There is no doubt that pornography usage is at record highs. With the proliferation of smartphones, the development of super-fast wifi and limitless internet browsing, porn is more readily accessible than ever before.
The Average Age a Child First Sees Pornography is Shockingly Younger Than You’d Think
The stats speak for themselves — just take a glance at these extraordinarily alarming statistics from internet security company WebRoot:
- Every second 28,258 users are watching pornography on the internet
- Every second $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography on the internet
- Every second 372 people are typing the word “adult” into search engines
- 40 million American people regularly visit porn sites
- 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornography
- 25% of all search engine queries are related to pornography, or about 68 million search queries a day
- One-third of porn viewers are women
- Search engines get 116,000 queries every day related to child pornography
- 34% of internet users have experienced unwanted exposure to pornographic content through ads, pop up ads, misdirected links or emails
- 2.5 billion emails sent or received every day contain porn
- Every 39 minutes a new pornography video is being created in the United States
- About 200,000 Americans are “porn addicts”
To further grasp just how big an issue this really is, all you have to do is look at recent website rankings published by Similar Web. Of course, the big hitters dominate to the top 5 spots: Google, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon and Yahoo. After these, however, the list takes a disturbing turn: The sixth, seventh and eighth most viewed websites in the entire continental U.S. are all hardcore pornography sites.
This is highly concerning.
Through numerous studies, pornography has been proven to erode healthy human sexual function and is know to ruin relationships. According to TIME, marriages are more than twice as likely to end in divorce if one or both partners begin to consume pornographic material on their own. Private pornography use in marriage breeds secrecy, shame and relational ruin.
And if you think Christians are exempt from the snares of this societal disease, you could not be more wrong. According to an extensive 2016 research project conducted by the Barna group, some 57 percent of pastors admit they struggle with pornography, or have in the past. The figure is even higher for youth pastors, at 64 percent.
Considering the extensive personal, spiritual and relational damage pornography inflicts on young people, the conclusions Barna drew surrounding attitudes toward pornography usage among teenagers was utterly heartbreaking. In a bombshell statement, the research group said they found that “teens & young adults view ‘not recycling’ as more immoral than viewing porn.”
According to Barna’s study, entitled, “The Porn Phenomenon,” the damage to both the spiritual well-being and ministry health of these individuals is incomprehensible:
“The vast majority of faith leaders who struggle with porn say this has significantly affected their ministry in a negative manner. It is not clear why, but youth pastors are twice as likely as pastors to report this kind of unfavorable impact,” the study noted.
And of course, the weight of intense guilt becomes incapacitating.
“87% of pastors who use porn feel a great sense of shame about it,” Barna explained, adding that “55% of pastors who use porn say they live in constant fear of being discovered.”
The spread of explicit content over the past couple of decades is well-recognized by those who are in pastoral ministry. Now that porn has “gone digital,” effectively combatting the habit is an arduous uphill struggle.
“93% of pastors and 94% of youth pastors say it is a much bigger or somewhat bigger problem than it was in the past,” Barna noted.
So it is a huge issue, both in and out of Church. But with so many Christians wasting their time engaging a fictitious digital representation of their sexual desires, what is being done to help them?
In an alarming remark, Barna noted that “Despite the clear-eyed awareness of the problem their congregations are facing in the use of pornography, most churches do not have programs specifically designed to assist those struggling with porn use.”
Apart from directly addressing the issue from the pulpit, what are some of the key resources that Churches should get hold of to help combat this devastating addiction? ChurchMag writer Jeremy Smith created a list of some helpful resources and software and that will help people keep accountable and stay free from porn:
- X3Watch
For me, this is the software that recommend. Install it on your church’s computers, consider buying it for your congregation members to give away for free, and setup the accountability groups right away. - CovenantEyes.com
While CovenantEyes also has software, I actually recommend them because of their literature. Go download everyone one of their eBooks and make them available to everyone you know. - X3Groups
For those that are currently struggling with pornography, there is accountability and support groups available to you. Encourage your leadership to know and promote these groups. - iParent.tv
I would say that unless your job is to focus on the dangers of the Internet, you cannot keep up. Instead, use iParent.tv as a trusted source that you can give to parents that want to protect their children. Even more, give this link to the children’s and youth pastor’s leadership. - Everaccountable
Pornography is available on more than just computers now. This software is perfect for Android mobile devices. iOS, we suggest X3Watch. - Pure Sex Youth Group Small Group Curriculum
Have your youth group leaders not only helping those struggling, but preaching Biblical practices from the pulpit.
Many organizations are seeking to highlight not only the incredible personal damage that pornography inflicts on the user, but also the dark underworld in which it is developed — a world saturated with abuse, coercion and even sex slavery.
According to anti-porn group “Fight The New Drug,” the relationship between sex trafficking and the production of pornography is absolutely indisputable:
“There are all kinds of connections, big and small, between pornography and sex trafficking. There are incidental connections, like the fact that exposure to pornography has been shown to make viewers less compassionate toward victims of sexual violence and exploitation. There are ‘supply-and-demand’ connections: the simple fact that pornography—especially when viewing habits and fantasies involve violence or other fetishes—increases the demand for sex trafficking, as more and more viewers want to act out what they see.
There is the ‘training manual’ connection: the well-documented fact that porn directly informs what goes on in trafficking. Traffickers and sex buyers get ideas from porn, and then make their victims watch as a way of showing them what they’ll be expected to do, so that the violent fantasy concocted by some porn director and his or her actors becomes the reality for some trafficking victim. And then there is the risk factor connection: the fact that, along with poverty and substance abuse, a child growing up in a home where pornography is regularly consumed is far more likely to be trafficked at some point in his or her life.”
Perhaps the most shocking element of this relationship is that pornography and sex trafficking are often one and the same.
“They’re often the same thing,” notes Fight the New Drug. “We can spend hours and hours pointing out these cause-and-effect, symbiotic relationships between trafficking and porn. Those connections are real, and that’s an important conversation to have. But let’s not allow that to entrench the idea that porn and sex trafficking are always separate. Far more often than people realize, they’re not.”
The organization notes that “nearly half of sex trafficking victims” have reported that they were forced to be involved in the production of pornography while they were being held captive.
And no, this is not far-fetched. It is happening right here in the United States, as FTND notes:
“The July 2007 issue of Taboo, a publication owned by Hustler, featured a multi-page feature of a young woman being held prisoner and severely sexually abused by her captors. They took photos and videos of her and sold them as porn. [23] In another case, a Miami jury convicted two men of luring women to Florida to audition for modeling jobs, drugging them, filming them being raped, and selling the footage as porn online and to stores across the U.S. This went on for five years. [24]
How many of those videos, in five years, were viewed by individuals who would never dream of contributing to human trafficking, who assumed they were watching the work of consenting performers?”
With the exponentially increasing availability of free porn, it can be easy to view it as a casual commodity that serves the simple purpose of satisfying a sexual urge. But as we’ve seen, this could not be further from the truth. Porn comes at a tremendous cost to users and countless others. In addition to being personally and spiritually ruinous, it is also shrouded in degradation, abuse, harassment and even slavery.
Let’s remember all these aspects next time we are tempted to engage in a few wayward clicks, and let’s be honest with ourselves and others as we seek to confess and conquer this calamitous sexual addiction that continues to threaten our very lives.