These are all great tips, but the BETTER solution is to for Congress to mandate that all pornography be available only via a PAID subscription. That would cut out 90+% of all adult pornography viewing and probably 99% of child pornography viewing. Why are we as parents and adults not demanding this??
Why just pornography? There should be an end to all "free" social media. That's because it is not free. Social media is designed to feed on the users' data and personal history in ways that harm society and the user in the long run.
Between the libertarians of the right and the progressives of the left, I can hardly see any political improvement coming anytime soon. You are asking like an open letter, but just look at the comments here and reply to a few of these presumed adults and you'll get your answers. [I'm dismayed of how much dissention there is in this comment section among a presumably self-selected bunch of folks.]
Agreed. But we're a VERY long way away from this. This requires a collective definition of virtue, something we've been running away from since John Stuart Mill.
Why aren't parents demanding this? Because "maximal individual autonomy" is all they know.
Unfortunately, porn is readily available in a vast number of countries beyond the reach of any particular national jurisdiction. Your approach would not work.
I worked in IT for many years. Many major porn providers are hosted here, not in Russia or Panama or Korea. PornHub could be shut down by EO tomorrow given the political will. Congress could alter Section 230 exemptions. Let them litigate it all the way to SCOTUS.
Internationally, it would be very easy to disallow particular domain traffic from entering the United States digital network. China does this. It's not hard.
The problem has never been technical. It has always been a lack of political will.
The method we used to help monitor internet access started with the router. Only recognized MAC addresses were allowed to access and use the bandwidth provided. Phones are just part of the deluge of devices available. Add into the mix WIFI enabled vibration devices and now you get a sense of what is out there.
The other rules and methods used were to review the phone/laptop usage at the end of each day, have access to all app passwords, and lock down the phone/laptop so the “user” had no administrator privileges (unable to install software or apps). Phones and laptops were not allowed to be used after 8:00 PM, left on the kitchen table at night, and homework was to be done prior to the 8:00 PM lockdown. Plus, to further dampen the workarounds, browser history collected and stored in an administrator accessible location, and a packet sniffer was deployed targeting the MAC addresses of the controlled devices. That way all was laid bare.
It may sound draconian, but this is what was used. I simply stated “All social apps, your employer, every other app you use, open WIFI locations, including everyone else on the public WIFI service you’re connected to collect and store this data, so why can’t I?” Most reading this will think it’s too much heavy lifting to implement, but that’s what it takes.
What a dark and horrible secret we’ve made all boys hide from their parents for twenty years. And we wonder why they’re fucked up now. Academics have been trying to convince us it’s harmless for decades too. Cathy Reisenwitz among others continues to repeat the lie that’s it’s resulted in “plummeting” rates of violence against women
I teach homeschool seminars on Internet safety. This advice mirrors exactly what I tell parents. Chris has great suggestions here (and I do have a technology degree.)
The thing about bedrooms is so important, and I really like his trio of bedroom-boredom-darkness.
Using MAC ID filtering on your router is critical. It means unknown devices can't connect. Also, setting your router to disallow Internet access between 11-6 AM is a good idea. MAny have this capability.
I put more focus on filter software (Qustodio is what we use now, but my favorite is Kaspersky, and when the Russian sanctions finally end, we'll go back to them.) But this is great advice overall. Far better than the last guest post on this subject from Tracey Foster.
McKenna’s advice is practical, compassionate, and sincere. But it is clearly optimized for parents with time, tech fluency, and domestic stability—conditions far from universal. His framework (e.g., “ten porn talks before age 10,” layered device control, and daily audits) presumes a household where at least one parent is emotionally present, literate in tech, and able to exert meaningful control over the child’s digital environment.
This creates a structural blind spot. Families facing financial precarity, housing instability, shift work, or language barriers may be unable to meet even the baseline conditions for McKenna’s system to function. Hand-me-down devices, unsupervised digital access, limited broadband, or a reliance on public infrastructure (like libraries or school networks) place his model out of reach for millions—no matter how well-intentioned they are. Free resources are valuable, yes—but access does not equal implementation, especially when the advice assumes technical confidence and sustained availability.
