5 Ways Culture Is Grooming Your Daughter for Porn
If you’ve believe the lie that pornography is something hidden in the deepest corners of the Internet, you’ve been duped. It is everywhere.
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5 Ways Our Culture Is Grooming Your Daughter for Porn
Last Updated: October 27, 2020
Kristen Clark
Kristen Clark is married to her best friend, Zack. She is the co-founder of GirlDefined Ministries and author of Girl Defined, Love Defined, and Sex, Purity, and the Longings of a Girl’s Heart. She is passionate about promoting the message of God-defined womanhood through blogging, speaking, mentoring young women, and hosting Bible studies in her living room. In the end, she’s just a fun-lovin’ Texas girl who adores all things outdoors and drinks coffee whenever possible.
Whether your daughter is seven years old or seventeen, our culture is grooming her for an appetite for pornography. If you have a daughter or know someone who does, listen up.
Millions of well meaning parents have a sincere desire to protect their daughters from pornography. They monitor their daughters’ internet usage, and even install protective filters, thinking they’re in the clear.
However, if you’ve believed the lie that pornography is something hidden in the deepest corners of the Internet, you’ve been duped.
Long before your daughter is ever exposed to a pornographic site, she has already gone through years of soft porn grooming. As a woman not too far past my teen years, I know this first hand.
We often think of porn as being some form of intense adult content only targeted at men…but it’s not.
With your daughter in mind, listen to how the dictionary describes porn:
“Sexually explicit videos, photographs, writings, or the like, produced to elicit sexual arousal.”
Did you catch that last part? “Produced to elicit sexual arousal.” How many mainstream movies, songs, books, TV shows, and magazines are created to elicit sexual arousal? Try…a large majority of them.
If your daughter is the the habit of watching mainstream TV shows, secular music videos, reading magazines like Glamour or Cosmo, and shopping at the mall regularly, she is being groomed for an appetite for porn. Welcome to the 21st century.
Your daughter’s innocent mind is being slowly desensitized one day at a time. If you want to spare your daughter from a future porn addiction, you have to do way more than guard her from the “biggies.” It’s the little things that will get her today.
Here are five subtle areas our culture is grooming your daughter for porn:
1. Mainstream Movies
When your daughter is little, Hollywood tells her that true love is nothing more than butterflies and happily ever afters. But, when she hits her teen years, true love is portrayed as steamy sex scenes and one night stands.Chick flicks are a huge culprit and they’re targeted at your daughter. Many of these movies are filled with glorified premarital sex scenes, steamy adultery, sexual innuendos, and nudity. “Eliciting sexual arousal” is an obvious goal.
Every time your daughter watches these so-called “innocent” movies, her conscience and sensitivity to purity and morality is weakened. Her view of sex is watered down. She is one step closer to viewing porn as a harmless pleasure.
2. Secular Magazines
I was chatting with a young mom once who shared with me how destructive Cosmo magazine had been on her as a teen. She said, “I read that garbage and soaked up their worldview about love, sex, and happiness. As a result, I moved into my adult years with an extremely distorted worldview about sex.”Magazines like Cosmo, Marie Claire, Glamour, and others are targeted at young single women. These magazines are filled with raunchy (premarital) sex advice, scandalous images, and dirty secrets. Nothing will groom your daughter’s appetite for porn quicker than reading this trashy material. “Eliciting sexual arousal” is an obvious goal.
The more she reads, the more her sexual compass is weakened. She is one step closer to viewing porn as a “harmless pleasure.”
3. Music Videos
Music used to be an experience for the ears. Not anymore. Music videos are now an extremely popular form of entertainment for young people. If you think your daughter is watching harmless videos on MTV or YouTube, think again.Music videos aren’t about the music anymore…they’re about the sexualized dance moves and seductive clothing. If your daughter is a fan of singers like Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Beyonce, and Rihanna, she is undoubtedly watching their music videos. And these videos are bad news. From total nudity to illicit sex moves, your daughter is being exposed to soft porn.
Every time she fills her mind with these raunchy and illicit videos, she is unknowingly building a craving for more. Diving headfirst into heavy pornography would not feel that extreme to her anymore.
4. Romance Novels
Girls are dreamers. We love imagination. We flock to “love stories.” Romance novels are written with the female gender in mind. They’re written in a way that draws the reader in and provokes her to vicariously experience what’s happening.Secular romance novels (and some Christian) are written with the purposeful intent to “elicit sexual arousal.” I’ve heard it said many times that romance novels are porn for females. The recent mainstream acceptance of erotic books like Fifty Shades of Grey is as close as it gets to reading porn. If your daughter enjoys reading, there’s a good chance some of her friends have passed a copy of this terrible book her way.
Reading this explicit material will pollute her mind and leave your daughter with a strong desire for darker and heavier content. Romance novels and erotica push your daughter one step closer to falling into a porn addiction.
5. Social Media
If you have a daughter over 12 years old, chances are she’s on social media.Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) have a good side and a dark side. Unfortunately, there’s not a large chasm separating the two.
I have personally, and unintentionally, stumbled across nude and highly provocative images on several of these platforms. I was innocently going about my normal business, clicked on an innocent hashtag, and wham. I was shocked.
If you think all social media sites are safe, think again. It’s extremely easy to stumble across sensual, sexualized and even nude images. All it takes for your daughter is a little exposure to create an instant curiosity and appetite for more.
By seeing these unhealthy images on a regular basis, your daughter is unknowingly taught that it’s normal to see naked/half-naked people. And if she’s “accidentally” exposed to heavy porn one day, she will have been well groomed to receive it.
Living in a raunchy, sensual, and over sexualized culture isn’t easy. Especially for those who are trying to raise children.
I hope you can see that it’s not just the “biggies” that you need to be concerned about for your daughter, but all of the many little things that groom her appetite every day. If your daughter has a personal cell phone with Internet access, that’s most likely where most of her unhealthy sexual exposure will come from. And before you write off you daughter as being “smarter than that” or “wise enough to make good choices,” check these out:
- “In a 2010 national survey, over a quarter of 16 to 17 year olds said they were exposed to nudity online when they did not want to see it. In addition 20% of 16-year-olds and 30% of 17-year-olds have received a ‘sext’ (a sexually explicit text message).”*
- “After an analysis of more than one million hits to Google’s mobile search sites, more than 1 in 5 searches are for pornography on mobile devices.”*
- “More than 7 out of 10 teens hide their online behavior from their parents in some way.”*
She needs you to guide her and protect her as you see appropriate for her age and season of life. She needs you to proactively set boundaries for her and lovingly hold her accountable. She needs you educate her on the dangers of porn and help her build a worldview that’s in alignment with God’s plan for sex. She needs your tough love to put your foot down and say, “no, you can’t watch that movie and here’s why.” These are some of the best ways you can help your daughter avoid getting groomed for porn.
I would love to hear from you now. Do you have a daughter or know someone who does? In what ways do you see the culture grooming her for porn? What solutions have you come up with to protect her from this sexual onslaught?
