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Hey, everyone, this is Kurt Franken from Leading Saints. Now, have you grabbed your free seat at the Liberating Saints Virtual Summit? This is free to attend anywhere in the world, starts on June 30, which is coming up quick here. So you got to make sure you stay in the loop by grabbing your free spot to view the virtual summit. And I want to share with you a quick clip. Again, I'm trying to share as many of these clips as possible, just give you a flavor of what's going to be involved and included in this virtual summit where we explore all things pornography, those that struggle with pornography, and, you know, we want to minister to those individuals effectively who are struggling with pornography. So that's why we're doing a deep dive here. This is a topic that a lot of leaders are engaging with and mentoring individuals through and so forth. So we want to make sure we have a strong library of content when it comes to this topic. So this is Kristen Jensen that you're about to hear. And she is the founder of Defend Young Minds, which is a phenomenal resource, also happens to be a Latter Day Saint. And so anytime I, you know, try and, and talk about or create content around this topic, I always make sure we involve Kristen. She does such great work in the context of how porn impacts young minds, you know, children and teenagers. And so she talks about in this clip the four jobs that young people hire pornography for. That's maybe a weird way to frame it, but using some, some more secular framing of why people, why young minds go to porn and what are they looking for, what, what urges are they trying to satisfy? And I think the more we understand this, the more ready and prepared we are to address it. So let's jump into it. Here's a clip from Kristen Jensen from the Liberating Saints Virtual Summit.
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So here's a question. Do we really know why kids use porn? We may think we know, but as I've researched and searched for ways to help kids become more resilient to the harms of pornography, I've realized that we may have been missing, you know, some critical information on the motivation of why kids seek out pornography. So I'm really convinced that we just can't assume that we know all the reasons why kids use porn and we need to ask more questions. So is it just simple curiosity? What kinds of jobs do kids hire porn to do? And how can we convince kids to reject porn and hire healthier behaviors? And the general insights that we came out were that there was a lack of sexual information from Parents because they were embarrassed, they were embarrassed to talk about sex. Some parents reacted with shaming and disappointment when they found that their kids were involved or even addicted to pornography. And we came to the conclusion that parents can benefit from more training and I would say leaders can too. So let's look at what we found. After analyzing all the interviews, we actually identified four categories of jobs. So the first category was curiosity and knowledge. So when I'm interested in and curious about sex and sexuality and I see clues about sex all over my environment, you know, songs and jokes, shows and social media, whatever it's, and it's taboo or embarrassing to bring up to my parents, I'm going to hire porn to help me learn about sex. And we do find that porn is really the, the major sex ed for kids these days, which is really sad. Stress and emotions was the second category. When I'm stressed or don't feel strong loving bonds from others and I don't have someone or something to turn to, help me find comfort, affection and distraction from the pain of negative emotions. Number three, normalizing sexual abuse. When I've been sexually abused and I'm confused by what has happened to me, help me normalize my sexual trauma and, or feel more grown up through sexual means. And then number four was just freedom and testing borders. When I have felt confined by my parents, strict rules all my life, and felt pressure to be good or even perfect, help me test borders and even be a little rebellious in a quiet, secret way. All right, so looking at curiosity and let's look at job number one again. When I'm interested, curious about sex, when I hear about sex from friends at school, school, maybe I become, start to become attracted to others. When my parents are too embarrassed or awkward to talk about it with me, and I feel like I might get in trouble if my parents find out that I'm interested in sex. And this would pertain especially, I think, to girls, even help me, you know, porn, I'm going to hire you so I can learn what sex is, understand what friends and media are talking about. Because no kid wants to be the dummy and not, you know, in the know, right. And understand my own feelings. So it's more about learning about something innate and natural. It's more about curiosity about feelings and attractions and also wanting to know what friends and other media, you know, what they're talking about. And it's less about fulfilling a craft, craving for sex or sexual desire, or even being deceitful or secret. It's really just wanting to learn and, and being Curious and not having other avenues that are as easy as pornography. Right. So from that we really understand that because kids are bombarded with sexual cues from the environment, from media, we know that those messages don't just bounce off of them just because they're young and, and kids are wired to learn how to grow up. They're, they have children imitate what they see. Parents do, they follow their curiosity, they want to figure things out and they feel driven to figure things out. So if their parents will talk to them about human intimacy and sex, they have a lot of options. Right. That are less embarrassing potentially. Porn is definitely the biggest one out there. Parents are competing with the porn industry for the sexual templates and the sexual health of their kids. That's why it's so important for parents to set themselves up early as the go to person to talk to about sex. And BYU professor Bradley Wilcox said young people who get answers from parents at early ages are usually the ones who avoid sexual experimentation. So they definitely become more resilient when they have those conversations early and, and often. So let's look at job two. All right. Dealing with stress and emotions. So several, several of the people that we interviewed did talked about using porn to help them deal with stress or painful emotions like a divorce. Right. And that is really backed up by current research that shows that depression predicts porn use and then becomes a vicious cycle. Right. As porn use continues, as porn use increases, mental health decreases, which takes a person right back to porn, which has become their go to stress reliever. So it's more about getting temporary relief from pain, a lack of a relationship with other people that is loving and just the inability to deal well with stress and with painful feelings. So it's more about that. It's less about feeding and addiction, wanting to be isolated or not wanting to engage in fulfilling activities. Just this lack of ability, this lack of emotional resilience. So our, you know what we would recommend from that would be to make sure you teach emotional resilience. And it's helpful to help children identify their emotions. It's helpful to model healthy ways to deal with negative emotions yourself. So they see an adult modeling a healthy way to deal with negative emotions. We have something called Emotional Care tags and it's, I won't go into it a lot here, but it is in a guide that we have on defend young minds called Building Emotional Resilience in Kids. And it's just a way to customize a plan for your child or even yourself. You know, when you're in a situation and you feel certain strong emotions. You know, what are some things that you can do to deal with that emotion in a healthy way instead of going to an unhealthy behavior like pornography? So there's the guide. Let's see. Okay, let's move on to job number three, sexual abuse. Children who have experienced sexual abuse report going to porn to actually normalize their trauma. You know, they. They have this trauma, but they want to feel like they're not a weird degenerate monster. They want to feel like this is normal. And it. It seems to, you know, they have this belief that if they watch it that it will descent and it maybe does. That desensitizes them. So it's more about trying to cope with something that feels wrong but is done by somebody maybe that they trusted. It's more about mimicking what was done to them. Less about fulfilling a craving for sex or sexual desire, at least initially. It's less about just, you know, seeing naked men or women or sex. It's really about normalizing the trauma. And then number four, the fourth category that we identified was freedom and testing borders. Using porn to rebel quietly and secret, secretively against authoritarian parents and the pressure to be perfect. So more about making my own choices, right? Not feeling like I'm always have to be good and perfect all the time.
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All right, everybody, now go to leading saints.org liberating. The link is in the show notes to make it easy on you and grab your free seat to this virtual summit coming up. And these have always been super popular and you never want to miss them. So leading saints.org liberating and we'll see you there starting June 30th.