McKenna may argue that he’s offering an ideal model—one that parents can apply to the extent they’re able. That’s fair, but an ideal that’s silent about its socioeconomic limits risks reinforcing a two-tier system: digital protection for the well-resourced, and exposure for everyone else. A more expansive approach would pair personal guidance with institutional support—e.g., through schools, ISPs, libraries, and child-protective policy.
Finally, while McKenna is right to emphasize early, values-based guidance, his framework doesn’t fully grapple with the influence of the peer group. Children will be exposed to others whose parents follow very different rules—or none at all. No amount of router management can eliminate that risk, which makes the absence of community-level solutions more glaring. Without broader scaffolding, even diligent families are swimming against the tide.
In short, McKenna’s system works best for the already-empowered. Unless we confront that reality—and design accordingly—we risk widening the very gap we aim to close.
Do you have a framework that would work better though?
It's unconscionable that our society forces parents to navigate protecting their kids online essentially without any social support. A sane society would have a collective framework built around legal limits like we do with alcohol or tobacco, but we're a VERY long way from that.
McKenna's tools are for parents who are able and willing to try to protect their kids. The others are beyond our reach for now. That sucks for those kids, but it's where we are as a society.
It is absolutely astounding how the porn industry has infiltrated our lives. As a kid of 12 back in 1949 a little paper booklets about 3”x5” in size passed around our world with caricatures of cartoon figures like Dick Tracy, Popeye and Olyve Oil and others having sex. Titilating. Then came Playboy and Hustler, all under the ‘freedom of speech. AI probably is adding to this revolution with its slick perfect anatomical correct characters. A disgusting descension into another sort of slavery.
I remember the ON-tv OTA UHF tv scrambler when I was a kid. By tweaking the antenna just right, you could kinda get the X-rated channel at the end of the dial (it was actually a slider bar) to come in clear.
Has anyone who has contemplated this problem thought that our modern society might be the problem?
Hunter-Gatherer societies, thriving for 300,000 years under starlit skies, embraced open nudity and sexuality as natural bonds, with the Hadza of Tanzania and the !Kung of the Kalahari (for example) weaving intimacy into communal life, free of shame—these traits and behaviors crafted into our DNA (Lee 1979; Marlowe 2010).
Today, we shroud these truths from children, driving their instincts underground where they instinctively seek out forbidden glimpses—pornography—amid a 20% rise in youth loneliness and anxiety fueled by this repression (Cacioppo and Hawkley 2009; Everytown for Gun Safety 2024). This break from our natural state warps their mental health, breeding confusion and distress, as moral panic replaces education with bans.
Rather than censoring, the solution lies in normalizing bodies and the loving act of sex through comprehensive education, as seen in Sweden’s 20% lower sexual shame, aligning with our instincts to heal, not hide, our children’s minds (Ferguson, Brown, and Torres 2019).
Herein lies the primary cause that contributes significantly to all the dysfunction in our world.
The Dark reality and effects of pornography on a generation with Melinda Tankard Reist
…[discussion about] the alarming rise of harmful sexual behaviors among youth, the cultural attitudes that normalize pornography, and the role of technology in perpetuating exploitation.
…
The conversation emphasizes the importance of empathy, awareness, and advocacy in creating a safer world for women and girls.
Fight the New Drug (FTND) is a nonprofit, secular, and non-legislative anti-pornography organization that is based in Utah. The group was founded in Utah in 2009. FTND describes pornography as analogous to
These are all great tips, but the BETTER solution is to for Congress to mandate that all pornography be available only via a PAID subscription. That would cut out 90+% of all adult pornography viewing and probably 99% of child pornography viewing. Why are we as parents and adults not demanding this??
Why just pornography? There should be an end to all "free" social media. That's because it is not free. Social media is designed to feed on the users' data and personal history in ways that harm society and the user in the long run.
