“No, thank you,” said the rabbi, “It’s against my religion to eat bacon.”
“Tell me the truth, rabbi,” asked the priest. “Have you really never had any bacon?”
Considering that he will never see the priest again, the rabbi decided to divulge his secret.
“Yes,” he said. “When I was young, I was alone in a strange town, and I was tempted to try it, and so I had bacon for the first and last time in my life.”
As the train came to a stop at Warsaw Rail Station, and the companions bid their good-byes, the rabbi politely said, “Best regards to your wife.”
“But I am not married,” explained the priest. “It’s against my religion.”
“Have you never had relations with a woman?”
“Well, truth be told, when I was young, I met a girl and we fell in love, and on one occasion I succumbed to the temptation and we were intimate,” confessed the priest.
The rabbi looked at him inquisitively. “Tell me, father. Sex sure beats bacon, doesn't it?”
We all have our temptations, and many of us had had an episode of giving in to them. It is especially true for the temptations of the sexual nature. In fact, those who have “experimented” with unsanctioned sexual behavior likely outnumber those who, being otherwise frum, have fallen for bacon. Combine this with raging hormones and natural curiosity of adolescents, and it is almost a given that a lot of young, frum men do not enter marriage nowadays with knowledge gained solely in chosson schmoozes. Sex is out of the box, and except for the most isolated of us, sexual or sexualized information comes at us from everywhere. I once took my then-five-year old son to a barber. Being that he had just started to read, he read everything that had letters on it. “Ta, what does ‘sexiest’ mean?” he shocked me by asking. Times Magazine’s “sexiest man of the year” was staring at us in the most innocuous of places – a barber shop!
We can't pretend that our children don’t see the magazine covers, don't pass by bench advertisements, or don’t drive past billboards that put sex words and sex acts in their proper context. We can't shut this stream down even as we try our hardest to prevent them from watching TV, going to the movies, or checking out “that book” at the library. As our children mature sexually, even the most “removed” of them will seek out information on sexual topics. And if we are too squeamish to provide them with this information, they will get it from peers or from the environment. This is a natural developmental stage and most of us have been there, done that. This, by itself, is not bad news.
The bad news is, that unlike when we were growing up and furtively looking up words like “puberty” or “intercourse” in the encyclopedia, there is a new player in the field of sexual education. Its name is Internet (I know, you knew THAT). It’s ubiquitous and it’s omniscient. And the worst news is, it offers a very graphic, very detailed, and very distorted crash course in human sexuality in the form of pornography. I know you knew this, too. But I wonder if you knew that according to a recent documentary, 90% of 8 to 16-year olds have watched pornography on the internet? And Stephanie Carnes, the president of the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals, reports that 75% of 14 to 17 year-olds view pornography regularly.
Do you think religious youth have been spared? You may be right. I don’t know of any statistics that tell us how many frum teenagers have seen “schmutz”, as we call it, on their electronic devices. All I know that over 1,300 members, or about 20% of total membership, on the GuardYourEyes.org website are 14 to 17 year olds. These 1,300 are courageous young men from religious families who are searching for help with breaking the porn habit. And it is a known fact that teens are much less likely than adults to seek out help with their porn problem, so the percentage is obviously much higher. So can we afford to dismiss this problem as secular or “goyish”?
Pornography is bad for our youthnot only because it’s age-inappropriate and immodest and contradicts our frum values. It’s true that it damages the young and the innocent by introducing them to images and ideas that are far beyond their level of maturity; it distorts their understanding of what healthy sex is and perverts their expectations of what’s to come in the marital realm. But pornography is just as detrimental to mature adults. In fact, more and more people, religious and secular, men and women, young and not-so-young, have come to recognize and often experience for themselves porn use’s deleterious outcomes.
And this, I’m afraid, you may not have known: Internet pornography has an ability to affect a human brain much in the same way as cocaine or heroin do. In other words, pornography is an addictive drug with far-reaching, damaging consequences.
Yes, some disagree. In fact, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, does not list pornography addiction among addictive disorders - yet. But research-supported evidence posits that porn-watching is, in fact, addictive and destructive. Moreover, watching Internet pornography, especially by adolescents, can lead to addiction similar to drug abuse. There is little doubt that porn use disorder, under this name or another, will soon make its way into the psychology text books and manuals.
So what is this research that purports that pornography is addictive? Here is some of what we have found:
Dr. Judith Reisman, in her presentation to US Congress titled The psychopharmacology of pictorial pornography, restructuring brain, mind & memory… , declared pornography to be a “poly drug,” which is processed endogenously (which means it is produced by the body itself) and generates intense sensory rewards.
Psychologist M. D. Reed, in the paper presented to the National Family Foundation Convention, claims that “arousal dependence” created by pornography produces changes in brain chemistry just like those created by excessive use of amphetamines.
And Dr. Jeffrey Satinover of Princeton University, when describing porn’s effect to a U.S. Senate committee, has said, “It is as though we have devised a form of heroin … usable in the privacy of one’s own home and injected directly to the brain through the eyes.”
In addition to these scholars who compare pornography and its effect on the brain to that of the hard drugs like heroin and meth, other research examines behavioral effects of porn use. Researcher L. F. O’Sullivan, for example, found in his 2014 study titled “Linking online sexual activities to health outcomes among teens”, that while some people eventually habituate to pornography and stop or decrease watching it, others keep progressing in their need for ever more explicit imagery to stimulate sexual arousal. This is similar to a phenomenon called tolerance, where a drug-user needs ever-increasing quantities of his drug to achieve the same “high”. Another study, conducted recently in the Netherlands, found that those teenagers who viewed pornography at high levels, reported engaging in sexual acts for casual rather than affectionate or relational motives. This means that they do it just to “get off” rather than out of love. For frum teenagers, this translates into pursuit of premarital sex; certainly an affront to our values. This sexual promiscuity puts these teenagers at a risk for STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and other detriments to health and quality of life, just like drugs put their users at risk for contracting diseases, getting robbed or harmed during drug buying trips, and being arrested.
