Closing Pandora's Box: Empowering Parents to Help Their Children Reject Pornography

Closing Pandora's Box replaces Pandora's Box is Open, Now What Do I Do, but the content is the same. Research shows that pornography addiction is as real as any other form of addiction, and children are especially susceptible to its damaging effects. Their first exposure releases unnaturally high levels of pleasurable chemicals in the brain, then the body grows used to this chemical concoction and continues to seek it out. Repeated porn usage delivers this gratifying chemical hit, time after time. Like a drug, kids keep coming back for more, sometimes in response to boredom, but very often as a way to cope with the difficulties and uncertainties of life, which—let’s face it— will always exist. As a result, instead of developing healthy coping techniques, children are becoming tethered to one of the unhealthiest coping strategies there is: addiction. The porn industry knows this and that’s why they want to hook our children, and hook them young. And they will stop at virtually nothing to do this. They want customers for life, and what better way than to target innocent children who lack the judgment to avoid pornography’s perverse pull? Some people say there’s no hope for helping children learn to resist the quicksand of pornography. Don’t believe it. When parents combine the bond they have with their children, with knowledge and skill-based resources, there is clear hope for both prevention and recovery. Remember this: Although the purveyors of pornography are flooding the world with their life-altering material, they can be beaten. Why is that? Because parents and their children have the most powerful defense of all, and that’s a loving, deep and abiding relationship they can build on, something the porn industry will never have.