Bishops warning

We had a combined meeting yesterday in church taught by our bishop that was titled "Person Purity Plan". This is the second time this year he has combined the Relief Society and Priesthood meetings and spoke to us on this topic. I thought it might be good to write a little about what he is teaching us, since we are all parents and this will affect your lives if not now, but sometime in the near future.
He started by explaining that we are all in charge of and responsible for the content that enters you life, your home and your children's home. The content habits you form for your children will stay with them for life. It is OK to be bold and straight forward with your kids, their friends and with your spouse about what is acceptable and what is not for your home. He gave some statistics that he has obtained from the FBI, they are;
-it is a 100% fact if you are in a chat room you will run into a sexual predictor.
-There is no safety in cyberspace for children and teens
-1/3 of teens browse the web on their cell phones/ipods
-1 in 5 youth have used sexting (sending nude pictures, or sexual talking)'
-Heaviest texting traffic is between 11pm-3am

Things he told us were a necessity to have in our homes were some kind of computer filter that has an administrator with password-blockers. Never let you kids have free access to the computer/Internet! We have Net Nanny, and love it!
Kids can get on the Internet through X-box, wii and other game boxes. Lock it with a password!
He also encouraged us to never buy our children a phone or I-pods (the I-touch) with Internet access, especially the I- phone. They are almost impossible to have parental locks on and run some of the highest risks for your children. He told us a story of a 9 year old that he is treating for pornography addiction. He saw some pictures on his I-touch and just that one time he became addicted. Our bishop is a doctor and he told us why boys especially, become addicted so quickly to pornography. When anyone sees explicit pictures or anything that stimulates us in a rewarding way it instantly recorded into our brain in the lower part of the brain. This part of our brain is the "reward" part. It is a part that remembers the best, and these images we put into this part of our brain are almost impossible to erase. That is why it is so hard to treat this kind of addiction. It takes years to treat someone with a sexual addiction that has only been addicted for months or weeks.
Also something that should NEVER be allowed is a computer or television in your child's bedroom!
Something that we have for a girls cell phones is parental control. We have Verizon and they offer it for $5.oo a month, per phone. This allows us to control and watch who they call and text. It also allows us to turn off their phones when we choose. We have it set so our girls phones turn off at 9:00 pm every night except for Saturday's they turn off at 11:00. They can not text or call anyone when their phones are off. This is something that we don't have to do, it is automatically done every night for us. They best part is you can have an emergency number they can call when their phones are off, so that if they are still out, they can call our home or cell number, but that is all! It is worth $5 a month!
Our bishop asked us to hold Family content night, monthly. That is, you discuss with your kids what is and what is not acceptable to watch or listen too.
Have family "fire drills". We teach our kids what to do if a stranger talks to them, but do they know what to do if they happen to receive a filthy text message, or stumble onto something on the Internet or TV, or hear something at school?
Treat cyber safety as you would any other predator prevention plan.
Have one on one dates with each child, regularly!
Have one person be the administrator that controls the content that comes into your home.
Have total transparency in the home.
And when all else fails, blame it on the Prophet or Holy Ghost. You can tell your kids, "Do you believe the prophet, well he has asked us not to listen to this, or watch that". Or you can say "The spirit is telling me something isn't right".
He really emphasized that this is a war! We are the parents and we need to love our children enough to be tough on them when required!
The last thing he warned us about was theater rooms. He said, that he knows a lot us have them and spent a lot of money to put them into our homes. He then said "if you want to save your children, get rid of them and never let your children into a home that has one"!
Like I said before, this is the second time our bishop has talked to us parents about this subject. It is something that all of will deal with and have to face, if we have children. Lets do everything we can to protect our children from Satan enticing's! It is such a different world from just 10 years ago and our kids are facing a hard battle!
I hope this helps you out, I know it's always good for me to hear again!