Tag Archives: Social Media

Eight Concerns About Selfies

By Angela Tooley

Have you ever considered what is the underlying cause of the #metoo abuse and assault cases? The horrors of sex trafficking come from that same place. Even pornography is based on this principle. It is called:
ob·jec·ti·fi·ca·tion
“It is the act of treating a person, as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others. Sexual objectification, the act of treating a person as a mere object of sexual desire, is a subset of objectification, as is self-objectification, the objectification of one’s self.”
It is the dehumanization process that can unwittingly lead a good person to a porn addiction or worse.  We can lose the ability to value the dignity of human beings. It is very frightening that we can even objectify ourselves. We see it everyday in social media and texts. I bet that you have done it. It is the selfie!
Here are the 8 C’s (Concerns) about selfies:
  • Comparison – you are inviting others to compare you to someone else, not to value your God-given uniqueness
  • Craving a false sense of self-will drive you to post pics for likes and comments
  • Controlling your images becomes unmanageable and unsafe
  • Cultivates negative personality traits like pride and insecurity
  • Compromises your self-image and lowers your self-worth
  • Consider that you will look conceited, not confident
  • Chew sup valuable space on your devices
  • Consumes a lot of time to get all those poses of pouty lips (girls) and flexing biceps (guys)
Now please don’t misunderstand – I’m not saying to never take or post a picture of yourself but when the endless posting of your own picture becomes an exercise in staging moments rather than the experience of living out the life God has given you then you have lost yourself, you are only an object.
You are so much more. I propose that you take great pics that celebrate life! Pictures with other people in them. Pictures that show valued relationships. That’s real beauty for all to see!

The Text Message That Destroyed Lives

By Eric Tooley

Margarite is in middle school. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her father. After a fight with a school friend, she is shunned at school. She’s also alone at home where she stays in her room with just her cellphone and computer.

She meets an eighth-grade boy, Isaiah. They like each other. He sends her a picture of himself with no shirt.

Desperate for a boyfriend, Margarite replies with a picture of herself completely naked. They eventually break up.

A few weeks later, Isaiah mentions Margarite’s photo to a friend. She pressures him into sending it to her.

Isaiah doesn’t know she is the “friend” fighting with Margarite. That night, she texts the picture to all of her contacts and asks them to do the same. By the next morning the photo has gone viral.

Students are questioned by the police. Cellphones are confiscated. Isaiah and Margarite’s former friend are arrested and led out of the school in cuffs.  They spend the night in the juvenile detention center and are charged with dissemination of child pornography.

Local papers, television, and social media spread the story. Margarite moves in with her mother and transfers to a new school to start over. Within weeks, a boy at the new school has the picture. The girls at the new school begin to taunt her.

A year later, those involved comment on the events:

  • A student at Margarite’s school: “When I opened my phone, I knew who the girl in the picture was. It’s hard to ‘unsee’ something.”
  • Isaiah: “I didn’t know it was against the law. It hurts the people in the pictures. It can hurt your family and friends: the way they see you, the way you see yourself.”
  • Margarite: “Don’t do it at all. I mean, what are you thinking? It’s freaking stupid!”
  • Margarite’s dad:

“I learned a big lesson about my lack of involvement

in her use of the phone. I trusted her too much.

Margarite will have to live with this for the rest of her life.”

Read this story with your teens. Talk about the incredible consequences of sexting. Focus on each character: Margarite, Isaiah, Margarite’s friend, and even Margarite’s dad. Why did they do what they did? What were the consequences? What could they have done differently? Then do everything you can to protect your teens: use parental controls, monitor technology, and keep talking to them.

(“A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives.” Hoffman. The New York Times, March 28, 2011.)

“Through technical devices … people were deprived of independent thought.”

By Angela Tooley

Eric and I recently visited the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. I was struck by the overwhelming thought, how could this happen? How could the people of Nazi Germany have been so deceived and so unaware of what was happening to their culture and their Jewish countrymen.

Part of the answer is a testimony at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals:

“Through technical devices like the radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man [Hitler].”

I’m a lifelong history enthusiast, so I was surprised when the museum displayed something that I had never heard of – The Volksempfänger.

