← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 452: The New Drug - What Every Parent Needs to Know About Pornography| Parker Hymas, Fight the New Drug
01:03:58
Loading summary
Transcript110 lines
- [00:01]
Cassidy Solis
When I graduated high school, I was pretty set against going to traditional college. I knew it was what I was supposed to do, but a lot of my peers were drowning in student debt and signing their lives away to careers they weren't passionate about, and that just didn't seem worth it. A couple years later, I heard about Excel College, which was a completely different path to higher education. With a debt free promise and students earning degrees while gaining hands on experience in the marketplace. This path just made sense along with that collection. Community and discipleship are central aspects of life at Excel. And I knew I wanted to be part of a community that would encourage my faith in the Lord. My name is Cassidy Solis and I graduated debt free in 2023 with a degree focused in marketing. And now I'm using my skills full time. More than that, I've grown deeply in my relationship with Jesus and his people. I can honestly say that this new way of college has changed my life for the better. To learn more about Excel's transformative debt free education model, visit theexcelcollege.com visit to sign for an informational call. That's the excelcollege.com visit welcome to the.
- [00:59]
Jenny Eric
1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Eric. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. I have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful guest today talking about something that is crucially important, possibly one of the most important issues of our time. Parker Hymas from Fight the New Drug is here. Welcome, Parker.
- [01:16]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, thanks for having us. This is great.
- [01:18]
Jenny Eric
So, Parker, you're the director of public outreach at Fight the New Drug. Fight the New Drug is a non religious, non legislative educational organization. You work with experts, researchers, celebrities, professional athletes, journalists, CEOs, authors, influencers and advocates from all different industries to share about the harms of pornography and how we can address this in our society. It's a really interesting take. I remember when I first learned about you and it's been years at this point to have the take of sort of neutrality. We're just going to put out this information for people and it's just been such a powerful thing in our society. You have a fantastic documentary. You've got a really cool set of clothing line. I mean, the shirts are really cool. You've got, you guys do live presentations. You have all sorts of articles and videos on your website, which is fight the new drug.org and I hope I said your position right, but I think maybe I didn't. Did I? Did I not?
- [02:16]
Parker Hymas
No. Yeah, I think you hit it right on the head. We're a non religious, non legislative nonprofit that exists to allow individuals the opportunity to make an informed decision on the topic of porn by raising awareness on its harmful effects using only science, facts and personal accounts.
- [02:28]
Jenny Eric
So tell us how you got involved.
- [02:30]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, so that's a great question. So I followed Fight the New Drug, like, probably like, oh, geez, this year was probably like a decade ago on social media. And I thought it was cool. And I was just what we would refer to. Like, I was a fighter. I wanted to be part of the movement. I tried to share information, I tried to educate other people. And then sometime around, like, 2716, I kind of got in touch with Fighting the Drug. I went to a live event. I ended up talking with the founder, and I started doing presentations the next year in 2017. And so I did some live events for Fight the Drug for about two years. I went through, like a training process and started doing presentations across the US and Canada. And then in 2019, a position opened up full time, and I applied for it and got the job. And then I've. I've worked here ever since. So it was actually. I think it was six years ago today.
- [03:19]
Jenny Eric
Wow.
- [03:20]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, wow.
- [03:20]
Jenny Eric
It's a long time. That's awesome. And what was the impetus for the founder to create it?
- [03:26]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, so he has some different content on our website. His name's Clay, and he basically was at college with four friends. And they were. They actually kind of had like a entrepreneurship class. And they were trying to figure out, like, things they could do that were kind of like, maybe socially minded entrepreneurship that would kind of make positive impacts in the world. But they weren't really thinking about, like, nonprofit necessarily. And they're like, you know, we should make a documentary about the impacts of porn. Because they started kind of digging into pornography and realizing they all knew people or themselves had been impacted by pornography, they wanted to do something about it. And they're like, maybe we make like a documentary. And that was kind of his background at that time was like marketing and videography. And then that just kind of evolved into Fight the New Drug. And then we actually didn't even release a documentary until quite some time later. I think it was in 2018 that we released the documentary. And so it kind of was a funny thing because it ended up becoming a nonprofit. And then way later we made a documentary and stuff.
- [04:22]
Jenny Eric
So the documentary is phenomenal. I'm not a huge TV watcher, but I was like, this has got to be one of the best documentaries I've ever seen. It's engaging and it's perfect. Like, I was so impressed, Parker, of how you could sit and watch this with your kid and there's all these different animations added. It's brilliant. I was like, this is the most brilliant thing. It's not boring. It's super engaging. There's all these other sort of added facts, like the Italian monkey, how they learned about mirror neurons.
- [04:50]
Parker Hymas
Yeah.
- [04:50]
Jenny Eric
And the animations that were thrown in there is one of the most well done things I've ever seen. And what a gift that it's something that you could watch with your family and it's going to engage your kids. So I absolutely love the documentary. It's free. You can find it at fight the new drug.org I could not recommend it more highly. Talk to us about the statistics. So we've got a listenership of a lot of parents, a lot of grandparents and young people as well. We're trying to get outside and we always say screens aren't evil. We have screens in our home. We're not anti screen. We're just sort of pro the things that make life better. We're pro hands on, we're pro getting outside. We're pro real life relationships. And I've always said, you know, screens are not evil. But there are things about screens. And especially as things are really changing now, we've got AI, we've got deep fakes. There are things about screens that could change you. And that's what you talk about. These are informed decisions.
- [05:44]
Parker Hymas
Yeah.
- [05:44]
Jenny Eric
Could you give us some of the statistics, Parker, especially around children.
- [05:48]
Parker Hymas
Yeah.
- [05:48]
Jenny Eric
Of what's going on with pornography. Pornography use and maybe if you know it, how that's changed since like the 80s or the 90s.
- [05:58]
Parker Hymas
These are all great questions. Yeah. So, okay, a lot that we can address here and maybe this conversation will evolve throughout this episode. But I think that maybe the thing to start with is to just acknowledge that you kind of hit the nail on the head at the end there, that things are different. The world that kids are growing up in today is different in many ways than the world that their parents grew up in. And it's okay to acknowledge those differences. Right. Surprisingly, we still send paper mail, which is kind of wild to me. Right. That was normal when parents were kids and we still do that today. But we don't have flying cars. Right. Like cars still drive on four tires that are rubber or like for the most part that hasn't changed. But there's other things that have changed. Obviously. You know, you mentioned technology. Cell phones, tablets, the Internet, AI all these things that likely didn't exist for many of the parents who are listening right now when they were kids. And that has changed society in some ways that we have to acknowledge. And it's okay to acknowledge those differences between the kids growing up today, kids and their generation, and our generation a little bit in the past. And the Internet, I think it kind of started to gain like popular use around like 1997 is when it became available. And that obviously changed things. And the first smartphone came out in 2008, and now we have AI. And all of these things definitely can have positive impacts in the world and do have positive impacts. But of course, at the same time, pornography became more affordable, accessible, available and anonymous than ever before in the history of the world. And because of that, the nature of the content has changed. We know from research that when people, people consume pornography, it can become habit forming, it can become an escalating behavior, and it can impact the individual's mental health. One of the things that we want people to understand when we say that it can be an escalating behavior is that research shows people need more porn more frequently and they end up needing more extreme forms of content. And so with porn being more accessible than ever before, the very nature of the material has changed because the demand has required more extreme content. So the pornography that we're talking about today is not magazines from the 80s. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the kind of often violent, abusive, degrading content that's readily available online that I think many people, even if we have a different stance on whether or not pornography is harmful or we disagree on the research or whatever, I think the one thing everyone can agree on is that at some age children should not be being exposed to pornography. And we're not advocating for legislation, we're advocating for education. We want to educate people on its harms and help young people make informed decisions. And the problem is that many people aren't having these conversations with their children. And a lot of that just comes down to it can feel a bit awkward, right? When was the last time we had a nice casual dinner conversation where we talked about pornography? For most of us, that's probably not happening. And I understand that. But we want to provide resources to change that. Let's change that. Let's make this something that we can talk about.
