At TOBET, one of the most frequent and desperate pleas for help that we hear concerns pornography.  It’s snagging our young men, beginning around age 8 (and even some girls and women are being pulled in).  If your son or grandson has a smartphone or tablet (without filtering software), be assured, he is seeing these images, or soon will, wittingly or unwittingly.

Today’s pornography is nothing as benign as pictures of unclothed women; it’s harsh images and videos of some truly unspeakable acts.  The pinup centerfolds of old seem almost innocent in comparison.

To put it bluntly, pornography is ruining lives and relatively few people are saying or doing anything about it.  This is my letter to the young men in my life whom I dearly love and want to protect.

Letter to the Young Men in My Life

I have known you since you were born, and loved you every day since. I couldn’t bear the thought that I might have made a difference for you, if I had only said something at the right time, to preserve you from something that could rob you of your life’s happiness.  That thing is pornography.

You may laugh, and think: how could it be that bad?  Here’s how:

Pornography conditions you to regard women as things, rather than people.  You may not see this effect at first, but over time, it coarsens your attitude toward real live women, and believe me, they can tell.

Pornography trains you to respond to sex as something other than love.  Sex becomes a toy, to amuse you, comfort you, cure your boredom… and eventually it will rob you of your natural ability to respond to real women.

The fantasies portrayed in pornography get farther and farther away from any connection to real love.  There is an addictive quality to pornography that begins to require more and more radical expressions of sexual activity to arouse a man, even a young man.  Men who have used pornography for a long time are only aroused by truly ugly sexual situations.

Eventually a man has difficulty being aroused by real-live women. That is why Viagra is so widespread these days among young men.  Erectile dysfunction used to be an “old man’s” problem but now millions of men under the age of 40 are seeking help for it. Pornography has spoiled them for everything but fantasy.

Pornography actually makes your life boring, as it takes your attention away from real people, your work or studies and fun (real fun, that is, not fantasy fun.) Even when a man is at work or in class or out on a date, he has images of pornography in the back of his mind (and sometimes in the front of his mind) which always seem to be much more exciting that what is actually going on.

This is a great formula for a wasted life. Men become entrenched in pornography when they are young, and by the time they see how much damage it does, they’re already addicted.

It’s addictive. Men who have used pornography for a long time report that it is extremely difficult to stop. I have seen utter desperation and self-loathing in men of all ages who hate pornography, especially as it gets uglier and more disgusting, but cannot help themselves from looking at it.  Experts say that 80% of young men in your age group are at risk of becoming addicted to pornography.

Attorneys report that about 60% of the divorce cases they handle these days cite pornography as a factor in the marriage breakdown.

The porn industry is selling about $10 billion of product per year in the US. So even if you’re looking at pornography “for free” in the beginning, know that there is a profit motive underneath.  What you get addicted to today, for free, is someday going to cost you a lot of money, as well as your happiness and peace of mind.

Looking at pornography actually creates changes in your body because of the release of the neurochemical dopamine. Excess chronic consumption of pornography actually changes the frontal lobe of the brain, damaging the “braking system” of the brain. This damage is seen in drug addicts, alcoholics, the morbidly obese, and men with long pornography use.  The longer the use goes on, the worse the damage is, and the less capability the man has to control it.

We are created for love, beauty, goodness and truth.  Pornography is the opposite of all those things, and yet it has the power to completely captivate a person. If you’ve already gotten a little taste of it, now is a good time to stop.  The sooner you quit, the easier it will be.  If you don’t quit until ten years from now, it will be unimaginably more difficult.

A good way to quit is to filter your websites and have internet accountability, on your computer and phone.  One group we have worked with at TOBET is Covenant Eyes. www.covenanteyes.com.  Please check out their website.

I will always love you and do anything to help you.  You can count on me.

Your loving mama/auntie/grandma/friend

Some useful links:

http://fightthenewdrug.org/get-the-facts/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marnia-robinson/no-porn-no-viagra_b_489194.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050060/

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/a-letter-to-my-sons-about-pornography

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