Breaking Free

4 Responses to “Covenant Eyes Internet Accountability”

1. • Ken Stanley
   • July 23rd, 2008 at 10:22 am

   Can you provide a reference for the 70% of Christian men struggle with Internet pornography stat that you use in this video? That is a pretty drastic number and I would love to see that backed up by a recent study. You know that 95.46% of all stats are made up right?

2. • Curtis
   • July 23rd, 2008 at 10:54 am

   Luke,
   I was wondering if you guys are going to or are in the process of developing an application for the iphone or other pda devices.

3. • Luke Gilkerson
   • July 23rd, 2008 at 11:25 am

   To be sure the “70%” figure is only an estimation based on a number of surveys. I understand your concern about stats. They can be misleading, misquoted, and misunderstood.

   By “struggling” we are not classifying the level of the struggle in each man. We are not here speaking of pornography “addiction” or “compulsion” but simply with the number of Christian men who confess to pornography being a formidable temptation in their lives.

   To be accurate there is no single study that has been done recently about this subject. Covenant Eyes conducts its own research whenever we can, and we try to be up to date on any recent studies that have been done. We estimate about 70% based on other stats we’ve collected.

   In January 2004 Kevin Axe reported that 60% of Christian men have sought out some form of pornography (“Porn addiction is more than skin deep,” found at faithlinks.org). In August 2006, a survey reported 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women admit to being “addicted” to pornography. (“ChristiaNet Poll Finds That Evangelicals Are Addicted to Porn,” on Marketwire.com). This is not surprising when we consider research done a decade earlier that showed 91% of men raised in Christian homes were exposed to pornography while growing up (Hart, Archibald D., The Sexual Man, Word Publishing, 1994: p.95). This was before the advent of the Internet which now makes pornography more widely available now than ever before.

   These stats get higher as the surveys touch younger Christian populations. When Covenant Eyes staff travel to Christian colleges and universities, for example, we try to do extensive surveys among students, deans of men, residential advisors, and university chaplains. The number of men who struggle with watching Internet porn is always between 90 and 100%.

   Still we find more staggering stats as we look at teens. It is generally known that the largest group of viewers of Internet porn is children between ages 12 and 17. In 2001, a study by social psychologists at the London School of Economics showed that 9 out of 10 children, ages 11 to 16, had viewed pornography on the internet (Gaines, Sara, “Why sex still leads the net,” at guardian.co.uk) irrespective of religious affiliation.

   In some areas and in some age groups the 70% figure would be entirely too high. In other areas and in other groups it would be entirely too low. But one thing nearly all researchers are concerned about is the rate at which pornography viewing is spreading through the Internet, and specifically with the generations that have grown up with the Internet.

4. • Angela
   • July 24th, 2008 at 11:21 am

   It really hits home when you review these stats. It’s an almost universal problem for this generation. The video is great!