- [08:43]
Jenny Eric
So one of the studies that you have on your website, and there's this fast facts part. So yeah, there's fabulous, fabulous resources on the website. Fight the new drug.org that a 2020 study found that the majority of 11 to 13 year olds had already been exposed to pornography, with some exposed as early as 7 years old. Yeah, so this is pretty recent. This is within the last five years. Yeah, but it says the same study found that 75% of parents believed their child had never seen it. And in reality 53% of those parents, children reported that they had see pornography. So the numbers are really high. What are some of the numbers in terms of exposure and ages?
- [09:22]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, I think those might be two studies. But yeah, basically, you know, multiple studies show that the majority of kids are exposed by the time they're about 13. Often, you know, some of that research shows some of the kids in the research were exposed as young as seven. Like you said, we know that statistically speaking, about 75% of 14 to 18 year old males and about 70% of 14 to 18 year old females have been exposed to pornography. So that's high school age, essentially like 8th to 12th grade. And then we also know that like you said this, this study by the bbfc that those, you know, three out of four parents believe their kids had not seen porn. And when they looked at data just from those parents kids, they found that the majority of those parents, children had already been exposed to pornography. 53%. That's a huge problem right there. Is that most parents want to believe their kids haven't been exposed when in reality it's incredibly likely their kids have already been exposed. And that's not to shame the parent or the child. Our stance is we're not trying to shame anyone or make any feel bad. We know that that does not drive change. What we are trying to do is open up conversations. We want parents to acknowledge that even though it's scary, we have to acknowledge that kids are growing up in a world now where it's no longer if my kid will be exposed, it's incredibly likely that it's when, when, at what age will my kid be exposed? And so how do we prepare for that? How do we have conversations that are age appropriate prior to our child being exposed? How do we look for signs that they may have been exposed? How do we help them to feel comfortable talking to us if they are exposed? How do we help them if they are exposed and end up struggling with pornography, developing a habit or the behavior escalates? How do we help them overcome that? Those are the things that we want to address.
- [11:01]
Jenny Eric
It's pretty wild. I mean those statistics are so high and I think then the parent starts to Think, well, how can I reduce the risk of exposure? And Chris McKenna, who's from Protect Young Eyes, he said something that I thought was really profound and impactful for me. He basically said, if you have children, this is part of the parenting landscape now. Part of the parenting landscape is that you have to know about what's going on with screens, and you have to be able to address it with your children. Are the exposures coming from is accidental? I have a cell phone. I'm on the bus. My friend is looking. I was at someone else's house. Like, is there any information about how the exposure is happening, or is it really random all over the place?
- [11:46]
Parker Hymas
That's a great question. Yeah. So one study that's a little bit older but definitely still relevant from 2016, it shows that a little under half of kids are first exposed to pornography on accident, but that almost 1 in 4, 22% of kids. So almost 1 in 4 are exposed because someone else showed it to them when they weren't expecting it. And so this is this delicate balance that we try to help parents to understand. Is that filtration monitoring, great idea. Is it the solution? No, ultimately, conversations are the solution, because would that prevent maybe almost half of, like, early childhood exposure? That's accidental. Yeah. Like if everybody had filters and monitors and they always worked perfectly. Yes, theoretically. Right. But still, almost one in four kids are exposed because someone showed it to them when they weren't expecting it. Filtration monitoring doesn't prevent that. And the majority of kids, I think it's like 53 or 4%, if I'm remembering the statistics, are exposed some other way other than it just popping up. Right. So. So more than half of kids are exposed another way. When you include that 22% and the other various ways kids are exposed, it's over half. So what it boils down to is having conversations. And what do those conversations look like? You know, we have many resources for this. We have a wonderful resource called the Conversation Blueprint. You can go on there. If you're struggling with pornography and you want to talk to someone and kind of disclose that, you can get tips and advice to how to do that. If you're a parent who wants to talk to their child about pornography, if you're a spouse and you think your spouse is struggling and you're uncomfortable with that in your relationship, this is how you would talk about it. It's really set up to kind of be like a blueprint for a house. You're going to say, you know, I'm a Parent and I want to talk to my kid and it's going to start mapping out a conversation for you and say, hey, you know what, here's some icebreakers. Here's what you could talk about. Here's what to talk about next time. Because it's not healthy or realistic to talk about all of this in one session. Right. This is a, an evolving conversation, especially with kids. This conversation should evolve as kids age. There's ways to have this conversation with a really young kid with something like good pictures, bad pictures, like a children's book. And you're just help kids understand. You know, sometimes there's things on the Internet that aren't for kids and we want to protect them from that. If something comes up and you don't know what it is, talk to mom and dad. Like that's not taking away a kid's innocence to explain that to them. You could talk about that with like a three year old. Right. And then on the other end of things, there's different ways to have this conversations with 13 year olds, 15 year olds, 17 year olds, and that can evolve.
- [14:09]
Jenny Eric
And when you use resources like yours, I think you become aware of things you would have never thought about. Because this is new.
- [14:16]
Parker Hymas
Yes.
- [14:17]
Jenny Eric
One thing that someone said to me along the way was don't let your kids look over someone's shoulder at their screens. You know, so if you're at some sort of event and people are on their screens and there's a bunch of adults like don't be looking over people's shoulders at what they're looking at. Or if someone comes to show you something on their screen, ask first, what are you planning on showing me? So resources like fight the new drug in these different conversation, the blueprints, it's like you're gonna learn things and strategies that you just wouldn't, they wouldn't be in your mind because you have no idea because no one did it with you. And so it's all new. And I am so impressed with what you put out. I mean there's all sorts of nonprofits out there and there's all sorts of well meaning organizations and they just look out of date or whatever. And not that that really matters, but your stuff, I mean the T shirts are so cool looking and the materials are so well organized and you get on and you find what you need. Like I said, I was so impressed with the documentary. But before we get into that, can you tell people about how your organization will come in and do a live event for people in certain areas?
