How to Talk to Your Kids About Pornography Recap

This might be shocking, but it's wise to begin when they are pre-schoolers. As soon as you have a device in their hands and are not with them every single moment—and that seems to be earlier and earlier these days—they need a vocabulary to tell you when they've seen a "bad picture." During the workshop, we mentioned Good Pictures, Bad Pictures which is a book that gives young children an awareness that there is danger on the Internet and a vocabulary to talk to you about it. (Think of this kind of like the conversation on "stranger danger" you start with them very early in their life. It will not rob them of their innocence but will protect it when the conversation is presented carefully.) This book was originally created for children aged 7-11 and there is a newer version of it for children aged 3-6. We, at True Girl and Born to Be Brave believe every home should have these books! They get our strong endorsement.

The answer is: never. If they are on the Internet they will likely encounter porn at some level. This is especially true on social media which has become a favorite spot for the creators of porn to sell their goods and invite life-time customers to their menu of offerings. It’s hard enough for an adult to deal with the temptations to click on an image. Imagine how much harder it is for tweens who don’t yet possess the emotional maturity to cope with the digital world.

Social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram have a minimum age requirement of 13 years old.  Users who enter a date of birth under 13 can’t set up an account.  However, this small detail is easily sidestepped simply by entering a fake year of birth.  Well-meaning moms have helped their kids create accounts so their kids wouldn’t be left out of the loop with friends.  Before you are tempted to do that, please consider this: legally your child must be 13 or older to have a social media account.  But just because your child turns 13 doesn’t mean they’re ready.  You must consider their emotional and spiritual maturity, not just their age.  Our resident digital expert, Arlene Pellicane offers four questions that will help you determine your child's readiness.

Let us put this into a word-picture. Giving your child a smartphone without considering how you can lock down sexual content, is like dropping them off in the strip district of a major urban center at midnight. You would never do that, so why would you give them a phone without putting some proverbial blindfolds on them?

It's not just social media, but all apps that can be gateways to porn. Check out our friends at Protect Young Eyes for some practical tools that any parent can implement today to ensure a more porn-proof experience on any device.

Social media has been integrated into our everyday life, hereby filling and holding an integral aspect of the entirety of a modern human social composition. Children, on the other hand, use the top social media apps for fun and end up spending more than the required time. Thus, you need some parental control options to curb their addiction to these apps at the onset itself. Here's a guide to setting parental controls on social media.

Nope.

It's not even legal for most of them. The COPPA act prohibits social media for anyone under the age of 13. Be aware. (Do you really want your child's online experience to begin with learning to lie?)

Here are Five Reasons Why Social Media is Not Smart For Middle School Kids.