Survey Says...

I've been conducting a survey of visitors to this site trying to get some primary research around behaviors related to pornography use. If you would like to contribute to the survey, CLICK HERE.  The findings thus far are interesting and somewhat depressing. The average age of the respondents was around 34 and 70 percent were men. Seventy-five percent of respondents were exposed to pornography before they were 14. Almost 40 percent were exposed before age 11. An interesting correlation here is that those exposed before 11 were much more likely to identify themselves as addicted to pornography as an adult. I think that is a HUGE warning cry for today's youth, whose average age of exposure is somewhere around 9 because of the Internet. If my informal survey is any indication, we could be facing a massive epidemic of pornography addiction as this generation matures.

I'll share one more stat in this post and then follow up with later posts detailing the remainder of the survey results. This is one of the most important stats next to age of exposure. Kids don't go seeking out pornography at age nine. I sure wasn't when I stumbled upon my father's pornography collection at that age. Of those responding to the survey, more than half were first exposed to pornography at home via their father's collection or from a friend's fathers collection. I'm sure if this survey were done with kids today we would see the Internet as a huge source, but we're still talking about seeing it at HOME. I don't have kids so I hesitate to comment on raising them, but parents today must take personal responsibility for protecting their kids from pornography. From everything I've learned, early exposure is one of the first building blocks of an addiction. I think we have to change the mindset that viewing porn is just a "rite of passage" for kids. It is a rite of passage for sex addicts.

Not every kid who views pornography at an early age will end up like me (going to prison for possessing child pornography), but I bet that almost every person who ends up like me was exposed to pornography early.
Take steps to protect your family, ask questions about what they are doing online, use accountability software like Covenant Eyes to monitor their behavior, talk to them about the damage pornography can do and how they have a personal responsibility to walk away.

Resources for Internet safety
Safety Tips from Center for Missing and Exploited Kids
Safety Tips from NetSmartz.com
Cyber Tipline to report suspected Internet crimes
Covenant Eyes - 30 day free trial

God bless,
David