Lori Borgman
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Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