Between the libertarians of the right and the progressives of the left, I can hardly see any political improvement coming anytime soon. You are asking like an open letter, but just look at the comments here and reply to a few of these presumed adults and you'll get your answers. [I'm dismayed of how much dissention there is in this comment section among a presumably self-selected bunch of folks.]
Agreed. But we're a VERY long way away from this. This requires a collective definition of virtue, something we've been running away from since John Stuart Mill.
Why aren't parents demanding this? Because "maximal individual autonomy" is all they know.
Unfortunately, porn is readily available in a vast number of countries beyond the reach of any particular national jurisdiction. Your approach would not work.
I worked in IT for many years. Many major porn providers are hosted here, not in Russia or Panama or Korea. PornHub could be shut down by EO tomorrow given the political will. Congress could alter Section 230 exemptions. Let them litigate it all the way to SCOTUS.
Internationally, it would be very easy to disallow particular domain traffic from entering the United States digital network. China does this. It's not hard.
The problem has never been technical. It has always been a lack of political will.
But the trick is to not become like China and Russia in the process.
The method we used to help monitor internet access started with the router. Only recognized MAC addresses were allowed to access and use the bandwidth provided. Phones are just part of the deluge of devices available. Add into the mix WIFI enabled vibration devices and now you get a sense of what is out there.
The other rules and methods used were to review the phone/laptop usage at the end of each day, have access to all app passwords, and lock down the phone/laptop so the “user” had no administrator privileges (unable to install software or apps). Phones and laptops were not allowed to be used after 8:00 PM, left on the kitchen table at night, and homework was to be done prior to the 8:00 PM lockdown. Plus, to further dampen the workarounds, browser history collected and stored in an administrator accessible location, and a packet sniffer was deployed targeting the MAC addresses of the controlled devices. That way all was laid bare.
It may sound draconian, but this is what was used. I simply stated “All social apps, your employer, every other app you use, open WIFI locations, including everyone else on the public WIFI service you’re connected to collect and store this data, so why can’t I?” Most reading this will think it’s too much heavy lifting to implement, but that’s what it takes.
I second this. We do this in our house. IT's not perfect, but it solves 90% of the problems.
What a dark and horrible secret we’ve made all boys hide from their parents for twenty years. And we wonder why they’re fucked up now. Academics have been trying to convince us it’s harmless for decades too. Cathy Reisenwitz among others continues to repeat the lie that’s it’s resulted in “plummeting” rates of violence against women
Time to call out the media’s disgraceful whitewashing on this for two decades. Here’s typical giddy coverage from 2019.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48283409
I teach homeschool seminars on Internet safety. This advice mirrors exactly what I tell parents. Chris has great suggestions here (and I do have a technology degree.)
The thing about bedrooms is so important, and I really like his trio of bedroom-boredom-darkness.
Using MAC ID filtering on your router is critical. It means unknown devices can't connect. Also, setting your router to disallow Internet access between 11-6 AM is a good idea. MAny have this capability.
I put more focus on filter software (Qustodio is what we use now, but my favorite is Kaspersky, and when the Russian sanctions finally end, we'll go back to them.) But this is great advice overall. Far better than the last guest post on this subject from Tracey Foster.
McKenna’s advice is practical, compassionate, and sincere. But it is clearly optimized for parents with time, tech fluency, and domestic stability—conditions far from universal. His framework (e.g., “ten porn talks before age 10,” layered device control, and daily audits) presumes a household where at least one parent is emotionally present, literate in tech, and able to exert meaningful control over the child’s digital environment.
This creates a structural blind spot. Families facing financial precarity, housing instability, shift work, or language barriers may be unable to meet even the baseline conditions for McKenna’s system to function. Hand-me-down devices, unsupervised digital access, limited broadband, or a reliance on public infrastructure (like libraries or school networks) place his model out of reach for millions—no matter how well-intentioned they are. Free resources are valuable, yes—but access does not equal implementation, especially when the advice assumes technical confidence and sustained availability.
