Last week, a friend sent me a Reddit thread on “dark secrets of the porn industry.” I won’t link to it here (there are no pictures or videos in it, but even the descriptions are graphic). Suffice it to say that it was a yards-long summation of our culture’s vile underbelly. Porn performers talked about prolapsed body parts. Rape and sexual assault are common. Industry employees discussed what they see on a daily basis. I’ve been researching this subject for years, but reading the thread I wondered again: Why do we allow this?
A recent study conducted by Professor Neil Thurman of the Department of Media and Communication (IfKW) at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, in collaboration with statistician Fabian Obster (Universität der Bundeswehr München) was another reminder of how common this material is. According to his study of 1,000 British adolescents, nearly four-fifths of 16- and 17-year-olds have encountered porn on the Internet. Most of them stated that they view porn regularly; many said they’d done so the day they’d filled out the questionnaire. In response, Thurman called on regulators to do something about young people accessing this content.
This brings me to a new initiative from Covenant Eyes, created with well-known speaker and podcaster Matt Fradd. Covenant Eyes is launching a new program called Strive to help people break free of porn, and Karen Potter, the Director of Church and Ministry Outreach at Covenant Eyes, explained why it could be precisely what struggling addicts are waiting for. It launches at the beginning of June.