- [15:26]
Parker Hymas
Yeah. Absolutely. And thank you for all the nice things you're saying. I appreciate it. It's very kind of you. Yeah. So live events, that's one of the things that I kind of help oversee. So we do live presentations all over. You know, we even sometimes have presenters trained in other countries and things. And we definitely do a lot of live events across, like, North America. Basically, you can just go to FTND.orglive that's kind of like the short link. And it will take you to our presentation landing page and you can learn a little bit more about what that looks like. And then you fill out a little quick submission form. It's super simple. And schedule a call with Haley, she's our presentation coordinator. And then from there we just kind of hit the ground running. And these live events are one of the best things, especially in a post Covid world when we're talking about getting kids off screens. Having an actual live speaker come show up to their school, to their organization, to a community event, to a church, like whatever it might be, and host a live event and have us come speak is one of the most impactful things for kids. They are getting to see a real person talking about why this is a problem, what the solutions are. And with kids, you know, these presentations, just like the documentary, are really age appropriate. So we're talking about. We can do, you know, like sixth grade and up, 11 years and older. And we mostly do presentations for like, middle schools, junior highs, high schools, parent nights, or community events, and then colleges as well. So those are kind of like the most common audiences that we speak to. And we have presentations designed for each of those audiences that are on topics like the topic of pornography, but relating specifically to that demographic.
- [17:04]
Jenny Eric
Wow. And I would trust that so deeply because of how amazing the documentary is. I was like, this is. It's so brilliant. I was like, how did they do this? In a way that is. It was interesting for me as an adult, but it would. I just feel like there's not that many resources like that out there that you can go to and be like this. And it's free. I mean, it's just wonderful.
- [17:28]
Annie F. Downs
Hey, friends. I'm Annie F. Downs, author, speaker, podcaster, and part of the that Sounds Fun Network. And I'm a big fan of seeing God move in our everyday lives. Can we talk for a second about what it really means to be a person of faith? It's waking up every day and choosing to trust him, even when life feels uncertain. It's standing firm in truth, walking in grace, and knowing that God is always with us. But I know staying rooted in faith is not always easy. At least it isn't for me. And that's why I love Glorify, the number one Christian devotional app designed to help you start, grow and strengthen your relationship with God every single day. One of the things I love about Glorify is the amount of options available to me through the app every day. Not only does it help me kick off my time with God with their daily devotional, but there's a song of the day to listen to and a community of other users available to engage with. It's really cool. With Glorify, you can begin your morning in Scripture, reflect with a daily devotional, and end the day with the daily walk with God, this immersive experience that quiets your heart and refocuses your spirit. It's one of my favorite hacks, something simple but powerful that keeps you anchored when life gets busy. And since we're shining a light on women this month, let's celebrate the strength, faith and stories of women who inspire us every day. And for the men listening, think about how you're uplifting the women of faith in your life. Join me and over 20 million believers who have found encouragement through Glorify. Download the app today@glorified app.com podcast and let's keep walking in faith together again. That's glorify-app.com podcast.
- [19:06]
Ryan Reynolds
Who doesn't love the good things in life? Even though I enjoy a little luxury, it doesn't mean I can always afford it. Until I discovered Quince. Quince is my go to for luxury essentials at affordable prices. I love the range of high quality items at prices that are within reach like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50 washable silk tops and dresses, organic cotton sweaters and 14 karat gold jewelry. The best part? All Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings onto us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes. I love that the puffer jacket I got from Quince has been a go to companion during these cold Michigan winter days. It is super warm and also super cute. Give yourself the luxury you deserve with quince. Go to quince.com outside for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E dot com outside to get free shipping and 365 day returns quints.com outside Ryan.
- [20:18]
Mint Mobile
Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com.
- [20:35]
Heather Thompson Day
Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees, extra terms. @mintmobile.com I thought maybe we could talk.
- [20:49]
Jenny Eric
About some of the things in the documentary. It's called Brain Heart World.
- [20:52]
Parker Hymas
Yeah.
- [20:53]
Jenny Eric
But it's split up into three different segments. They're just 30 minutes each. So this isn't going to take gobs of your time. And you would expect that a documentary about pornography is going to be like either finger wagging or boring or awkward or all of these different things in combination. Yeah, I mean my, my jaw dropped. I was like, it's so cool how you were able to make it like so current and all the extra visuals anyway, I was just blown away. But you, you take it into these three parts and the brain is about how pornography affects you as an individual. The heart is about how pornography affects your relationships. And the world is about how pornography can affect what's going on in the greater world. Because I think a lot of people think, well, this is just a personal decision. And so you're making the argument about sex trafficking and lots of other things, domestic violence, a lot of other things that are happening that maybe people wouldn't be aware of.
- [21:48]
Parker Hymas
Yeah.
- [21:49]
Jenny Eric
So one of the things that was really interesting in the first section, the brain, which is about how pornography affects our relationship with ourself, is it's so good. It was talking about how our brain tends to prefer the super normal, the exaggerated. So Parker, there was these really cool object lessons where it showed like this is how much sugar people consumed in 1940. And then it's got this massive pile of how much sugar people consume now. And then it had like.
- [22:18]
Parker Hymas
Or the little action figure. Yes.
- [22:22]
Jenny Eric
So it was an action figure from whenever. Let's say it's from the 1960s. You got this action figure and it's kind of, it's like big, but it's kind of just like chubby ish looking. It's just kind of like a bigger, whatever action figure. And then it's like, well this is what the action figure looks like today. And it's got like 1 million muscles. Yeah. And so our brains tend toward, I guess I didn't really know this. Exaggerated versions of things. And eventually we prefer the super normal stimuli and we ignore the normal things. Can you talk about why that is something that we really need to know about?
- [22:55]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, absolutely. So this really all goes back to like something a lot of people maybe learned about in like a Psych 101 class or something. But Dr. Nicholas Timbergen, he won the Nobel Prize for what we now call a supernormal stimulus. And this is just an exaggerated version version of something natural. That's basically what that means. His original work, one of the things that he studied was butterflies. He wanted to see what male butterflies found most attractive about their female counterparts. And when he kind of thought he had that figured out, he made these fake cardboard butterflies where he exaggerated the features that the male butterflies found most attractive. So the wings on the butterflies are bigger, the colors on the wings are brighter, the shapes on the wings are more exaggerated than what you would see in nature. And then they let those butterflies go in an enclosure with the cardboard decoys. And over time, the male butterflies basically just swarmed the cardboard decoys and ignored the real female butterflies. Instead of trying to mate with them, they were trying to mate with these cardboard butterflies. And he asked himself, what did I do right is kind of how I picture it. And he's like, this isn't what I was expecting. And if I remember right, he said, I created an artificial exaggeration of something natural. And over time, the brain preferred the artificial exaggeration to what was normal, natural and healthy. And many researchers today consider porn to be a supernormal stimulus. Because everything from how accessible porn is, there's no work like a real human relationship. It's just accessible immediately to the content itself. Being so exaggerated and extreme to the way people look and connect with each other in pornography, they all point to it being just as fake and exaggerated as those cardboard butterflies. And research shows that over time, people who consume pornography tend to lose interest in real life relationships and partners and seeking out real life relationships, and instead prefer to spend time alone consuming pornography, which isn't healthy. You know, there's research showing how porn impacts our mental health. And it shows that individuals who consume porn tend to have poor mental health, lower self esteem, poor body image, less fulfilling relationships, and ultimately more loneliness. So while many people think porn is going to help them feel better when they're lonely, stressed, sad, or bored in the Long run, it only further complicates issues surrounding the individual consumer's mental health.
