FEATURED SCHOLAR
Marie-Claire Hernandez
Family and Society (Mexico), President
“Red Familia” (Mexico), Board Member
The following is an excerpt from Marie-Claire Hernandez’s speech “The New Drug of the Millennium” presented at the World Congress of Families IV, Warsaw, Poland, May 2007:
The problem that faces us is silent, invasive and destructive. It seriously affects individuals, the family, school, companies, society and nations. Due to its silent nature, adults are often unaware of the problem experienced by children and young people around us, with the consequent lack of professionals adequately trained to help them. It is known as the new drug of the millennium and it is the addiction of children and young people to online pornography, be it on the Internet, mobile phones, and Ipods or Xboxes.
Sooner or later, addiction makes us dependent on the sensation, and enslaves us and becomes the center of our thoughts and of our acts.
The addiction to Internet pornography among children and young people began to emerge some ago following the introduction of the Internet. Children and young people learned quickly how to use the computer, which was not the case for adults. Unfortunately, there is still a great amount of cyber illiteracy among parents. They do not know what their children are looking at. It is also true that in the beginning, children and young people did not know what they were getting into. Of course, once coming across porn on the Internet, there was an initial mistaken decision to go on. However, this mistake quickly converted into a loss of freedom once the addiction took hold.
Why has this addiction overpowered children and teenagers? Especially, in cases of children and teenagers who are emotionally normal and stable for their age, without serious problems at school or without problems of family disintegration or social instability.
The main cause is due to the fact that they are victims of exposure to porn at an age when sexual curiosity is natural. The earlier the exposure, the greater the risk of addiction. Pornography is the commercial exploitation of a natural curiosity. There are millions of porn sites on the Internet. Unlike pornographic films or magazines, the Internet has no limits. It is accessible to everyone at any time of the day or night. The material that can be seen can be easily concealed in hidden files, with passwords, coded CDs, USB, and the history of pages visited can be easily deleted. In many cases there is no control, and filters can still be easily bypassed.
Children and young people can surf the Internet for hours looking at porn without paying a single cent.
What they see is a far cry from the goodness and beauty of sex. The most sublime and the lowest aspects of human nature may be found in the expression of our sexuality.
To read the entire speech, click here.
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