Sexual addiction affects adults and teens alike. Image courtesy of photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
More and more teens are engaging in pornography use. The majority of the use seems to be on their phones. Adolescents are very private about their cell phones. It is harder for parents to monitor what they search than when there was a family computer.
According to Covenant Eyes, a company that sells a way to block certain web content from either accidentally coming up, or from coming up as the result of a search, the statistics are unsettling. For teens, a 2010 national study indicated that about 25% of teenagers have viewed nudity online by accident. Over 1/4 of 17 year olds have received a “sext” at some point. 9 out of 10 teenage boys have been exposed to pornography by time they reach college. The same is true in almost 6 out of 10 teen girls.
Recently in my private practice I have been receiving desperate calls from parents whose teen children are addicted to internet porn. The parents feel helpless and frustrated. For starters, there is more shame in admitting you need help to stop a sexual addiction than even a drug addiction. It seems easier for a parent to call me and say their teenager is addicted to marijuana, alcohol, or even methamphetamine than to online pornography.
If your child is struggling with this, or you are struggling with this, the first thing to do is set aside your shame. Shame makes us hide. We feel mortified about something we are doing, or some part of who we are. When we feel ashamed of something, it is very difficult to talk about it. However, getting it out in the open is how healing begins. Think about when you have a wound, it needs to be cleaned out and it needs air to heal. If you hide away your wound then it just begins to spread infection to other parts of the body. Sexual addiction is like that (as are any other addictions). If you don’t discuss it, even if that is incredibly difficult to do, it starts to affect other areas of life; addiction makes the most honest people into liars, the most responsible people into schemers, and emotionally closes off the most open and loving people.
Therapy is one of the best places to talk about sexual addiction. It is confidential and free of judgment. You will not shock your therapist. Your therapist should be able to help you pick a path back to health. This is not easy. Many people assume if you want to stop a sexual addiction then just stop looking at the porn. If it were that simple I doubt anyone would have the addiction. Whether or not the images are viewed, they still exist in your teen’s mind’s eye. It takes a lot of work and time to get to the place where those images don’t pop up each time your teenager thinks about sex.
Patrick Carnes is one of the leaders on treating sexual addiction. He wrote a book called Out of the Shadows that is very helpful for those with addiction, and the people that love them. If you’re reading this because you want help, but you’re afraid to say that out loud, then I recommend you start with this book.
If you or your child is struggling with sexual addiction and you are ready to say that out loud, don’t wait any longer. Go and get the help you or your teenager needs.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Having teens earn their way teaches perseverance. Image credit: freedigitalphotos.net and David Castillo Dominici
I sat with a client in the past week who is just now facing the harsh realization that life requires work. I really felt for this person because things have always been handed to them, and suddenly that is going to stop. This person really doesn’t know how to manage on their own. They are definitely smart enough, but just don’t have the training needed to push through challenges because they’ve never had to struggle; if you don’t struggle as a child or teen then you don’t know how to get yourself through it when you struggle as an adult.
I don’t know how it was for you growing up, but for me, this was gradually taught. From the time my sister and I were small we were required to do a little bit around the house. We grew up in an affluent neighborhood, and our parents could have given us as much as all the other kids got. They made a conscious decision to make us work for things instead. It was incredibly frustrating as a child. I would be invited to a birthday party, and my parents had a rule that I had to pay for half of whatever birthday gift I got for someone. So, while my friends all gave each other designer this and that, I usually was giving them a card with a $10 bill inside (this was the mid-1990s so that was plenty). I was too young to have a job so in order to obtain my half of the $10 bill, I would do extra chores.
When it came time to drive I was required to pay my own gas and insurance but I got to use my parents’ third car. However, as soon as I turned 19 I had to buy my own car. I paid for half of college, and the list goes on and on. Whatever the next obstacle was in life, I was always required to have some skin in the game. Each new thing was a stretch for me. What started with half of a birthday present as a kid became finding a way to come up with $10,000 per year in tuition as a 19 year old (Debt was not an option I was allowed to choose, so I applied to every scholarship I could get my hands on).
Here’s what all this consistent earning my own way did for me: Because the next mountain to climb was always a bit of a stretch for me to afford, I learned a lot of tenacity. I did not quit a job just because I didn’t like something about it. I was careful to choose things with the most value; when it came time to go to college I considered both prestige and price. I pushed myself into better and better work situations. I learned to enjoy activities that are free or low-cost, i.e. surfing and hiking. Most importantly, I learned a lot about gratitude.
