Teens

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The Pornography Trap
(It’s Not Just a Guy Thing)
by Dan Blankenship



Okay, I have to admit it, I always believed pornography was a guy problem. Well I don’t think that anymore. I’ve just spent the last few hours looking over studies concerning teenage girls and their exposure to pornography, and I was astounded to learn some of the statistics. I think most of my readers will be just as bowled over by the numbers.

In a study conducted by Dr. Jennings Bryant, six hundred American teens (junior high and up) were interviewed about their possible exposure to pornography. 91 percent of the males confirmed they had viewed hard-core pornographic material. I thought that figure was a bit high, so I expected the number of females exposed to such material to be on the low side. I was wrong. 82 percent of the females admitted to viewing X-rated material. (1)

What does that statistic mean? The porn industry and their fan club like to argue that pictures don’t hurt anyone, that images do not manipulate the human brain. Really? So all of these companies spending billions of dollars on television and magazine advertising are just wasting their money, after all, images can’t possible affect a person’s behavior. C’mon now, we all know what we see definitely affects how we feel, what we think, and what we do. It always has. And the biggest defenders of pornography are usually the people who don’t ever want to see it go away. Of course they’re not going to admit the more porn a person sees the more they want to see.

I’m not sure where the stereotype originated that females could not become addicted to pornography, but I can fully see both sexes bombarded with soft-porn images on a daily basis. From R-rated movies to posters placed upon the walls of Abercrombie & Fitch, sexually stimulating pictures are no longer directed only at males. And I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve overheard women actually fantasizing out loud about a weekend with Brad Pitt or Matthew McConaughey.

Quite frankly, I can only think of one girl me and the guys talked about when I was a teenager – Farrah Fawcett Majors, but at no point did I or my friends ever blurt out in public how cute we thought the famous actress was. That just wasn’t proper. We watched Farrah on TV and in the movies, but we didn’t have the Internet offering nude pictures of her in those days.

Yet it seems completely acceptable for more and more teen girls to be drawn to movies where the current Hollywood hunk might perform a love scene on the big screen. And as they walk out of the theater, they talk about how hot the man they will never meet, depend on, or get to know is. If that isn’t pornography, I don’t know what is. And it is that type of thinking that can lead to more X-rated material.

No one ever makes the decision to become addicted to porn. While the best way to control the addiction is to never start viewing such images in the first place, if you find yourself struggling with the addiction, there are many Christ-based programs designed to help. If you are scared to broach the subject with your parents, seek help at your church, online, or anywhere followers of Christ are willing to help. And don’t think you are alone. Millions of people, Christians and non-Christians alike, have fell victim to this trap – millions of males and females.




Source:

1 Victor B. Cline, Pornography's Effects on Adults and Children (New York: Morality in Media, 1990), 11

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