When I was 11 years old, I clicked on a link on my favorite gaming website’s messaging forum. The person who posted the link said it was for a fun YouTube video about the game. It was not. In an instant, my computer screen and mind were flooded with pornographic content. I had spent countless hours lazily playing video games and scrolling on this website, so something bad was bound to happen eventually (I know now), but that didn’t make it any less terrible.

It was shocking to my young mind, and I had no idea how to handle it. I decided to shut down my computer, run upstairs, and not tell my parents or anybody else about what happened. Big mistake. I was confused and scared and tried to run from the problem. But the experience was so shocking that it stuck in my brain, like traumatic events tend to do. Despite not liking what I saw, a neural pathway formed in my brain that was triggered every time I saw something sexual or heard friends talking at school about sex-related things I didn’t know about. My brain would remind me that I could probably find more about that on the internet, where I had seen sexual things previously.

And so I did. Curiosity would arise, so I would search on our home computer for things related to sex and pornography and fall into a vicious shame cycle.

The only inaccurate part of this image is the size of the “Shame” piece. For me, it might have been days, weeks, or even months between me looking at explicit content, but for the entire time in between those events, I was filled with shame, guilt, and self-hatred. I knew it was wrong, and I couldn’t tell anyone. I thought that if anyone close to me knew, they wouldn’t love me anymore. A lie straight from hell that kept me in chains for years.

When you’re that deep in the battle, logic and reason don’t have the effect that they do on others. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was bad for me physically and spiritually. I knew I should stop. These mental consents had no effect on my day-to-day battle, though, because when temptation arose, my brain’s prefrontal cortex took over and my decisions were based purely out of feelings. Logic and reason no longer had power, and I consumed and was consumed by an addiction that provided 30 seconds of false pleasure and years of shame, fear, self-hatred, pain, anger, and sadness.

After falling in love with my now-wife, I knew I couldn’t continue in the lies, sins, and addiction. But my mind was so warped, and my flesh was so weak, that I didn’t have the power on my own. Freedom came only by bringing it to the light. By looking the love of my life, my mentors, and my closest friends in the eyes, confessing my deepest, darkest shame and failures, and receiving nothing but grace, love, and forgiveness. It was what God was showing me the whole time, but I was too blind to see it until I experienced it face-to-face with people around me.

Since then, I have gone through various counseling, personal processing, and courses to renew my mind and become free of the images and darkness that once bound me so tightly. Those years of my life spent in that garbage and wasting so much time online set me back so much in my growth and joy in life, and I don’t want anyone else to experience what I did.

This is why I do this:

• To help kids learn how to use technology wisely to benefit them and not to hurt them.
• To raise awareness to the dangers of the internet and move society towards putting more measures in place to protect children online.
• To teach parents how to have the hard conversations with their kids so they don’t fear shame or have unhealthy relationships with technology.

There are a few things about me that help me to be effective in this role. One is that I am a former child. I grew up in the age of the internet. I saw bad things and wasted tons of time on technology. I used it in ways that have hurt me. But I have processed and reflected on them and know the things that could have been really helpful, and the things that were really harmful, and I seek to share these things with parents and children so that they don’t make the same mistakes I did. There are ways we can discuss and interact with technology that can be very healthy and beneficial. The second is that I know technological safety practices. I’ve tried and broke past almost every internet filter/safeguard I could find. I know every sneaky place explicit content can be found by kids, and all of the ways kids can be hurt by their use of tech. I know which apps have what content, dangers, and settings, what device safety practices work and benefit families and what don’t, and the ways parents can talk about all of these things with their kids in a way that benefits and encourages everyone. God is now using my own sinful actions for good (Genesis 50:20) – Praise Him for that!

Both of these aspects – the personal and the technological – are vital for parents to understand in order to lead their children well and keep them safe and free. If you want to know more, head to the Contact page and reach out so we can talk further.

Casey