I was recently made aware of an eight-year-old with an addiction to pornography. I will repeat that: an eight-year-old with an addiction to pornography. In fact, I will repeat it again because I worry that we have become so desensitized that this statement will not elicit the shock and horror that it should. Recently, I was told of an eight-year-old who is a small child who hasn’t even hit puberty, who is addicted to watching hardcore pornography — you know, the really vile kind that cries out to heaven.
I heard the news and I was sick. I almost cried. In fact, writing about it makes it hard for my eyes to stay dry. That poor child. His poor soul. The trials that he will face as he ages will be remarkable. He is eight, and he is already an addict. He is already spending so much time on a phone—yes, his parents have given him a smartphone at age eight-that he has developed an addiction. Growing up, when I heard of people having addictions, I would think of the poor souls I might see downtown who had become dependent on drugs. Or, I might think of a character I had seen in a movie or a TV show who couldn’t stop wasting money at the blackjack table or the slots. In any event, addicts in my mind were supposed to be adults, because people who became addicted to things became addicted to sinful things that children would never be in a position to do.
Nevertheless, we now live in a time wherein children, maybe even younger than eight, are addicted to the most vile images and videos, and the addiction comes through the phone.
Mere Tradition with Kennedy Hall is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Understanding Addiction Related to Media
Now, I don’t know how long it takes to develop an addiction in the clinical sense, but I imagine it doesn’t happen overnight. Ultimately, an addiction is like a compulsive bad habit that is formed over time after repeated participation in an activity that elicits a pleasurable response. Now, pleasure in itself is good, hence the word pleasure, which is derived from “to please.” Being pleased is a good thing because it means something like being satisfied or content. After a good meal, we might be pleased because we are satisfied, or after a hard day’s work, we might be very pleased with the satisfactory work we have done.
However, there are pleasures that, we might say, cheat. What I mean by that is that we get the feeling of satisfaction or the pleasurable feeling, but in a way that is unnatural or at least intemperate or imbalanced. Also, given our fallen nature, we often take pleasure in things that are immoral. Any parent knows this because children as young as 18 months old will take great pleasure in smacking a sibling who has annoyed them. It isn’t the smacking per se that is the pleasure, but the sense of accomplishing retaliation.
Little children do not have self-control, nor do many adults, for that matter, so they cannot calibrate their response to what is perceived as an injustice, and they retaliate inappropriately. Nevertheless, the impulse to achieve justice is a good thing, because justice is good, but the child simply doesn’t seek justice the right way, so he does something he shouldn’t do.
Now, what would facilitate an addiction in a small child to something so wicked as pornography?
Well, in the first place, before he has developed said addiction, he will already have associated the use of a device with the satisfaction of an impulse. And, over time, the satisfaction of that impulse will become compulsive; he will have gone from the spontaneous or infrequent titillation of a desire or longing to a state of dependency, which creates in him a compulsion.
And, what is it about phones and tablets that is so titillating for children, and adults for that matter? Well, our screen devices are objectively pleasing to behold and to use. They have gorgeous colouring in the displays, and they combine a number of senses that are primed for pleasure. They are tactile, visual, and auditory. Also, they are portals to a promise of endless entertainment, which means endless pleasure. This is how they are so different than traditional or older forms of media.
Books, for example, offer a portal into a world of pleasure, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, but they are analog and limited; a book only has what the book has, and cannot link to other books, or videos or music. When we read a book, we have to use our imaginations and “work hard” to create our own mental pictures, or to imagine the sounds being described. The use of a book is tactile in a secondary sense, because we hold the book, but not much happens because of how we touch the book. We turn the page to continue reading, but we don’t move things around or cause the words to change into pictures that move.
Radio is another technology that has afforded us great pleasure, but it is limited as well. The limitations on radio, as with books, require a certain style of program to be made that focuses on the auditory sense, and, like with books, the imagination is required to make the magic happen.
Television/film was perhaps the greatest technological leap when it comes to storytelling and the sharing of information, as it engages multiple senses. However, it is the auditory and visual faculties that are engaged, and there is nothing active or tactile about the experience. So, there is still a limitation on the participation of all the senses.
Now, with screen-based activities, it is not all the senses that are engaged, but the senses of touch, sight, and hearing are all fully engaged in a way that is not possible with other types of media entertainment. And, without being crude, the use of screens for pornography consumption is also associated with illicit activities of the body, which invoke a host of other sensations that become intrinsically linked to the pleasures a device may offer.
Ultimately, there is something, perhaps, too pleasurable, or, we might say, pleasurable in an artificial and imbalanced way, about tactile screen devices. In addition, since no work is required like with books or the radio, the pleasure is easier to access and promises a higher and more engaged reward. Yes, with films and TV, we do not engage the imagination like we do with radio and books, but we also don’t actively participate in the activity with the sense of touch like we do with screen devices which allows us to manipulate the pictures effortlessly, so the experience of passively watching something like TV or films doesn’t offer the full engagement of watching things or playing with things on devices that engage more of our senses. That being said, of the older media technologies, TV can often be the most problematic, even if not as bad as the newer ones.
