A porn-free family plan is essential to safeguard kids of all ages from harmful online content. Youth workers: Please share this helpful information with parents at your church!
I’m a father of three children who are fully part of the digital generation. They’re as comfortable with iPods as I am with a paperback. They’ve only ever known a world where almost everyone has a cell phone at all times. Social media is a teenager’s rite-of-passage, and every home has five, 10, or 20 devices that can access the world via the internet.
Yet I know of dangers lurking out there, waiting to draw them in. I want to protect my children in a world like this. But I also want to disciple them to live virtuously, to use technology for good purposes, not bad.
I believe this is a crucial part of my calling as a parent. To address this great need, I assembled what I call The Porn-Free Family Plan. I designed it to protect my kids from online dangers so I can train them to use devices and technologies well.
The Porn-Free Family Plan
A thorough anti-porn plan must account for three types of devices:
- Fixed devices. These will only ever be used in the home. Here we have desktop computers in the home office or Internet-enabled televisions and gaming consoles. Parents can have a significant level of control over these devices.
- Mobile devices. These are laptops, tablets, smart phones, and other devices that can be used in the home but also carried and used elsewhere. Parents can have a lesser degree of control over these devices.
- Other people’s devices. These are the computers children may use at another person’s home or the tablets other children may show to friends. Parents can have no control over these devices.
This porn-free family plan has two broad goals. It confounds those who want to see porn and shields those who don’t. And while the plan is geared specifically to combat pornography, it will also help battle other online dangers.
A 4-Part Porn-Free Family Plan
This Porn-Free Family Plan has four important aspects:
1. Plan.
You’ve heard the maxim: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That applies well to what we are attempting to accomplish here. A successful plan must account for every device in your home that combines an Internet connection with a screen. So let’s get to work.
Step 1: Inventory.
You need to know exactly how many Internet-enabled devices are in your home. So you must take an inventory. List all your Internet-enabled devices: desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones. Don’t forget the Playstation 3, Xbox, smart TVs, Apple TVs, iPods, and e-reader tablets. Even a Kindle reading device has basic web-browsing capabilities. A family recently reported they were shocked to discover they had 22 devices to account for!
Step 2: Budget.
Decide whether you can make Internet security a regular and recurring monthly expense. Where it used to cost money to access pornography, today it often costs money to avoid it. While there are free options available, the best services have a cost associated with them. A budget of $20-$25 per month will allow a family to take advantage of the premier options.
Step 3: Learn.
Now that you have taken your inventory and have a better grasp of the devices your plan needs to account for, it is time to learn about the options available to protect those who use them. There are four broad categories of protection we have available:
- Filtering. Filtering proactively detects and blocks objectionable content. (Examples: If your child does an Internet search for “naked girls,” it will block the search; If your child mistakenly clicks a link to a pornographic web site, it will block access to the site.)
- Accountability. Accountability software tracks web sites visited from different devices and then prepares and delivers regular reports. (Example: If your child visits a pornographic web site or performs a search for “naked girls,” the accountability software will note it and include it in a report emailed to you.)
- Parental controls. Parental controls block certain functions of modern devices (Examples: Preventing the use of the Internet browser on an iPod Touch; preventing the use of the Facebook app on a tablet).
- Communication. We can’t rely on technology to solve all our problems. So the plan must also involve regular, deliberate and open communication.
Because none of these offers complete protection, the wise plan must use some combination of all four. The Porn-Free Family plan uses the following tools:
- OpenDNS. OpenDNS uses filtering to automatically block objectionable web sites for every device connected to your home network. It is activated by making a small change to the settings on your existing router.
- Covenant Eyes. Covenant Eyes tracks the web sites visited by your computers and mobile devices and sends regular email reports; it also offers optional filtering that can be configured specifically for each member of your family.
- Parental Controls. Parental controls allow parents to disable certain functions on devices.
- Meetings. The most indispensable tool is regular, open, deliberate communication between parents and their children.
Step 4: Discuss.
Before you begin to implement the porn-free family plan, meet with your family to explain what you’re about to do and what you hope to accomplish. You’ll be inconveniencing your family and putting rules in place that will impact them. So it’s wise to discuss these things with them.