- [24:58]
Jenny Eric
So parents that are listening, you could see how if you're sitting with your 12 year old and you're watching this documentary, the brain parts just 30 minutes and they show the action figures and then they show what did little dolls look like in the 50s? And now they look like these Barbie dolls. You know, the clothing has changed and you talk about the butterflies. You just learn so much and it makes so much sense. And I Talked recently to Dr. Nicholas Carderis, who wrote this book called Glow Kids and another one called Digital Madness, and he's dealing with clients and he is saying how there's. I don't exactly remember how he put it, but there's dysfunction, like sexual dysfunction that's happening in kids that used to only be an adult thing. And Dr. Carder has talked about how there's. They're talking about digital dementia. Digital dementia. It's affecting your brain matter in a way that normally you'd be a lot older in your 70s, you're getting Alzheimer's and they're seeing that in kids. And so it's just something that really helps you understand what's going on, why it's so appealing to the brain and what the dangers could be. I never heard of that. Like, you talk about Psych 101. I'd never heard of the phrase supernormal stimulus. And additionally, with the brain, one of the things that is talked about in the documentary is that the prefrontal cortex is like the brakes for the reward center. Once again, it's so geared toward including your kids. So it's like, you want to eat the whole pizza, but your prefrontal cortex says no, just eat a couple pizzas, you want to sleep in till noon, but your prefrontal cortex says no, you need to get to school and get your schoolwork done. So it's just masterfully done. But what I learned and the part of the documentary about the brain is that the brake pads wear out, basically. So the prefrontal cortex that is supposed to keep the reward center in check in time can start to fail a little bit. Can you talk about that?
- [26:51]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, great question. So that's what we mean when we say that pornography can be habit forming. Basically. There's some, some great research on this from various different studies. But essentially the reward system and the prefrontal cortex, right, the reward system drives our desires. The prefrontal cortex acts like the brakes. And normally the prefrontal cortex is like, hey, hey, hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. And kind of keeps that reward system in check. The problem is, when people consume porn, it can weaken the relationship between the reward system and the prefrontal cortex, meaning the reward system can begin to run kind of unchecked. And that's what develops to a habit, a compulsive behavior, or even, in some cases, an addiction. And I'm not saying that everyone has been exposed to porn is addictive. That's not. Not true. But there is an abundance of research to show that porn addiction is very real. It shares similarities to an addiction to a substance like, say, nicotine that makes cigarettes or tobacco products addictive. And aside from that, we all have probably met people who struggle with pornography. We know it's impacting their life, and yet they still can't seem to stop consuming it. And that's not something we should ignore either. When we're talking about how it can be habit forming, I think that understanding that. Understanding that the brain is neuroplastic, that we can develop unhealthy behaviors, that behaviors can become habit forming, it can become compulsive or even addictive, even though it's not a substance. And then understanding that also because of neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change, that someone can overcome a struggle with pornography through time and forming healthier habits and making a conscious decision to not consume pornography. You know, we can kind of undo a lot of these things, but it does take time, for sure.
- [28:24]
Jenny Eric
Yeah, there was a good message of hope. I mean, it very much talked about toward the end of that section that the brain can heal. And then you watch that one, and there's so many things about it. Like you learn about this guy that had some sort of a. Like a rebar, like some sort of a metal thing that went through his head. He still lived, but it just changed him. And how those changes can really affect our health and our happiness. That bright, you know, changes to the brain.
- [28:49]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, I think that's kind of what you're getting to, is the documentary and our live events and our resources and our social media. We try to be fun first and informative second. Kind of. Well, maybe cool first and informative second. We try to educate while still keeping people's attention.
- [29:06]
Jenny Eric
Yeah.
- [29:07]
Parker Hymas
And that's maybe some of the things you're pointing out in the documentary. Right. Like, we want to help it be something that kids can pay attention and understand. It's educational for adults and children. There's going to be jokes that your kids will laugh at that you won't laugh at. There's jokes that parents laugh at that their kids won't laugh at. But it's kind of for everybody. Right?
- [29:24]
Jenny Eric
Is. And I think it's entertaining and it feels good to learn new things. So I like that. I'm like, oh my gosh, I learned so much in this 30 minute segment. And it's explained it just so. It's so clear there. It's so much clarity to it. So I enjoyed these so much. The second one, and this is something that you talk about on the website, is that this is not just an individual thing. This is going to affect your relationships. It might change who you love, who you're attracted to, how you love, how you show love. There's lots of different things that could change due to watching pornography. Can you talk about some of those things that people might not know?
- [30:06]
Parker Hymas
Yeah. So when we're talking about how porn affects how much we love, there's a good amount of research on how porn impacts relationships. And most of this research is demonstrating how porn impacts the relationships over time. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a single longitudinal study that has shown that porn has a positive impact on relationships over time. It's always a negative outcome. But we see in the research, you know, people who consume porn are more likely to have poor relationship satisfaction. They're less committed to their partner. There's a greater acceptance of cheating in relationships where one partner is consuming pornography. And those findings are directional. Meaning in the research, the more porn that was consumed, the greater the likelihood of those different outcomes. There was also a study where they followed couples for six years. They weren't studying pornography, they were studying relationships. They wanted to see what would determine if a couple would be less happy in the future than they are today. And they found that porn was the second greatest indicator that a relationship would suffer over time. Meaning that people become less happy in their relationship over time. The interesting thing about that study is I always get asked, what was the greatest indicator? People think it's going to be money or something like that. The greatest indicator in that research was actually if the couple began the study as unhappy for whatever reason. That wasn't used as a control. So if the couple was unhappy at the start of the study and they didn't do anything to improve that, then of course they're going to be unhappy at the end of the study. Right. They didn't change any behaviors and they were already unhappy.
- [31:24]
Jenny Eric
Wow. So in other words, this really is the greatest indicator.
- [31:28]
Parker Hymas
Yeah. Second only to that born was.
- [31:30]
Jenny Eric
Yeah. Because if you took a happy. If you took a relationship that was happy to begin with, and if that were controlled for, then that would be the biggest indicator then.
- [31:39]
Parker Hymas
Exactly. Yeah.