We have to be honest with ourselves; we are fallen, and because of this, we often seek the path of least resistance if there is a promised carrot at the end. Is there any easier path to sensory pleasure than what is offered from a smartphone or tablet? We don’t have to get up, but we can still be involved physically; we don’t have to use our imaginations, but stories with pictures still play out in front of us; we don’t have to do anything difficult, but, with video games on these devices, we can pseudo-accomplish great feats of heroism or daring; we don’t have to interact with another living human being, but the images and activities of those human beings can be used as inspiration for autoerotic pleasure, and there are seemingly no consequences.
To put it bluntly, the immediate access to engaging, sensory pleasure is simply dangerous and wildly tempting when it comes to screen devices.
We haven’t even considered the effects on the brain that take place with repeated dopamine hits, and how, in order to accomplish a continual satisfaction for dopamine compulsion, the participation of individuals seeking pleasure in this way must become more extreme and intense in order to go beyond mere satisfaction of compulsion to the titillation of higher and more sensible pleasure.
Most grown adults cannot handle this temptation, which is why so many adults are addicted to screen pleasures, so we cannot expect children to ever stand a chance.
Mere Tradition with Kennedy Hall is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
How Parents Fail Their Children
Now, as I mentioned at the outset, I learned of a young child who had developed a full pornographic screen addiction. So the real question is, how could a child get to that point?
I will relay a quick anecdote to illustrate.
Years ago, before my wife and I had children, she was pregnant with our first — number seven will be here in a few months — we were at a restaurant with some friends and friends of those friends. There was a young couple who had a toddler, a sweet little girl. The parents were nice people, and they explained to us how extremely cautious they were about giving their daughter anything made with sugar. Their daughter, we were told, had never eaten a sweet, and the closest thing she had eaten was fruit. They were very proud of this, and I make no judgment of parents who are as cautious, although I can hardly think of anything more precious than a little baby with a face covered in icing after smashing the cake from his first birthday. In any event, they clearly wanted to protect their child from physical sickness, so their motivations were from a good place. However, we noticed that the toddler spent the whole dinner on an iPad while she ate vegetables and strawberries.
The parents were not shy of extolling to us the perceived goodness of a child spending hours on an iPad. They told us that it helped her learn and grow in dexterity. I remember specifically that the little girl loved to watch unboxing videos of toys, and apparently, there are playlists that are curated for children. In any event, I do not know what happened to that little girl, as this was ten years ago; however, I do know that her misguided parents were creating an addict. She would be about 12 now, so I imagine she has her own phone, and spends all day on social media, or worse, although maybe she still doesn’t eat sugar.
The mistakes of these parents are indicative of the rationalist and misguided understanding of human nature that plagues us all in some way. They were correct that using an iPad could help with dexterity, as anything that involves touching and pointing and moving fingers around objects can help with dexterity. They were also correct that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a child watching someone open a box of toys, even if it is a bit consumerist and materialistic to do it for pleasure.
These parents did not realize that they were creating a proverbial monster in that child, a monster who would be raised to develop a compulsion that would have to be fed by more and more titillation; a compulsion that will ultimately undo any person, like Midas’ unfettered love for gold would take away all the joy he had in the world.
Now, in the best case, a child raised like this will have strong morals, and somehow only waste his time on the device with morally neutral content. However, the odds of this are extremely low, even if the parents do officially protest against things like pornography and other salacious video content. Once the habit has been formed, there is likely no stopping the logical progression required by such a habit, which will mean a search for more dopamine. To find that dopamine, things like taking moral risks, disobeying commands, and keeping secrets will ultimately arise. Kids who are raised like this don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of making it out alive.
The eight-year-old addicted to pornography will likely have been raised like that little girl who loved strawberries and iPads.
Thanks for reading Mere Tradition with Kennedy Hall! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Why Do Parents Do This?
It doesn’t take a proverbial rocket scientist to figure all this out, so why do parents simply give their children screens to pacify them? Well, there are potentially numerous reasons, but the most common reason is that the parents themselves are also addicted to the screens.
Think about it. Why do little ones get upset? They get upset because they are hungry, tired, sick, or need to be changed. In essence, when their basic needs are not being met — the need for food, sleep, a clean bottom — they become unhappy. So, when a baby is wailing, any experienced parent will see if they want to nurse or take a bottle, see if the diaper is wet or stinky, and if that doesn’t work, they will check the child’s temperature or see if teeth are coming in.
The hierarchy of absolute needs is very limited, because we really only need things like food and shelter to survive, but our relative needs are more expansive.