While these lessons were painful at times growing up, I am incredibly grateful to my parents looking back. I want nothing more than for your teenagers to be functional adults even if they have to struggle a bit now. I’ve been told there is no better feeling than for an adult child to tell a parent thank you for the discipline they received.
Hard work and accomplishing goals equates to confidence, self-esteem, personal value, and contentedness. Give your teenager the gift of all these things by requiring them to earn part of their way.
Helping teens grow and families improve connection,
Times they are a changin’. Some of these changes don’t bother you as a parent. Other changes make you uncomfortable. You wish you could raise your kids in another era. While I’m sure this is true of all generations, technology and social/moral changes are so rapid now that I hear a lot of nervousness from parents. Here is some advice on this topic:
“Hooking up” has become normalized, acceptable and even preferred to dating among today’s teenagers. Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
In a culture that has the shortest attention span in recent history, it’s no surprise our teens are “hooking up” more often than they’re dating. Parents, this should scare the bejeezus out of you! It scares me to death and I’m not even fearing for my own child (she’s still small), I’m worried sick about the teenagers I work with.
On the more obvious level, I worry for their physical health. It’s not new news that diseases spread through kissing, sexual activity and sexual intercourse. It’s also not new news that girls who participate in this type of activity with boys they don’t know very well are much more likely to be sexually assaulted. In that case, sometimes the situation gets away from them. What began as consensual activity progresses farther than they intended. Actually, this goes for boys too. While your sons aren’t as likely to complain about it aloud, I hear it in my office ALL THE TIME. An adolescent male is “hooking up” with a girl at a party and she doesn’t seem to be stopping when things really heat up. He wants to stop, but knows that culturally he’s not supposed to. Before he really knows what’s happened to him, he’s squandered the virginity that he did actually value. He wasn’t assaulted per se, but he didn’t really want to be with that girl either.
Side bar: I keep putting “hooking up” in quotes because this has become a confusing term. In my generation the term “hook up” always meant sex. Teens use it now to mean anything from making out to intercourse. It’s not a very descriptive term. If you hear your child using it, make sure to ask for clarification.
The other part of “hooking up” that really bothers me as a therapist is the lack of personal connection, self-respect, respect for commitment, and respect for the other partner- all the emotional stuff. Most of the teenagers I work with who “hook up” have been deeply hurt by this activity. They do this believing it will help them walk towards having a relationship, but actually makes them disposable. There is no earning the right to a kiss after being taken on a nice date because all he has to do is give your daughter a drink or two and then they’ll become sexual (feel free to interchange he with she and daughter with son). I realize this type of thing has been going on for years, but I’m telling you that it is more prevalent than when I was in high school in the late 1990s and early 2000s. At least at that time we tended to be “dating” before anything would happen. One client complained to me that the majority of her friends have a “hook-up” or a “friend with benefits,” but that nobody has a boyfriend or girlfriend. She said she’s commonly called prude, old-fashioned, and a tease because she isn’t sexual with her male friends; she insists on being taken out for a real date. I pointed out to her that although she is called names for this, she does actually have the respect of her male and female friends. She agreed. Can you believe she is made fun of for having self-respect?!?
Parents, I’m begging you to have multiple conversations with your teenagers about this. Please, please, please teach them that their bodies are to be treasured, not given away. Please set a strong example for them yourself. I realize that given the statistics today, half of you reading this have gone through a divorce. That means there are a significant number of you trying to date. For those of you in that situation, set the example for your teens of how you’d like them to handle sex. If you’re casual about it, they probably will be too; if you take it seriously and see it as a big deal, they probably will too.
One of the best things you can do as a parent is demand the respect your teenager deserves, and force them to give the respect their fellow teens should have. I realize that sentence wasn’t very clear, so this is an example of what I’m talking about. If you have a teenage son, require him to knock at the door and shake hands with a girl’s parents when he takes her out. If you have a teen daughter, don’t let her leave the house until her date has come to the door to pick her up and shaken your hand. If he’s clearly uncomfortable beyond the nerves any teen boy would feel standing face to face with a girl’s parents, don’t let her go with him! Hold very firm boundaries around teen dating while still letting them figure out what it’s all about. For goodness sake, talk to them about the destructiveness of just “hooking up!” We want our kids to grow up healthy and free of the burdens that come with sexually transmitted diseases, wounded hearts from sex that happened too young, and the pain of being cast off after giving everything to another person.
Hello, I’m Lauren! If you notice your teen struggling, you might be feeling helpless, hopeless, frustrated or concerned as a parent. Try to remember, there is hope. I want to help your adolescent feel better. My hope is for them to enjoy their life again. I want them to feel confident they can handle whatever situations arise.
