John 3:20 - "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed."
Over time, the children are having less and less of a safe space to grow up properly. Meaning that they are being exposed to things too early, thus interrupting the maturity process of our youth. Many people look at this and subtly sweep it under the rug, but it is becoming a true epidemic. In schools, the only thing our teenagers talk about is pornography and drugs. A current issue is vaping, and before long, teenagers will get their hands more dirty and more dirty over time. The amount of time we spend in the same spot, the more we become numb to it. This also arises the problem that everybody, these days, has to be in a constant state of pleasure. Anatomically, we were not made to be in a constant state of pleasure, but people want to have somewhere to turn when things get dirty. Somewhere to get their next fix. Somewhere they can take refuge. The earlier people are exposed to things of the adult life, the sooner they seek things that give pleasure. They realize at a young age, that this is a corrupt world full of selfish people, and while this is true, the innocence of a child is a precious thing. Like a pearl found at the bottom of the ocean, the innocence of children is becoming more rare by the year. With the exposure of explicit content getting worse and worse, we do not know what to expect out of our youth anymore. Exposure is becoming a serious problem that is leading to long term issues that must be addressed and fixed accordingly.
It is important, when addressing exposure, to mention explicit content. Explicit content plays a tremendous role in this problem with exposure. With children being exposed to explicit advertisements, television, and people at a young age, what can we expect to come out of them as a result? The realistic truth is, what goes in comes back out. When we intentionally or unintentionally expose a child to explicit content, you can expect the same thing to come out as a result. Not only is the exposure a problem, but also what the children do with that exposure. They typically find that these things are rare amongst their age group finding them, therefore, cool or interesting. Finding them this way, they spread them to other people of their age group, with no problems or threats in mind. After they spread, the parents soon find out and it then creates an awkward situation that must be dealt with. You either sit down and talk about these problems, or you let them fester and boil within your child. The risk of leaving them, is they may end up growing stronger and stronger as your child progresses maturely. The problems with approaching them is, it may cause the child to become more curious about them because they are obviously bad. With these two solutions being potentially dangerous, what do we do? We kill the problem where it started, the roots.
By addressing the problem where it started and enlightening the child on the truths behind these things, it can help to eliminate the curiosity that grows as a result. The problem is the lack of initiative by our parents and authorities over this problem. It has come to the point where being exposed to these things at an early age is a normal thing now. A common excuse is that your child is "just growing up". Although this is true, this is no reason to justify a lack of protection over your child. The problem just grows when it spreads from child to child causing a mass of problems for each parent. The best way to handle this is to keep in check the exposure that your child is getting.
One of the best ways to handle this epidemic is to keep our audience in mind. Whenever you have children, you are expected to filter out some of the bad things you do, if any at all. The problem with holding yourself back is, sooner or later, the real you will break out and show. Small leaks at a time will allow your true self to leak out and stain your child. Whether it is drinking alcohol with your children in the room or watching an adult film with them in the room, possibilities for premature exposure are endless. By doing these things, the youth have an idea that they are cool. "Only adults can do them, so they must be cool," the children say. This problem all starts with the parents. By having children, you should be willing to change for the better of your child. If you are not willing to change, than you can expect your child to be just as good or less good than you are. Every parent wants their child to do better than them, but the thing most parents do not realize is that their exposure to things affects them heavily. If they grow up thinking that drinking alcohol is the cool thing to do, than they will eventually struggle with being an alcoholic. By having that cool and mature picture around alcohol, it makes it attractive to you. Before you know it, you have fallen victim to the same things your parents did. You never know when your child may be watching what you do, but you can always count on them watching. They look up to you as a role model, and you should be able to fit the shoes of a role model. Parents must be the people who are able to teach their children and steward them into a better future than what they had. This is how societies evolve. They climb up the stairs of preparation. The parent always wants better for their kids than they had, so the parent does everything in their power to help and prepare them for their future. What too many parents do not realize is, exposure is a type of preparing. By keeping them safe from pornography, you are preparing a better marriage for them in the future. By keeping them from drugs and alcohol, you are preparing a filter of smart decisions for them in the future. Exposure plays just as big a role as financial or social preparation does in preparing our youth for the future.
When looking at exposure and parents, we must observe the unpredictable factor of television and advertisement. Advertisements are getting more and more explicit as the barrier of innocence is being torn down year after year. Advertisements only take into consideration the educated, adult audience instead of taking into consideration the youth that are likely exposed to the same things. Luckily, the advertisements do well in advertising against tobacco, but others include ads planting seeds of lust and greed. By showing half-naked women on a television ad, you are planting a seed that will grow into a problem with lust, that can lead to an unfruitful marriage. By showing that explicit language is part of the adult language, it is planting a seed that those words and phrases are okay to use. These commercials plant seeds, as they were intended, to get you to buy into their product. The problem that arises is, these advertisements are getting more explicit as a means to attract more people. We can all admit that we have worldly desires, and advertisements pull on them to entice and attract us to what they are saying and advertising. By exploiting the fact that everyone is attracted to these worldly things, we have created a society more concerned with greed than for our youth. It is common knowledge that children watch the television on a daily basis. With this fact noted, there is no reason for these advertisements to be as explicit as they are. Do we not understand that the youth of today, are the leaders of tomorrow? By exposing them to these explicit things, we are possibly placing them in rabbit holes in which they will never emerge. We wonder where the success and prosperity has gone in America. Just look at the television, and see what is being pumped into these children. We can not let our consumer production get in the way of preparing our future. There are healthy and effective ways to promote a product, but we are constantly turning to explicit means of advertising. This is to be expected, but is it worth scarring the future of America?