“The People’s Receiver,” was designed by Nazi Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels. It was available at little to no cost to every German home. It’s low frequency ensured that only German and Austrian radio frequencies were received. All programming was controlled by the Nazi government.

The People’s Receiver delivered the Nazi lies and hate to every German home.

Today, are we any less susceptible to changes in our culture due to our dependence on technical devices?

Rather than one radio in our homes, we are bombarded everywhere with messages of sexual immorality, self-promotion, divisive political rhetoric and racial biases.  This happens through advertising, movies, mass media, the internet and social media.

These messages are delivered to us at anytime and anywhere through our indispensable phones and mobile devices.  Today we hold in our hands the delivery device of lies and self-deception.

We must teach our young people to have independent thought.

Noble Choices programs address these very issues. Not of the World equips students to see the effects of social media. Culture Illusions trains students how to notice cultural “truths” and question their accuracy. Both teach God’s plan about sex as a comparison. These helpful programs equip adults and youth to recognize the unhealthy influences of culture and media.

We would love to present these to your school, church, or civic group.

Let’s make sure we keep independent thought.

“The Truth will set your free.” –John 8:32

Wiesner-Hanks, M. E., Evans, A. D., Wheeler, W. B., & Ruff, J. (2014). Discovering the Western Past, Vol. II: Since 1500. Cengage Learning.

Pornography Recovery Success

By Eric Tooley

Today, February 28, 2018, is my four-year anniversary of sobriety from pornography!

I will celebrate tonight in our Celebrate Recovery program and pick up this coin. I thank God for this freedom.

As I reflect on the longest sobriety I have achieved in 43 years, Luke 11:34 comes to mind:

Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness.

Jesus tells us that to become light we need our eyes to be healthy. In my battle with pornography, here are nine ways I make my eyes healthy:

  1. I look away from sexual images.
  2. I avoid movies with sexual content. This has eliminated R-rated and many PG-13 movies.
  3. I opted-out of the Sports Illustrated swim suit issue. ESPN: The Magazine does not make that offer for its body issue so I cancelled that subscription.
  4. I avoid television shows with sexual content. I pretty much only watch baseball, football, and some older comedy shows.
  5. I avoid watching the news. There is usually at least one story that is sexual in nature. This was a huge trigger for me to go to the internet to research a story and then end up looking at porn.
  6. When staying in a hotel, I rarely turn on the TV.
  7. Even though we do not have children at home, we set the TV parental controls to TV-PG.
  8. We have programmed our TV channel listings not to display any adult listings.
  9. I “unfollow” friends on Facebook that post anything of a sexual nature.

My addiction ritual was to be triggered and then go to the internet for pornography. Once I eliminated my triggers, pornography is not an issue for me. We are all different and have our own triggers. In my Images or Glory? program, I talk about bouncing your eyes to avoid pornography.

Be full of light. Keep your eyes healthy. Bounce your eyes.

People Are Not For Sale

By Angela Tooley

It was a few years ago when I first heard the term – sex trafficking.

What? People taken and used as sex slaves?  Modern day slavery in a country that outlawed slavery over 150 years ago?

Sadly, this is the horribly true reality.

How did this happen?  What are the conditions that allow such a monster to exist?  Well let’s just start with the Super Bowl. A “market” drives demand for prostitutes every year in each Super Bowl city. For this reason,

January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month.

As I’m learning more it is heart breaking to me that children and adults are trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced labor. It happens through the means of force, abduction, fraud or coercion. It is indeed modern-day slavery as criminals profit from controlling and dehumanizing human beings. This trafficking exists in every corner of our country and throughout the world.

So how does pornography play a part in sex trafficking? The links between pornography and sex trafficking are undeniable.

  • Pornography is used as a “tool” to train young children and women so that they will “know” what to do in performing sex acts.
  • Pornography users often seek to act out what they have viewed in porn.
  • Pimps are operating more and more online as it becomes easier to connect with potential buyers and to remain anonymous. Most social media sites including Facebook and Snapchat as well as classified ad sites like Craigslist and the infamous Backpage have become “virtual brothels” where one can quickly find prostituted women and children to engage in sex acts.
  • As addictions to pornography increase, users seek more and more disturbing and violent material.
  • Porn users do not and cannot distinguish between trafficked women, prostitutes, and porn stars. [1]

All of these things fuel pornography and in turn fuel the global sex trade by driving demand into mainstream society. One should never ever think that viewing pornography is harmless.

