With the upcoming Christmas gift-giving season, many children have wish lists containing digital devices, including tablets, smartphones, gaming consoles, and smart TVs. Yet even tech-savvy parents might feel concerned about giving these devices as gifts, because children could potentially be exposed to dangers on the internet, including online pornography and predators.
The age of first exposure to pornography is between 8 and 9, according to Father Allen Hoffa, pastor of Holy Guardian Angels, Reading and chair of the Lumen Christi Commission, which aids the faithful of the Diocese of Allentown in fighting the evils of pornography.
He said parents are often “blindsided” when it comes to their children accessing pornography. Parents “may have talked with their children about how pornography is wrong, but they’ve not conceived of the depth of how manipulative [it] can be,” resulting in children finding “workarounds to device security.”
To help parents facing this challenge, Father Hoffa and the Lumen Christi Commission recommend the Defend Young Minds website at www.defendyoungminds.com. Available on this website is a free three-step guide for parents called the Digital Safety Planner. The planner demystifies the process of setting up filters and parental controls, and gives advice on supervising online activity and starting important conversations.
For personal devices, Defend Young Minds recommends that parents add protection to their home wireless networks (Wi-Fi) by using internet filters, which either come pre-installed on newer routers (such as those offered by Gryphon), or can be separately purchased and installed on existing routers (such as parental controls offered by Circle).
These filtering systems may also offer other useful functions, including time controls and assigned bedtimes, which cut off internet access when children should be sleeping.
However, a router’s internet filters aren’t a perfect solution. It’s still possible for children to opt to take their devices off the home Wi-Fi and use a smartphone’s cellular network to avoid internet filters. For this reason, it might also be necessary to add parental controls to a child’s device. These provide another layer of protection to safeguard kids from accidentally accessing inappropriate content.
Some companies offering parental control and accountability software for devices are Bark, Canopy, and Covenant Eyes.
For more information on protecting children and their devices from pornography, visit this Defend Young Minds webpage: “Filtering 101: Protect Kids From Porn on New Devices.”
Even if parents take every step to protect their children's personal devices, they should also be proactive about school devices. Defend Young Minds recommends that parents check their school district websites and review the “Acceptable Use Policy” (AUP) to understand the filtering on their children's school-provided devices.
If parents aren’t comfortable with the school protections, they should check if school policy allows parents to add more security to school devices. Though if the school device is connected to the home network and a router with filtering, it will be protected from the internet.
For more information on keeping children safe when using school technology, visit this Defend Young Minds webpage: “5 Troubles with Tech at School and 5 Top Ways to Keep Students Safe.”
Another layer of protection is for parents to supervise their children's online activity. This can be as simple as establishing household rules for device usage, such as allowing devices only in common areas, collecting them at bedtime, and charging them in parents' bedrooms.
Additionally, parents may choose to invest in monitoring technology from companies like Bark, which monitors keywords and phrases that could indicate questionable device usage and sends alerts to parents.
As a final layer of protection, help your child develop 'internal filters' by discussing the harms of pornography. Though this can be a challenging conversation, this free guide from Defend Young Minds offers advice and strategies: https://www.defendyoungminds.com/product/quick-start-guide.
If any person in the Diocese of Allentown is struggling with pornography addiction, they can contact the Lumen Christi Commission at 610-921-2729 ext. 2205, 610-207-3441, or adlumenchristi@allentowndiocese.org. All calls and emails are strictly confidential. The Lumen Christi website is www.adlumenchristi.org.
Copy Permalink