O’Sullivan also found that someone who is habituated to violence in pornography will likely participate in violent or forced sex. Finally, O’Sullivan's study confirmed what we've intuitively known: that adolescents who take part in online sexual activities to a degree that they neglect or altogether shun other pursuits could also report various health problems, social inadequacy and poor scholastic performance.
Additionally, a joint report by the BBC and the Portman Clinic in the United Kingdom found that large numbers of people express concern over their pornography use. About a quarter of all the men surveyed said that they worried both about the amount of time they spent watching porn and the types of images they sought for gratification. Four percent of men ages 18 to 24 reported viewing pornography for 10 hours a week or more. This level of use is compulsive and problematic, according to doctors quoted in the BBC report. Heavy users were also much more likely to worry that pornography is influencing their behavior and reported more relationship problems. Reed, too, states that obsessive porn viewing is “as distressing to a person as is drug addiction.”
Other advocates of classifying heavy pornography use as an addiction are numerous websites offering help to self-described porn addicts. Some, like GuardYourEyes.org or MaritalHealing.com, have religious affiliation – Jewish and Catholic, respectively - and bring in religious overtones to disparage and discourage pornography watching. Others, like FightTheNewDrug.org or ThroughTheFlame.org claim no such affiliation, and offer help with stopping compulsive use of pornography on health, moral, or “quality of life” grounds. Such websites usually provide scientific support for their assertions of the dangers and addictive nature of Internet porn. It’s important to note that all these websites feature resources for teenagers, and report significant numbers of members between the ages of 14 and 17.
So what does all this mean? In the opinion of the creators of GuardYourEyes.org, this means that it is time our community became alert to the fact that Internet pornography addiction is here and is real. It affects our youth just as it does the general population. We need to stop treating this affliction as a moral or religious failure and recognize it for what it is – a pernicious disease, requiring professional help. And we should offer this help without shaming and stigmatizing to the thousands in our community who need it. GuardYourEyes.org network offers such help, that is both completely free and completely anonymous. There are no appointments to make, no bills to come in the mail, and the help is administered in the privacy of your home or office, at your pace and your schedule. The only requirement for membership is the admission that one has a problem and the desire to be free of it.
However, it is common knowledge that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Prevention remains the best tool in dealing with an addiction and its ruinous consequences. It is true, of course, that not all who view pornography suffer a detriment to their health, just like not all who drink alcohol or use drugs become alcoholics or develop a drug addiction. Yet, research shows that by delaying the age of initiation or by deterring the use of pornography altogether, we can help a significant number of teenagers avoid developing any issues associated with porn use.
Programs that are directed at reducing or eliminating use of pornography can help start conversations between children and adults, deglamorizing porn and describing the dangers inherent in its obsessive viewing.
It is important that parents and educators deal with adolescent porn use without shaming. Shaming is an inefficient disciplining technique, which causes low self-esteem and depression. This further isolates the person being shamed from their peers, and can even lead to suicide in some teenagers. By suggesting that pornography is addictive, we can help de-stigmatize pornography use and motivate those struggling to get help.
For prevention to succeed, it is important to educate grown-ups - ourselves - about accessibility as well as dangers of online porn. It is our hope that this article will be useful towards that goal.
It is equally important that we have at our disposal sex education tools and materials that would help meet adolescent interests while keeping young people away from harm, and at the same time be true to our values of tznius. Like in drug prevention, “Just say ‘No!’” is not enough for success; it is of equal importance to provide the developing needs and curiosity of teenagers with suitable substitutes for unwanted behavior. The sexualized media is omnipresent, and we need tools to counteract it.
Of great importance to our teenagers is an empathic and open relationship with a safe adult, be it parent or educator, who is able to discuss sexual issues and address questions of pornography and sexual behavior in a direct, mature, and respectful manner. GuardYourEyes.org offers an on-line forum for teens for just such purpose.
Just as important, is parental supervision and monitoring adolescents’ technology use. For the latter, GuardYourEyes.org network offers a variety of prevention tools. They have an entire website, venishmartem.com, dedicated to stopping the Internet problem at its root by providing effective and easy-to-use filtering solutions for Klal Yisrael. Venishmartem aims to help tens of thousands of Yidden install effective filtering. Their team researches every existing up-to-date solution for every type of device. The site’s expanding directory of professional frum filter technicians is available for those who need extra help. As a public service, Venishmartem filter guides are available free of charge.
Thousands of frum Yidden out there still have open Internet on their computers and devices. Many people think that filters will slow down their computers or block them from things they like to do, but this is not necessarily true at all. The problem is that people are used to not having filters and are therefore afraid of what the filter will do. This whole situation has to change. We must ensure that the coming generation doesn’t even have a question about whether to use internet without a filter. It should become a given for every frum Yid that unfiltered Internet is a danger to the fabric of Jewish life and the health of our children. The next generation of frum Yidden must grow up with the concept of filtered internet as a basic prerequisite to being an erlicher Yid.
Please help us make our dream of a physically and spiritually healthy world a reality. Visit GuardYourEyes.org or Venishmartem.com for more information, to get help, or to participate in helping others.