Pornography is prostitution on screen.

The onscreen image is a human being, someone who is a daughter or son, a sister or brother. There is no excuse to allow trafficking to exist because

PEOPLE ARE NOT FOR SALE.

[1] The National Center on Sexual Exploitation. (2011, April 19). Talking Points: Porn & Trafficking. Retrieved from Porn Harms Research: http://pornharmsresearch.com/2011/04/trafficking/

Be FOMM not FOMO

By Angela Tooley

I hate to admit it, but I have FOMO. Do you have FOMO?  Maybe you’re not familiar with this but it is

Fear

Of

Missing

Out

(and yes it is a word)!

FOMO begins innocently enough, usually with our smart phone but it can be any digital device. The device lets us instantly:

  • check sports scores
  • check Facebook status and likes
  • look at all other social media
  • listen for incoming texts and emails

Our smart phones and mobile devices have become the indispensable organizers of our lives – through communication and calendars; and through every kind of conceivable news, entertainment, calorie counting, exercise, and fantasy football app that is out there. We get addicted – never wanting to be without our mobile device.

Ultimately interacting with our device takes precedence over a conversation with the person right beside us in the car or right in front of us at the dinner table.

What we are really missing out on is each other!

FOMO is now so widespread that it necessitates a public service campaign to get us all to put away our phones at the dinner table.  While I think it is a sad reality, I am encouraged by the opportunities for family growth that can happen by coming to the dinner table – device free.

At any age conversation matters. Sharing the day whether it was how the presentation went, or what was the most fun at preschool.  Laughing at silly pasta shapes and hearing the laments of pop quizzes is meaningful. One day there will be a hard conversation and you’ll be there to listen.

This isn’t just for family dinner, this is for friends, coworkers and everyone we face. Please don’t miss any of the experience, put the phone away.

I am making a conscious effort to be aware of how and when I am using my smart devices. I’m working on a new word for the dictionary, FOMM

Facing

Others

Matters

Most

(not quite as catchy as FOMO but I’ll keep working on it).

I hope you will all do the same and set a great example for your kids too.

Interest in Sex is Dropping

I have written several times how pornography is bad for your sex life. It can cause loss of sexual performance. It can cause lack of satisfaction with sex even with the most attractive partners. It can even lead to preferring pornography over real sex with a person.

Now we are starting to see these effects on a much wider scale. Recent studies are showing that interest in sex across the population of two countries is dropping.

Great Britain showed a 25% drop in the sex rates of people aged 16-44 than the same age group just ten years earlier. One of the most commonly reported sexual problems was simply, “Lack of interest in sex.” The study’s authors list the following reasons for this drop in sexual activity:

  • online pornography,
  • modern technology: Twitter, Facebook, email,
  • worry about jobs,
  • worry about money.

A series of studies in Japan reveals an even worse loss of interest in sex. 45% of women and over 25% of men aged 16-24 “were not interested in or despised sexual contact”. 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, 10% more than five years earlier. 33% of people under 30 had never dated at all.

People explained their attitudes with

  • “don’t see the point of love.”
  • “don’t believe it can lead anywhere.”
  • “Relationships have become too hard.”

Many are turning to easy or instant gratification, in the form of online porn, virtual-reality “girlfriends”, anime cartoons. Or else they’re opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes.

American rock star, John Mayer, shows we’re likely not far behind Great Britain and Japan when he said,

“I equate sex with tension. Once I have to deal with someone else’s desires, I cut and run. I mean, I have unbelievable [sex] alone. They’re always the best. They always end the way I want them to end. This is my problem now: Rather than meet somebody new, I would rather go home and replay the … experiences I’ve already had. …I’m more comfortable in my imagination than I am in actual human discovery.”