- [31:40]
Jenny Eric
Wow. And it affects divorce rates. That was something that someone was talking about in the second part. Like, it was like. And I don't remember the names, but this guy was like, I can predict with 94% accuracy, you know, people are going to divorce or, you know, but. But it's affecting long term, the marriages.
- [31:57]
Parker Hymas
Yeah. So that's Dr. John and Julie Gottman. And he is kind of. Him and his wife are famous for running the Gottsman Institute in Seattle. And there's a little clip in there from him on the news talking about how successful they are, kind of predicting relationship outcomes. Generally not related to pornography. But they're in there. A few years back, they released something called an open letter on pornography. And in it they said that for many reasons, porn poses a serious threat to a couple's intimacy and relationship harmony. And so that's one of the things we point to when we're talking about experts in their field saying, hey, big flashing lights, hey, maybe you should consider this. This can be harmful to your relationship. And then the other thing we talked about, especially with young people, is how porn impacts the way we think about the people we love. And so we talk about objectification with young people, helping them to understand that people who consume porn are more likely to objectify the people in their lives, including the people they love, care about. And we want them to live a life where they're not objectifying people, where they can live a life free of the burden of these things and feel happy and live a healthier life. And objectification isn't going to point towards those things. Right. Objectification isn't good for you or the person you're objectifying. And especially with kids, helping them to understand that sexting or sending inappropriate images is a real problem. And parents need to understand that when someone under the age of 18 takes a photo or a video of themselves without clothing on and sends that to another person, it's not only something that can contribute to objectification, it's also considered legally in many places, the possession and distribution of child pornography or child sexual abuse material. And it can have longstanding repercussions for children, even minor to minor. And so we really need to have conversations about that, helping kids understand they don't need to be pressured to send them. They don't need to be pressured to ask people for them, and especially that they should be never be sharing these images with other people, that's image based sexual abuse. You know, if you receive an image from someone who knowingly sent that to you and you send it to other people without their knowledge or consent, that's image based sexual abuse. You are now distributing child sexual abuse material to other people. And it really can have some longstanding repercussions. And so we really encourage parents to be talking with their kids because sexting was a problem when I was a kid for sure. It's like cell phones were kind of just coming up. But much of my high school was before smartphones. And so you can only imagine how that has evolved over time. And we want kids to be making healthy decisions, prevent them from having these things. And for parents also to know that, unfortunately because of AI, that Deepfakes is a real thing. And there have been a few instances across the US of young people having their photos taken off their social media and then digitally altered through AI to look as if they were naked or they were in a pornographic video. And of course that's not appropriate. You know, that's never okay. A lot of the laws are trying to catch up to these problems, but these are things that we should be talking about as parents to help protect our kids as well. Not just to caution them against things they're doing, but sometimes things that are out of our control and how we can try to prevent that.
- [34:57]
Mint Mobile
Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry company, seniority skills. Wait, did I say job job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started at LinkedIn.com results terms and conditions apply.
- [35:27]
Heather Thompson Day
Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was glasses are too expensive. So they set out to change that. By designing glasses in house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate. And they start at just $95, including prescription lenses. Get glasses made from the good stuff. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify, the global commerce platform that supercharges your Selling wherever you sell. With Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps, and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial period@shopify.com tech. All lowercase. That's shopify.com tech.
- [36:28]
Jenny Eric
You said you can only imagine, you know, like if you went to high school and it was just flip phones and now there's these smartphones. But Nancy Jo Sales wrote a book called American Girls where she basically says what it's like and it's. It was a gut wrenching, life changing read for me. She talked to girls and it's actually about a decade old. She talked to girls across the country, ages 13 to 19 and talked about that. That the pressure is so astronomical. The boys are trading the pictures as like a currency to a degree. So there's like almost this pressure for the boys to get the pictures and the girls are in some cases they're being bullied, but also like, you ha, you better give me to this or give this to me or I'm gonna show people this other thing about you. So there's a, what's that word? Like it's not bullied, but it's like they're, you know, I'm talking about like you if you better do this or I don't know, I'm kind of sick of my brain.
- [37:20]
Parker Hymas
When we're talking about nude images. I, I would call that sextortion. Right? Yeah.
- [37:24]
Jenny Eric
Okay. Yeah, yeah. So sextortion or like, yeah, like, or when you hold something over someone's head, even if it's not about nude out nude pictures, it's like, I don't know, someone's gonna email me and tell me what.
- [37:35]
Parker Hymas
Oh, they're just pressuring them into.
- [37:37]
Jenny Eric
Yeah, they're, they're pressuring them. But like with. I've got this ugly picture of you and if you don't send me a nude photo, I'm gonna share this with our whole school, that type of thing. So it just really, there's so much pressure for kids. I never. The word didn't come to my, to my mind. But yeah, sextortion works. There's so much pressure for kids. It's more than I could have ever imagined or dreamed.
- [37:58]
Parker Hymas
Absolutely. Yeah.
- [37:59]
Jenny Eric
For the girls and the boys. I felt empathy for both. If all your buddies are doing that and there's. In order to feel included, you feel like you have to do that or in order to be in part of this group of friends, you have to do that. I mean, it's just pretty awful. So I just think that that's a must read for parents American girls in terms of realizing how prevalent this is.
- [38:19]
Parker Hymas
Yeah. And if I could just put a call out for the sextion since we kind of brought that up briefly for parents, something to be aware of. You know, when we were first seeing sexortion cases, it was like, like a boy or partner was getting a girl to send them images and then saying, hey, if you don't send me more content, I'll send this to your parents or something. Right. And definitely not okay. That's a huge problem. And it's still happening. But now law enforcement agencies are seeing actually a really big spike in boys being sex sorted. And this, it's different. What's typically happening with young men is someone in another country. They're these scammers that traditionally have scammed grandma by pretending to be the Social Security agency or whatever, are now targeting young high school age boys, convincing them that they're a 17 or 18 year old girl, getting them to send them a photo and then saying, hey, if you don't send me money right now, I'm going to send these photos to your parents. And then they reveal themselves. And this has led to a number of kids taking their own life because they don't know how to handle this. They feel so overwhelmed by the burden of the shame. The money's never enough. Even if they do somehow get money to send to the scammers, the scammers always want more and they just feel so way down and burdened there. There was a story at a conference I was at recently. A father talking about how his son did end up taking his own life. And this all happened within a six hour window. It was on a Saturday, everybody was home. They thought it was a normal day. And within six hours, from the time that these scammers first reach out to him pretending to be a girl, to the time that his son took his life, it was only about six hours. And I know that that is kind of a. That's kind of like one of the really heavy stories to hear and I know that can be difficult to hear. Now I'm trying to scare parents. You know, that's not going to be every outcome, of course, but we do need to be having these conversations more than ever with our children. We can't just say that's uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about it. Like we have to find a way to talk about it.
- [40:13]
Jenny Eric
Yeah. The word I was thinking of was blackmail.
- [40:16]
Parker Hymas
Oh, blackmail.
