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When we think of problems confronting today’s youth, we often worry about illegal drugs or teenage pregnancies. A bigger menace to the young generation, however, is just a click away: pornography.
In a report on The Catholic News Agency, anti-porngraphy advocate Clay Olsen lamented how young people are becoming more and more liberal about their views on porn.
Olsen is the founder of the group called “Fight the New Drug,” which seeks to educate the youth about the ill effects of pornography. During one of his recent talks, he shared an experience showing how pornographic materials have become even more acceptable to the young generation.
He said a male member of the audience he was addressing approached and asked him “very sincerely whether Playboy was pornography or not.”
“His definition of pornography had shifted so dramatically…that Playboy doesn’t even make the cut,” Olsen said.
The anti-pornography activist said this greater acceptance of porn materials can be attributed to their sheer accessibility. For instance, he said a pornographic website can attract over 2.4 million visitors per hour.
What is more alarming is the fact that these pornographic materials depict extreme content — such as physical aggression and violence — that is becoming a norm to the young people of today.
“You combine those two things — the prevalence and then also the nature — and that cocktail is really what has driven individuals like myself and those that work with me, and millions of others, to rise up and say we can do better, we have to do better,” Olsen said.
It is never too late to address this problem, however. Fr. Sean Kilcawley, a priest with the Diocese of Lincoln who also educates kids against pornography, suggested that churches take an active role in combating this menace.
“Anti-pornography ministry is not a peripheral ministry. We don’t just need tools to help a few people, we have to take those tools and incorporate them into an evangelisation plan that’s trying to evangelise within an entire culture that’s being affected by pornography,” he said.