(Haworth, A. (2013, October 19). Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? The Observer. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-japan-stopped-having-sex)
(Mercer, C. H., Tanton, C., Prah, P., Erens, B., Sonnenberg, P., Clifton, S., . . . Johnson, A. M. (2013, November 30). Changes in sexual attitudes and lifestyles in Britain through the life course and over time: findings from the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal). The Lancet, 382(9907), 1781-1794. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62035-8)
(Triggle, N. (2013, November 26). Modern life ‘turning people off sex’. Retrieved from BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25094142)

Ten Easy Ways To Protect Your Child Online

Children computerCan you think of a time during your childhood or teen years when you were picked on, put-down, or even shamed by other children or teens? It felt like you were “the only one” or that “everyone” was against you.

Most of us can remember these experiences vividly because of the emotional turmoil involved. Our young people today have these experiences also with one important difference: the Internet.

Those against them or at least aware of their shame could actually be everyone.

We have to do more to protect our children. Here are ten things I have gathered from several sources.

  1. Teach that all rules for interacting with people in person also apply online and in texting.
  2. Limit online privileges age appropriately. Don’t give too much access too soon.
  3. Be present in their online world. Text, Facebook friend, go to their pages, etc.
  4. Model appropriate online behavior.
  5. Teach how context can dramatically change meaning and online context is often unclear. Consider the difference in “Fire!” yelled by a firefighter or a soldier in battle or a toddler by a fireplace.
  6. Use filtering and accountability software. It’s like the fence that surrounds the playground.
  7. Establish a contract or covenant. List expectations and consequences. Sign it and post it.
  8. Teach the three R’s of responding to cyber bullying: reject (tell them to stop), record (keep all evidence), report (keeping telling adults until one helps you).
  9. Teach the Golden Rule still applies even when online.
  10. Pray. After each online session ask your child to choose someone online to pray for with you.

(Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. (2009, July 30). Preventing Cyberbullying: Top Ten Tips for Parents. Retrieved from Cyberbullying Research Center: http://www.cyberbullying.us/Top_Ten_Tips_Parents_Cyberbullying_Response.pdf)

(Mueller, W. (2012). A Parents’ Guide To Cyberbullying. Retrieved from CPYU’s Digital Kids Initiative: http://www.digitalkidsinitiative.com/files/2012/01/Cyberbully_handout.pdf)

(Tooley, E. (2013, March 8). In the world but not of the world: Social media and the struggle to keep our children safe and pure. National Christian School Association Annual Conference. Oklahoma City, OK: Speaker’s PowerPoint.)

5 Dangerous Apps For Teens

Mardi Gras MaskIn my program on social media, “Not of the World,” I put on a Mardi Gras mask.

I proceed to talk to my audience as if they don’t know who I am. If I were to use bad language or hit someone or steal something from someone in the audience, I would get away with it because no one would know who did it. If no one knows it is me, I don’t have to worry about any consequences to my behavior.

This is absurd because even though I wear a mask, everyone knows it is me.

Teenagers are especially attracted to privacy, independence, and not being supervised. That makes them especially vulnerable to the risks of phony privacy. The “responsibility” and “consequences” part of the brain isn’t fully developed until the mid-twenties. I am sure you have heard a teenager say, “It won’t happen to me.”

Adding phony privacy to a teenage brain is like throwing gas on firewood; all you need is a match for a huge fire.

The match is some of the most popular apps to teenagers.

It started with Snapchat that promises to erase any picture a short time after you send it to someone.

Burn Note makes that promise with texting.

Whisper and Secret-Speak Freely are places where you can post whatever you want anonymously: vent, confess, share intimate fantasies or anything else as long as there are no identifiable names or information.

Omegle is a chat room for anonymous instant messaging with a stranger.

Watch for and deny access to these apps with your teenagers.

As I do in “Not of the World,” we have to constantly make the following loud and clear:

Social media, the internet, and texting
ARE NOT PRIVATE!

(McIlhaney, Jr., J. S., & Bush, F. M. (2008). Hooked. Chicago: Northfield Publishing.)
(Schryver, K. (2014, March 26). Trend Alert: 6 Messaging Apps That Let Teens Share (Iffy) Secrets. Retrieved from Common Sense Media Making Sense Blog: http://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/trend-alert-6-messaging-apps-that-let-teens-share-iffy-secrets)