Survey Says…

I only see that old game show “Family Feud” now in doctors offices, but I watched a lot of it as a child. 

I remember the host saying in his dramatic voice, “Survey says…” while all eyes turned to the results on the screen.

Every summer, I get a general survey of what is troubling the hearts and minds of children and youth in my community.

Some years, the survey has said “Poverty.” Other years, it’s been “Illness,” “Fatherlessness,” “Addiction,” or “Abuse.”

This year, survey says…..“Internet Pornography!” and it has skyrocketed to the top of the list. 

Children as young as three and four years old can describe things they should have never seen. Older children express their concerns about seeing those images and what it is doing to their minds. They share concerns about what it is doing to their friends. Teens who babysit are concerned about the babies being desensitized to the violence depicted in the images and videos.

I first saw pornograhy at age five, and that was before the age of the internet. I had the advantage of loving, involved parents who tried to shield me from obscenity and who talked with me about what I had seen, unlike many of the children I interact with in my community. The images are still as clear in my mind as they were then, even though I didn’t have a full understanding of what I was seeing. It is as if they are burned into the retina of my brain.

This week, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a ruling from Texas that requires age verification to visit pornographic websites. 

Three justices opposed the requirements, stating that it would have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, claiming that both the producers and publishers of obscenity and the consumers of it are expressing their freedom of speech. 

Anyone opposed to the age verification requirements is not listening to the children and youth who don’t have parents to filter their internet access or usage. They aren’t thinking of the millions of children who accidentally stumble onto images that function like methamphetamines or cocaine in their brains, hooking them from first glance to an addiction that is just as destructive. 

Brad Littlejohn recently said this at the Danube Institute’s conference on “Family Formation and the Future,” “[The porn industry] has fought [against age-verification restrictions] tooth and nail, recognizing that its massive profit margins depend on addicting customers when they’re young… The greatest horror of modern pornography is that it has become child’s play- the average age of first exposure is now 11, with many children already addicted to violent pornography by the time they are 8 or 9.”

We use the Scripture Proverbs 24:11 “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter,” in our pro-life arguments, but what about the children who are stumbling down the folly of pornography’s stairs to their spiritual deaths?

“Her feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol.”

Christians need not be persuaded by arguments about freedom of speech or expression, how much the porn industry contributes to our GDP (one site’s gross revenue for 2024 was $7.9 billion), or how adult access to obscenity will be hindered. 

We should only be persuaded by Jesus’s warning: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.”

Jesus’s survey says, “So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”