The unavoidable scene in which exposure is worst, is certain to be school. Our schools provide an environment in which our youth can socialize with each other. As students are exposed and learn more about explicit content, the more they want to share these things with their fellow classmates. The problem arises when children who are growing up, very monitored by their parents, get exposed to these things and they learn about them. Thus, taking away their innocence. It is very difficult to monitor school life closely, for they are bound to share these things with each other at some point. The thing we can do in school is start pumping the truth into these kids. The truth that these things do not define maturity and how cool you are. In fact, innocence is more valuable than these things. We have been demoralized to the point that these things appeal to the younger audience more. Things get worse when people do not change from this. When they stay in the same spot of immaturity and discovery, they forget they are adults in whom should already know these things and should be able to keep themselves composed about them. Instead we see this exposure giving these children a sense of authority and control over others. The fact that knowledge is power applies here. This knowledge, unknown to the youth, unlocks an authority because of the scarcity of it. The fact that nobody knows about these things is big in class diplomacy. This also opens a door for bullying. Everybody does not know these things, making belittlement a high possibility. Belittlement because other kids may not know the same things. Often times, we make our place of hurt and exposure a means of getting a step above someone else. This extra experience makes for a stepping stool for power, when it could be a stepping stool to help others fight this problem. A lot of people see this as a way to promote their personal gain. To gain power in and out of the classroom among people their age. However, what if we were to steward people to use their exposure for the good of others? Instead of a power stool, we used it to help others and protect so they can grow up different and better than we did. We will find unknown joy in this, more than we will in exercising our exposure as a means of power. We can build each other up in ways we did not know possible. The opportunities for good are endless. Instead of seeing exposure in a bad light, we can approach it as it is and deal with it in the best way we can. We cannot stop explicit content from spreading, but we can use it as a leverage for greater things to come out of dark spots.
While approaching this problem of exposure in schools, we must address the issue of creating a safe space for people. The real issue with the contagious nature of these problems all thrives in the fact that our authorities do not seem to care. The lack of care and justification that has occured, makes it seem like these problems are normal for everyone at that age. This problem has been swept under the rug, as people have found it to be a normal occurrence. It seems, though, as if this has been used as an excuse to avoid dealing with it. This avoidance has led to the youth being forced to deal with it themselves, which never ends good as they do not know what to do and how to deal with such knowledge. This leads them to put themselves above others with this knowledge, because they are not mature enough to correctly deal with them. This is the reaction to be expected, but not accepted. We do not have to settle with the average outcome of these situations. We can help nurture these people, and protect them from any other harm. Exposure is necessary, but using exposure timely according to their current age and maturity is wise. While no person is prepared for pornographic material, the youth are no different. Being able to recognize a problem is the first step in solving it. By recognizing the issue with exposure, we begin exposing exposure.
There are two ways teachers and parents can go about creating a safe space for their children and students. One, you can approach it directly which eliminates the guilt and embarrassment, and deal with it according to the magnitude of the problem. Two, you can plant seeds in your children and students by subtly telling them that these things are bad and lead you down a road of self-destruction. Both ways work, but approaching these things directly may be better as subtly addressing them will not always carry out the implications you intend it to. Addressing it directly can help carry you into a spot of transparency and enlightenment as students and children are likely to have questions about the truth and accuracy of the statements you make about it. This curiosity of good, meaning that you planted a seed that is taking root inside their brains. By telling them these things, the truth about them will begin to set in, and they will turn to other things to be cool. The caste system among students in schools is bound to happen, but perhaps this can help create unity and eliminate any division students may have between each other because of various levels of exposure. The truth brings light to the dark and build bridges that no person can build. We can count on Jesus Christ to do the work in our hearts as we learn the truth about certain topics and expose them to His light. We can do so much to direct the light, but we can count on Jesus do the work within our hearts to expose us to the truth and use our exposure for the good of others and for the glory of God.