- [40:17]
Jenny Eric
I had to look it up. I don't know. Anyways, I've like been sick for quite a while and I'm like. And then you're kind of like, you're not fully there. You're like really close, but not quite. Blackmail was the word I was thinking of. What about this? We have a friend that we've known for decades and it's just a friend of the family and he is involved with AI software. And he came on our podcast, his name's Jeff, and he's. He's been interested in like the chatbot thing really since the 80s. He was able to make like his Atari have a conversation with him. He was kind of a lonely kid. And the AI stuff is interesting because in some ways there's a lot of benefits to it. Like if you had. I just saw a story the other day about a robot dog and it's like this AI robot dog and it's helping elderly people with connection and who knows? Like, what do you, you know, it's like, what do you really think about that? I don't know, is it good, is it bad? What are the dangers? And this friend of ours, Jeff, he has done a lot of work with AI relationships. So in his case, AI, AI girlfriends, boyfriends. But girlfriends are more, I think, more common. An AI girlfriend. And he's just testing it out. Parker. So this is part of his job and his family, his wife, his kids, they know that he, he has some of these AI girlfriends. It's for testing. And he told this remarkable story about how he's spending time. And the, The AI girlfriend can like look how you want her to look. The AI girlfriend can. Will ask you, will always think you're funny, will never forget that you had a big meeting or a bad day or. And it's like this perfect specimen.
- [41:50]
Parker Hymas
Yikes.
- [41:51]
Jenny Eric
And he got pretty attached, like he said. Even though I knew it was fake. There was one time when it would take a picture, a selfie, like they would go out to dinner together and have a conversation. They could watch a movie together and it would actually talk, like with a voice. Anyway, it's wild. This is the stuff that's like already out there and already happening and being tested. But I couldn't help but think, well, if a child, let's say a child, let's say a 14 year old has an experience with the perfect looking AI girlfriend, will they be able to ever have a normal relationship that has all sorts of idiosyncrasies, all sorts of ups and downs? And one of the things that you Talk about is that it changes what we're attracted to and, like this arousal piece. And I thought, well, that seems like that could also be a pretty impactful thing because, you know, it's like you're a kid. You're like, I remember being a kid. It's like, well, that's the cutest boy, but I'm not the cutest girl, so I'm not going to end up with that guy. You kind. There's kind of like a strata, right? Of like, who is in your strata. Is this a weird conversation?
- [42:57]
Parker Hymas
No, no.
- [42:58]
Jenny Eric
I just was thinking about the fact of, like, if in pornography or in art, like artificial girlfriend territory, you can have whoever you want, but in real life you can't, how might that affect relationships long term?
- [43:11]
Parker Hymas
Yeah. And I don't know the research on this specifically, and I don't know what research has even been done yet on this, but I will say this. Anecdotally, I was at a live event. I spoke on a military base somewhat recently, maybe within the last 12 months. And I had someone come up to me after, and they were talking about how they spend so much time on OnlyFans and with like an AI girlfriend that they have developed the strongest social anxiety, that they can't even hardly go out in public or talk to real people. And also the crippling financial burden that this has put on them in their life because they're tipping people on OnlyFans or spending money on the AI chatbot. And I felt for this person, you know, this person is just absolutely in the thralls of the problems with these, with the content with some of these platforms, you know, and I, you know, strongly encourage them to meet with a therapist to get support and all of those things. But, you know, that is anecdotally this one story. Those are the things I really worry about. You know, some of These platforms, like OnlyFans, people want to say, hey, this is the future of pornography. This is exploitation free. This is, quote, ethical pornography. And unfortunately, none of those things are true from fighting drugs viewpoint. Right. And why do we say that?
- [44:47]
Jenny Eric
Really quick, Parker, can you explain what OnlyFans is?
- [44:50]
Parker Hymas
Oh, oh, great question. Yes, sorry. Sometimes I forget my audience a little bit. Yeah. So OnlyFans, for those of you who don't know, you know, since the late 90s, pornography has traditionally been essentially like, free. And they've made money originally in the early days by stealing content, essentially the same way that people used to, like, rip a DVD and put it for free on the Internet. That's kind of what was happening. They were essentially like stealing major porn studios content and putting that online on free tube sites. That kind of completely changed the industry because all of those organizations went under and the free Internet porn bought them or made their own studios and they made their own content. And it basically survives on marketing like watching a YouTube video, right? You're not paying to use YouTube, you're watching an ad and then you can watch a video, right? So that's kind of how these organizations have thrived. But OnlyFans has completely flipped that on its head. They have found a way to get people to pay for pornography in a world where people were fully accustomed to not paying for porn. And the thought behind this is it's kind of like influencers, right? Like you go on the website, on your phone, on the mobile website and you pick people that you want to purchase content from and you subscribe to them. So you pay 5 to 50 bucks a month have access to this person's pornographic content. And only fans, you know, they do have some other content on there. But by and large, even by their own admission, almost all of the creators on OnlyFans create pornographic content. Very few people are on there making cooking videos or fitness content for you to subscribe to. The vast majority of the content is pornographic in nature. Then you can also pay more to tip that person or pay more to have a conversation with that person, which that's a whole other problem we have to talk about, which is most of the time the people aren't talking to that person. They're talking with a third party chatter in another country who's being paid by the content creator to pretend to be them. And then you're, you're paying to talk to someone in another country who you think is this person that's not even the real person. Reuters did a great, great job of reporting on OnlyFans recently. They have a landing page where they have, I think seven articles talking about all of the problems with OnlyFans, why it's not ethical, why there are problems behind the platform and they cover everything from the fact that just like the tube sites, one of the problems when we talk about society, right, we've talked about how it affects individuals and relationships. And that's why I was saying there's no such thing as is ethical porn. Because the reality is even if you could somehow ensure that porn is made without any exploitation and people are treated fairly and all these things that would make it exploitation free, which we haven't hit on a lot today, but even if you could it wouldn't null the effects that it has on individuals and relationships. Right. Which means that the point is mute. It doesn't matter if that's even possible because the research still shows it affects individuals, relationships, our society. But these platforms aren't ethical and we should go a step further to show why they're not ethical. And the problem is that many of these platforms like OnlyFans have been in trouble, just like the tube sites of yesteryear, for hosting non consensual content, child sexual abuse material, videos of trafficking victims, for being a platform where victims are trafficked on it. Right. People basically force people to produce content for it and they don't even see the money. Essentially like a modern day a pimp where these people are being sex trafficked through the platform. You know, there's so many problems with all of these, with only fans and with tube sites that we can definitely go into a little bit more. But yeah, we want people to understand definitely what only fans is and some of the dangers. You know, there have been instances, especially a few years ago where there was instances of people creating content on OnlyFans by signing up with like a family member's ID so that it looked like they were 18, but it's not them, things like that.
- [48:40]
Jenny Eric
So how ubiquitous is it? I've obviously heard of it and the only things I've heard of it beyond hearing about it is like oh, someone was a teacher and then they had an account and then kids maybe in the school found it and then they lost their job or something along those lines. I mean, is it like so many people are on it and using it?
