Today marks TEN YEARS since we did the very first parent presentation at our neighborhood school, with the intention of providing parents with easily accessible solutions to protect their children from pornography. In our beautiful elementary school there was a widespread problem of children accessing this content—they were talking about it and showing each other sites and images through mobile devices (ipads on fieldtrips or aftercare). This was long before 3rd graders were getting phones.
At the time we wondered, at this trajectory... what would pervasive childhood pornography exposure look like 5 or 10 years down the road. It's the burden that kept us going. Every time we felt like quitting, a distraught parent would reach out because their precious son or daughter stumbled on egregious content that was LIFE-CHANGING.
Fast-forward 10 years, and the damage done to Gen Z is evident and severe—not only by pornography, but by social media, sexploitation, cyberbullying, and algorithmic targeting of too many harms to name (eating disorders, self-harm etc.).
But TODAY, we have the gift of seeing incredible families who have dug in to go a DIFFERENT WAY. Notably, those who walked beside us in our church community to delay phones, social media, and video games, whose college-age students are now shining examples of character and resilience. We celebrate all those who have welcomed us into their schools and churches to teach parents how to protect their kids online. We have deep appreciation for all of the allies who encouraged us and cheered us on, especially when it felt like no one cared. We especially want to thank all of the families who welcomed us into their homes to go step-by-step in locking doors to vulnerable areas of technology, even as some were grieving and distressed over harms they knew their kids had encountered online.
Today we pray for clarity and vision in the chapter to come. And we thank God for the opportunity to be used in this work. Cheers!