With age comes experience to the exposure we gain earlier. As we gain this experience we are finally able to understand what these things mean to their fullest extent. Some things are uglier than we expected, and some are not. When we learn the truth about these things, we seem to sift through them according. Adding some to our lives and taking some out. Nobody of the young age has the experience they need to understand what all of these things mean. This inability to understand is what pushes people to do what they think is best with that knowledge. What they think is best is driven off of social standards, because they can compare the value of this knowledge with the current social standards and apply them. This is why our youth seems to think that it is cool to be derogatory to women or to use curse words as if they are normal words. These seeds are planted on television and other places, and before we know it, these seeds grow up. They grow in the wrong way because they do not have the experience they need to understand them and apply them correctly. The ability to sift through them is not there, because they have not experienced that kind of thing before. This ignorance is the pushing factor that forces people to make rash decisions and come to false conclusions about them. With these false conclusions, they act on this exposure in an ignorant way that hurts others, rather than building them up. If they do learn these things, it is best to not rush their experience. For example, if a child asks for a beer, you do not give them the beer and let them get drunk. You do not, because they are underaged and the risks of drinking alcohol can lead to liver problems as well as a fatal addiction. Without experience, they can learn about the consequences of these things by being told and given examples. By learning about these things and the consequences of them, we can give our youth an accurate picture of the things they are exposed to.
It is important, when educating our youth about these things, to not avoid why people us them. A lot of people tell their kids or students all of the bad that they do, without telling them why people do them if they are so bad. This causes them to act on their curiosity and learn, maybe the hard way, about the seemingly good parts of these bad things. For example, you can tell people all of the bad parts about smoking marijuana, but by not telling them why people use it so much, a seed of curiosity will be planted and perhaps even pursued. Their questions and curiosity will lead to action. Our need for closure and answers sometimes outweighs our need for comfort. This can lead to dangerous situations in which they are learning what these various things do through exposing themselves to it. Before long, they are addicted to the very things they were taught to avoid, as they were not aware of the addictive effects that they have. Most people avoid telling them about why people use them out of fear that they, themselves, will use them. Although the intention is good, the youth are more likely to act on curiosity than on fact. By telling them the whole truth about these things, the decision to do them or not is in their hands now. You can not be the one to blame for their addiction if you told them the whole truth and warned them about the drawbacks of them. If you tell a child, after being exposed, about why people drink and use alcohol as well as the bad effects of it, they will likely avoid it because their curiosity has been doused out by the truth. By telling them all of the bad things about alcohol and just all of the bad, they are more likely to act on that, because the whole truth is missing from that equation. In math, we solve x in the equation 1+x=3. By using math, we can figure out that x is equal to 2. By giving our youth an equation, we are forcing them to discover the variable, and they will figure it out by going to the side they never thought they would in order to get their answer. The road to truth is a hard one to confront, but it is more effective to tell our youth the whole truth about the explicit content, than to tell them the bad parts and why to avoid them, only to leave them to figure out the rest themselves.
As there is for anything, there is a healthy pace in which our youth should be exposed to explicit content. The healthy pace can be found in our teachers and parents. By monitoring our children's exposure, we can expect the pace to be set. Not only monitoring them, but also informing them about the truth of explicit things as they learn about them. Learning about them is inevitable, but what they do with that knowledge can be changed. Most children delve themselves deeper into these explicit things until it begins to come out in their everyday life, affecting how they act and see certain things. By informing them on what these things are and why they are so attractive and seductive, is the first step in setting a healthy pace. The truth must come out sooner or later. The sooner they learn the truth about these things, the better off they will be in the long run. Knowing how to approach these things and deal with them down the road is important to living a healthy life. You can learn all about pornography, knowing all of the bad things that come from it, but without knowing how to apply that knowledge you will still end up treating your future wife as an object. Not applying the knowledge you receive will only lead to bad results down the road. If you know something helpful, but refuse to apply it, who is to blame? Teaching them and stewarding them to apply this knowledge correctly is perhaps the best thing you could do when dealing with premature exposure. Children are doomed to learn these explicit things at an early age, but they are not doomed to fall into the trap their whole life. There is hope on the other side of knowledge and application for our children who have been prematurely exposed to explicit content.
The issue of exposure deals with children who are just trying to fit in, and the parents and teachers that sweep it under the rug, saying it is "normal for people of his or her age". We must realize that we are being watched by tomorrow's leaders, and they will pick up on things that seemingly lead us to success and happiness. The fact that we are being watched as peers should be encouraging and awakening. Encouraging to the fact that we are being looked up to as role models and for guidance. Awakening to the fact that we should be willing to change for the better of the people watching us. We must fully recognize the responsibility that comes with being a parent or teacher, and be able to change and adapt to the people looking up to us for their good. The blame can not be solely placed on the youth for their exposure, as we look on television and other advertisements and see these explicit things being publicized. The youth are merely curious about these things after being exposed to them, and they tend to act on this knowledge for their own personal good. We can not expect anything different as they do not have the experience to truly know how to apply this knowledge. This is where our parents and teachers come in to teach them about the whole being of this explicit content, for it is two faced. While it provides short term pleasure, it also gives long term pain. Teaching them all of the bad things of them, as well as why people use them will as be useful in stewarding them into knowing how to appropriately apply them. There is hope for our youth. The more they learn the truth about these things, the better off they will be in the long run. Not only will they be better off, but they will also know how to deal with immature exposure in the future. Exposure is becoming a serious problem that is leading to long term issues that must be addressed and fixed accordingly, by telling those who are affected the whole truth so they can apply it correctly and effectively.