- [49:01]
Parker Hymas
I just googled because I was trying to remember. The current estimate is there's 305 million active users that use only fans. Now not all of those are paying subscribers, but there's 305 million accounts that have been made between people who create content, people who consume content across the world.
- [49:19]
Jenny Eric
That's a lot. That's ubiquitous. Wow.
- [49:21]
Parker Hymas
Yeah.
- [49:22]
Jenny Eric
And then, and one of the things you talk about. So if we, if we were to sort of move into that final piece of the documentary which fits here, which is about the world, how pornography can affect society, one of the things is, is that this is basically modern day prostitution. It's very similar in the fact that it's the same type of people involved, there's traffickers and I guess maybe people would never even consider think to consider that as being somewhat similar. But in what ways is that the same?
- [49:52]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, that's a great question. So we talk About a lot of things when we talk about society, how porn impacts society on a large scale. One of those is the very nature of the content, like we talked about earlier, because people need more extreme content. There's a demand for that, and that content gets made, made. So one of the things is recent research shows that between 35% and 88% of popular porn scenes contain physical violence or aggression. Meaning the most conservative research, over a third of the videos that researchers analyzed were violent and degrading and abusive. And on the other end, some research shows almost nine out of 10 scenes are violent, degrading, abuse of the researchers analyze. So the content itself is problematic, especially when we're talking about young people. Again, there might be people listening to this that we don't agree on porn's harms, but what we can agree on is that young people should not be consuming pornography. And this is why, right? They are far too young for this to be their only exposure to any form of sex education. And pornography, to be clear, is not sex education at all. It is not sex education.
- [50:54]
Jenny Eric
Is that something that people say, children.
- [50:56]
Parker Hymas
Young kids, if their parents are not talking about sex, they see it as a form of sex education is what I'm trying to get out. So to be clear, my stance is porn should not be sex sex education. But the problem is, if we don't talk to our kids, then they look at porn to get answers to questions and they think that's what sex should look like. And the problem is this content is extremely abusive. Degrading individuals that consume porn are less likely to believe survivors of sexual abuse and more likely to carry out sexual abuse themselves. Individuals are more likely to have sexist beliefs after consuming pornography than before they consumed pornography. These are not the things that we want to be programming into young people because this is the content that they're looking at. And then of course, the abuse that we're talking about, right? So not only does the demand for pornography and the fact that it exists allow individuals who would seek to groom minors to normalize the abuse by showing them pornography, saying, hey, this is normal. Like, look, these people are doing it on this video and they're showing them important to normalize and to groom them into inappropriate and illegal behaviors and abuse them. So that's a problem. And then the other side of is like you were talking about the sex trafficking. Now when a fight through drug. We say porn and sex trafficking are inseparably connected. And that can sound extreme if people don't understand the legal definition of sex trafficking. So I'm just gonna like quickly spout that off. The TDPA in the year 2000 defined sex trafficking as a commercial sex act induced by force, fraud or coercion, or where a minor is present. So that means if money or something of value is exchanged for sex and there's a minor, that's sex trafficking, trafficking. Or if there's force, fraud or coercion, it becomes sex trafficking. So force is what we often see in media, right? Someone's kidnapped, held against their will and sold for sex. And while those things do happen, there are definitely many other ways that sex trafficking occurs. And that's what we want to educate people on. The fraud, the coercion, right? These are the stories that we see that are legally sex trafficking, fraud. You know, that can be withholding someone's pay, changing the terms of an agreement, forcing someone to sign a contract, withholding legal documents, documents. This could be blackmail, extortion, right? All of these things define that act as sex trafficking, even if it was occurring within the production of pornography. So let me give you two examples that we often share at live events. In one example, a young woman's partner took explicit photos and videos of her without her knowledge. He threatened her with violence. When he realized he could make money by posting those on a mainstream porn site, he was charged with crimes of sex trafficking. In another example, a popular, well known this was heavily publicized porn production company was found to have been for about a decade, intentionally seeking out predominantly women on Craigslist through modeling ads and telling them they were flying them to California to do like fitness photo shoots and model yoga equipment and clothing, right? So these people think, I finally got a chance to do modeling. And instead when they arrived on set, they were held against their will, drugged, raped, forced to participate. Some of them were kept. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is in California. They're flown out to California where it all happened. And some of them were filmed and held for a day, two days. And think about the amount of content they're filming that time. And then they just have to edit that to be a few minute long video that looks consensual because they have hours of content to cut a few minute clip that looks consensual. People didn't believe these survivors, which is why this went on for 10 years. They thought these are women who chose to do porn and change their mind after and they're embarrassed and now they're making up the story, which is really unfortunate. We need to believe survivors. And when finally there was enough of them, the executives, this Company ended up on the FBI's top 10 most wanted list. They were eventually found hiding in New Zealand. And you know, we go from there. So these Jane does who withheld their names in the, in the case we have one of them. We've done a podcast episode with. You can hear her story. We have True Story video, a podcast with her where you can kind of hear her story about what this was like being trafficked in pornography when she thought she was going going to do modeling work. So these are the issues we're talking about when we're saying why is pornography impacting society? Well, because it's sexual exploitation. There's no way to know that someone in the content someone is consuming was there willingly. There's no way to know because it's an under regulated industry. The laws that exist often aren't enforced. And that is what the industry is, I would imagine.
- [55:15]
Jenny Eric
People's jaws are dropped.
- [55:17]
Parker Hymas
It's.
- [55:17]
Jenny Eric
Sorry, I get a little wild to.
- [55:20]
Parker Hymas
Those stories come out.
- [55:21]
Jenny Eric
Yeah, it's wild to think like that's just what's going on around us. One of the things that you say is that each and every viewer feeds demand.
- [55:29]
Parker Hymas
Yeah.
- [55:30]
Jenny Eric
And you even have a T shirt that says stop the demand. The shirts are so cool. I was like, how could pornography shirts be so cool? But they are so cool. There's a couple designs that say porn kills love. There's one that maybe a couple that says be a lover and a fighter. People are not products reject all counterfeits. And they're like some of the coolest looking T shirts you've ever seen. Like that's really powerful to be out. There's bags too, you know, to be out and spreading that message just even through what you're wearing. But the whole stop the demand concept, you know, that would change a lot of things. If there's no demand for it, then those things would start to wane. And so in that way, the documentary, you know, you're talking about how pornography affects individuals, how pornography affects relationships and how pornography affects society. But also all the information on the website, from the articles to the videos, to the shop to the live presentations, they all are similar in sharing those stories, but in a way that is entertaining. As entertaining as it could be. I mean, it's entertaining, I guess you learn stuff and the, you know, the little drawings constantly like in the notebooks. I was like, this is one of the best things I've ever seen produced. So. So it's really fabulous what you're doing. It's a great entry point. For families who are looking to talk to their kids more about this and who are needing resources. Before we wrap up, we're kind of right toward the end here. Yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more about how you're gearing this toward college students. We talk quite a bit on here about college and how there's a lot of failure to launch a lot of kids that are addicted to gaming and are dropping out. There's just a lot of things going on right now that are different than used to be decades ago. Kind of like what we were talking about at the beginning. What are you finding is going on at colleges and how are you addressing those students?
