In 2017, the South Dakota legislature declared porn a public health crisis. It’s been seven years, and nothing substantial has changed. The time to stand up against the porn industry and protect our children and our society from this depravity is now, and it starts with HB 1257. This bill would require age verification from anyone seeking to access explicit websites, drastically reducing if not altogether eliminating children accidentally stumbling onto pornographic content online – a bigger problem than you might assume.

We know that routinely watching pornography at any age leads to sexual aggression, anxiety, depression, interpersonal relationship problems, and dangerous sexual behaviors. This is not an issue to take lightly, and it is not a victimless problem. Rep. Bethany Soye, the author of HB 1257, testified in committee that watching pornography “produces chemical changes in your brain like an addictive drug that can quickly take over your life.” Why would we place a device in our childrens’ hands that has such a capacity for evil and wrongdoing and then fail to implement common-sense safeguards on dangerous content? 

HB 1257’s multifaceted approach to protecting children from harmful content while also ensuring the privacy of adult users is described in Rep. Soye’s press release. The bill:

• Applies to any online platform that regularly works to “create, host or make available” content that South Dakota law defines as “harmful to minors.”
• Requires the “covered platforms” to implement a system which would verify the age of the online user.
• Requires that no personally identifiable information of adult users be saved or stored in any way.
• Enables parents to take legal action against any “covered platform” that refuses to implement an age-verification system and continues to allow unfettered access to their child.

One witness at the committee hearing on HB 1257, Hollie Strand, a forensic examiner for the Internet Crimes Against Children division of the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, told story after story of children who became addicted to extremely violent and perverted pornography, oftentimes because they were exposed to it from a young age. You may think cases of kids addicted to pornography are few and far between, but data shows that 73% teenagers between 13 and 17 years old have watched pornography online at some point in their lives, and over half of them reported that they first saw pornography by the time they were only 13 years old. Take a look at the statistics from Common Sense Media below:

• 15% of teen respondents said they first saw online pornography at age 10 or younger. The average age reported for first viewing pornography is 12.
• While the vast majority of respondents said they have seen pornography, nearly half (44%) indicated that they had done so intentionally, while slightly more than half (58%) indicated they had encountered pornography accidentally.
• Unintentional exposure to pornography could be a common experience for teens, as 63% of those who said they have only seen pornography accidentally reported that they had been exposed to pornography in the past week.
• The majority of the teens who reported in this survey that they had seen pornography said they feel “OK” about the amount of pornography they watch (67%). Still, half (50%) reported feeling guilty or ashamed after watching pornography.

A bill to protect our children from online pornography is long overdue. We must fight back against the perversion of the porn industry and stop them from stealing our childrens’ innocence.

“When it comes to kids and pornography, failure simply cannot be an option,” Strand said.

Although we are hopeful HB 1257 will be enthusiastically passed by our legislators, you, as parents, are not helpless in this cause. One of the most important things you can do to stand in the gap is make sure you get to your kids first, before the world steps in and takes over – teaching them all the wrong things about sex, gender, relationships, and the other uncomfortable topics parents sometimes shy away from, but the world never does. It is your right and responsibility to raise your children up in the ways of the Lord, and teaching them about sin and how to resist it is absolutely essential in the world we live in.