McKenna may argue that he’s offering an ideal model—one that parents can apply to the extent they’re able. That’s fair, but an ideal that’s silent about its socioeconomic limits risks reinforcing a two-tier system: digital protection for the well-resourced, and exposure for everyone else. A more expansive approach would pair personal guidance with institutional support—e.g., through schools, ISPs, libraries, and child-protective policy.
Finally, while McKenna is right to emphasize early, values-based guidance, his framework doesn’t fully grapple with the influence of the peer group. Children will be exposed to others whose parents follow very different rules—or none at all. No amount of router management can eliminate that risk, which makes the absence of community-level solutions more glaring. Without broader scaffolding, even diligent families are swimming against the tide.
In short, McKenna’s system works best for the already-empowered. Unless we confront that reality—and design accordingly—we risk widening the very gap we aim to close.
Do you have a framework that would work better though?
It's unconscionable that our society forces parents to navigate protecting their kids online essentially without any social support. A sane society would have a collective framework built around legal limits like we do with alcohol or tobacco, but we're a VERY long way from that.
McKenna's tools are for parents who are able and willing to try to protect their kids. The others are beyond our reach for now. That sucks for those kids, but it's where we are as a society.
It is absolutely astounding how the porn industry has infiltrated our lives. As a kid of 12 back in 1949 a little paper booklets about 3”x5” in size passed around our world with caricatures of cartoon figures like Dick Tracy, Popeye and Olyve Oil and others having sex. Titilating. Then came Playboy and Hustler, all under the ‘freedom of speech. AI probably is adding to this revolution with its slick perfect anatomical correct characters. A disgusting descension into another sort of slavery.
Thank you for everything you do to help protect our kids, Chris! Grateful for you!
I remember the ON-tv OTA UHF tv scrambler when I was a kid. By tweaking the antenna just right, you could kinda get the X-rated channel at the end of the dial (it was actually a slider bar) to come in clear.
Kids today have it so easy
Has anyone who has contemplated this problem thought that our modern society might be the problem?
Hunter-Gatherer societies, thriving for 300,000 years under starlit skies, embraced open nudity and sexuality as natural bonds, with the Hadza of Tanzania and the !Kung of the Kalahari (for example) weaving intimacy into communal life, free of shame—these traits and behaviors crafted into our DNA (Lee 1979; Marlowe 2010).
Today, we shroud these truths from children, driving their instincts underground where they instinctively seek out forbidden glimpses—pornography—amid a 20% rise in youth loneliness and anxiety fueled by this repression (Cacioppo and Hawkley 2009; Everytown for Gun Safety 2024). This break from our natural state warps their mental health, breeding confusion and distress, as moral panic replaces education with bans.
Rather than censoring, the solution lies in normalizing bodies and the loving act of sex through comprehensive education, as seen in Sweden’s 20% lower sexual shame, aligning with our instincts to heal, not hide, our children’s minds (Ferguson, Brown, and Torres 2019).
Herein lies the primary cause that contributes significantly to all the dysfunction in our world.
I plan to write more about this one day.
The Dark reality and effects of pornography on a generation with Melinda Tankard Reist
…[discussion about] the alarming rise of harmful sexual behaviors among youth, the cultural attitudes that normalize pornography, and the role of technology in perpetuating exploitation.
…
The conversation emphasizes the importance of empathy, awareness, and advocacy in creating a safer world for women and girls.
https://open.substack.com/pub/daniellestrickland/p/the-dark-reality-and-effects-of-pornography?r=4l7sv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
American anti-pornography nonprofit organization
http://fightthenewdrug.org/
Fight the New Drug (FTND) is a nonprofit, secular, and non-legislative anti-pornography organization that is based in Utah. The group was founded in Utah in 2009. FTND describes pornography as analogous to
Love this! The first layer is truly so important for any child!
Love this! The first layer is truly so important for any child!
Love this! The first layer is truly so important for any child!
Love this! The first layer is truly so important for any child!