- [57:16]
Parker Hymas
That's a great question. On college campuses, the way that we talk about this is a little bit different than the way that we would with an 11 to 18 year old at a middle school, junior high or high school. We approach it a little bit more like, is porn harmful? And then we try to prove that argument through our presentation instead of just addressing it with the kids. And we also kind of get right into it, you know, with the high school audience or middle school. We're not even mentioning pornography for the first five to 10 minutes. We're getting the kids to be comfortable and laughing and having fun. And so with college students, we're trying to help them to understand this is the research showing the impacts pornography has. And we dive in a little bit deeper than we would with younger kids. And so we're still, you know, any of our resources are going to focus on how porn impacts individuals, relationships in society. But with colleges, we kind of take that a step further, dive into some deeper research and really try to help them understand how it is impacting us. And then of course, provide resources. We want to provide resources for all of our audience for youth that's often pointing them to their parents, to a school counselor, to someone that's like qualified to be speaking with them or a trusted adult in their life. But with parents, the resources are, hey, here's all the resources for when your kids do come talk to you. And with college students, the resources are, you know, is your porn consumption a problem? Here's some questions to ask yourself. Here's some resources. Here's, you know, your college campus has these resources. Here's what we can be doing to try to overcome a struggle with pornography. Here's why you should, shouldn't consume porn. And so that's kind of what that looks like with college students. We really want to try to create and drive change on campuses. And we Want the students to get involved on campus.
- [58:51]
Jenny Eric
What kind of responses do you see?
- [58:53]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, it depends on where we speak. You know, sometimes we're speaking on a college campus where people are generally very accepting of our message and they're on board and they want more information about porn's impacts, but they generally, many of them agree. Sometimes we're in a place where it's still a little bit more up for debate. Like, some of the students are on board, Some of them aren't. Some of them understand our mission. Some of them are confused about what we actually do. So I would say it varies greatly. And we always have Q and A, like live question answer sessions after presentation. Anytime we're with adult audiences. Again, with kids, we want to point them to proper resources like school counselors and parents. But with parents, we want to answer their questions. With college students, we want to answer their questions to the best of our abilities. And so it varies widely depending on where we're speaking and kind of the community response response. But either way, we get to go out there and allow people the opportunity to make an informed decision by learning about the impacts.
- [59:44]
Jenny Eric
Parker, that's really brave, truthfully, isn't it? It's really brave to go out into a world where you know that there are going to people be people that are opposed to your message, and still you're putting the information out there. Wow. Fight the new drug.org FTND.org live if you would like to bring them in to do a live presentation in your community. And the resources are the best I've seen. The best I've seen. I've not seen better.
- [60:08]
Parker Hymas
Oh, thank you.
- [60:08]
Jenny Eric
And I'm just so thankful to know about it and thankful for your time here. We always end our show with the same question. Parker, what is a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
- [60:19]
Parker Hymas
Yeah, that's a great question. Okay, so when I was a kid, one of my. I mean, I have a lot of favorite memories outside, but one. One favorite memory that I have outside side is kind of a silly one. I was with, like, a boy scout troop, and we were up on top of this mountain, and we had just done this grueling hike backpacking to get to this place. And the leader's like, hey, you know, maybe we could just go down the snow slope to get down faster. It'd be like a shortcut, right? And this story is kind of just one that I like telling. I guess maybe it's not like my favorite story, but it's like. It's like one I love Telling. So my brother ends up being kind of the first one. He's like, yeah, just kind of like sit on your bum with your feet kind of against your bum and go down and then just kind of steer with your hands behind you, right? And so we're like, okay, cool, this is a great idea. You know, and the slope seemed like it would be pretty easy. It wouldn't get going too fast. There shouldn't be any obstacles. But it's like July. This is like on the backside of, you know, the opposite side the sun's on of the summit and so there's still snow there. And we're just going to go down the shoot and my brother goes first and he goes down and we're watching him and it's like going pretty smooth and all of a sudden he just spins around the wrong way and he's going down backwards. There's like nothing he can do. And we're like, oh no, maybe we didn't think this through all the way. And it looked like he bumped this rock and then went around it. And we're like, my brother just broke his head open for sure. So we all like kind of just like get down to him as fast as we can and we're like panicking. We're like thinking he's going to be like seriously injured and all this stuff. We get down there, there and he's just like, that was so fun. He was totally fine. Nothing had happened. Everything was okay. And so that's one of my favorite things is, you know, spending time outside, gambling a little bit, sometimes taking a little risk but leaving with those memories.
- [62:07]
Jenny Eric
Away from screens though. I mean, for kids that are still doing that, if they're going on boy scout trips, I mean, those are the things you're putting them away. And it's just less. I don't know if it's true or not. It feels like there's less opportunity to be exposed to the things that you, you know, you don't want to be exposed to. So, Parker, what an honor. I so appreciate your time. Thank you for all you're doing. Thanks for having us to fight the new drug. Yeah, it's fantastic and so, so impactful.
- [62:30]
Parker Hymas
Yeah. And parents, all of our resources for parents are one easy to access place. So if you go to FTND.org parents everything that's parent related is all in one place there. FTND.org parents okay, great.
- [62:41]
Jenny Eric
I'll put all the links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Parker.
- [62:44]
Parker Hymas
Thank you. You, let's be real talking about intimacy.
- [62:52]
Jenny Eric
Can be awkward, even with your spouse. But it doesn't have to be.
- [62:55]
Parker Hymas
We are Alanna, Kyle, and Tia, hosts of the Kingdom Sexuality Podcast, and we're.
- [62:59]
Jenny Eric
All about keeping it real and helping.
- [63:01]
Parker Hymas
You add some spice and deeper connection into your marriage. Specifically, when it comes to what happens in the bedroom, we don't shy away from the tough conversations that often get missed in Christian circles. With us, you'll get laughs, tips, fresh ideas, and challenges to strengthen your relationship and bring it to the next level.
- [63:17]
Jenny Eric
Because, let's face it, navigating intimacy as a Christian can be confusing, and finding safe, wholesome resources can be tough. So subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week on the Kingdom Sexuality Podcast.
- [63:40]
Heather Thompson Day
What if More important than being right is how we handle being wrong?
- [63:45]
Annie F. Downs
Holding tightly to ideas that can't adapt.
- [63:47]
Heather Thompson Day
With new information is not a virtue, it's a vice. I'm Heather Thompson Day and I'm inviting you to join me over on my podcast what if I'm Wrong? Where I'll be your guide through real life questions.
- [63:59]
Parker Hymas
Okay, today we have a submission story.
- [64:01]
Heather Thompson Day
And it is wild. Subscribe to what if I'm Wrong? Available wherever you listen to podcasts.