Our jobs require certain machines or devices to accomplish tasks; our dietary habits require certain foods; our relative need for recreation requires certain types of activities, and so on. If a parent is at the point where he “needs” his device to be happy, then he is likely to impart that perceived need onto the child. Whether he knows it or not, if his form of relaxing means sitting on the couch on his phone or tablet, while he watches the game and scrolls social media and places sports bets, he has become dependent on screen time to “unwind.”
However, he isn’t really unwinding by doing that, is he? He has a stressful job, because many jobs are stressful, so when he comes home, he wants to find a way to take the edge off, so he finds his device and he “checks out.” The thing is, what he perceives as “checking out” is actually the opposite. You see, the reason that we become stressed is because we are experiencing a plethora of stimuli that overload our senses and minds. The emails, the video calls, the cranky co-workers, all these things stress us out. Now, it would stand to reason that if we are in a stressful environment — which means a highly stimulating environment — we would want to avoid stimuli in order to truly relax. Nevertheless, we are creatures of habit, and we are often our own worst enemies, so when stress becomes the norm, we have a hard time unwinding. Therefore, so many of us trade what we perceive as unwanted stress for what we perceive as pleasure that helps us unwind. However, we are really going from stress to stress, because we are going from overstimulation to overstimulation. We are like drug addicts when we do this, who go from one hit of one drug to a dose of another. We do this because being sober is too hard.
Sobriety entails the ability to properly use our faculty of reason, and we know we are truly intoxicated when we lose that ability. Intoxication essentially shuts off our brains, so we don’t have to think too hard or care about much. So, when times are tough, there is a temptation to help our brains shut off by downing a pint of whiskey. The problem is that when the intoxication leaves us, we experience the “coming down,” which is so unpleasant. In the case of something like alcohol, it is physically unpleasant because it can be associated with headaches, shaking, and nausea; with something like the intoxication of stimuli, it is unpleasant for a different reason, because we reenter full-scale reality, where we cannot manipulate pictures and digital persons to do our pleasurable bidding.
In real reality, people have free will; in digital reality, we are like gods who make them do what we want. In real reality, we have to hear the voice of our conscience screaming at us to stop sinning; in digital reality, there is no conscience because digital people don’t have souls.
So, like drunkards, so many moderns go from the stress of the work environment to the stress-pleasure of the digital entertainment environment, like the characters in Brave New World who go from technocratic materialist work environments to long dreamscapes induced by getting stoned on soma.
We cannot expect parents who are perpetually stoned on soma not to impart the addiction on their children.
Parents who do this, whether they know it or not, are sending their children to hell, and they will be waiting for them there when they arrive.
A Word on Video Games
To conclude, I would like to say a quick word on video games. Video games are not intrinsically evil, but they have changed immensely in recent decades and are almost nothing like the things millennials like me played on Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Sure, watching Mario jump over flames and chasms was fun, but it wasn’t really addictive, because it wasn’t pleasurable enough to be addictive. A kid using an analog control to direct Sonic through an adventure was surely having fun, but when his friend showed up at the door and said, “Can Jimmy come out to play?” he would shut off the system to go play road hockey.
Over time, video games became more titillating because of changes to graphics and the power of the video game systems. It started with high-powered computer systems that would be linked on networks at video-game cafés where idle teens would stay up all night drinking Mountain Dew and shooting each other virtually. Then, the internet got involved, and everything became a multiplayer experience. Now, video games occupy huge spaces in so many lives, and can be played on phones, laptops, and massive TVs. The reward systems were intensified over the years, and now they are money-makers or places where gamers drop digital coins like addicts at slot machines.
It is my contention that many parents do not understand the risks in allowing their children to play games, even the seemingly innocent games like Minecraft. It is not that Minecraft is immoral, it is not, but that the same digital addiction will be cultivated in a child playing Minecraft for hours on the iPad as will be cultivated in the toddler watching toys be opened on YouTube. The same beast is being created, and that beast will need to feed on more exotic food as it grows.
Yes, many parents have the sense to limit screen time or put parental controls on what is allowable. However, what are the odds those limits will be honoured continually, or that the children won’t figure out how to bypass passwords, etc?
If your son is in his room right now playing video games, even moral or innocent ones, I hope you understand that the likelihood that he will — if he isn’t already — be addicted to pornography is very high.
You cannot monitor everything he does on the screen, because you are too busy looking at yours.
And, why can’t the children simply not play video games? Are there not enough screens already? We use them for maps in cars, educational and recreational films, for school, and even for ordering food. Can we not simply turn them off when we have had enough?
If regulating screen time relating to video games has become a constant topic of conversation between you and your spouse, respectfully, you may have already created the monster, and I hope it isn’t too late.
If you turn off the game and the kid throws a tantrum, that is your fault. If your kid can’t sit and be entertained by an audiobook or enjoy a colouring page, that is your fault.
Ultimately, they are mimicking your behaviour, so if you want to keep your kids away from digital hell, you need to escape it first.
Mere Tradition with Kennedy Hall is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit meretradition.substack.com/subscribe
