FamilyLife Today®

Ann Wilson: Hey, we just wanted to give you a heads-up before you listen to this next program because today's conversation on FamilyLife covers some pretty sensitive but really important subjects that may not be suitable for younger ears. So just use some discretion. We just wanted to give you a heads-up.

Dave Wilson: Oh, yeah.

Jacob Valk: Your children will encounter explicit material at some point. That is just a given. There's never, ever a substitute for having conversations with your kids. "Hey, there are these videos out there. If you ever see one, know that Christians don't watch stuff like that. If you see it, shut it down, come tell me. I promise I won't be angry with you. I'll be glad you told me."

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann Wilson: We have Jacob Valk back with us today. He's the co-executive director and co-founder of Into the Light Ministries.

Dave Wilson: Fasten your seatbelt. We're going to talk about some heavy stuff today like AI porn and how to lock down your house tech-wise.

Ann Wilson: This is some stuff that maybe you don't know any of this, and we need to know it. These are topics and conversations that we need to know how to navigate. You're going to be like, "What?"

Dave Wilson: But it's going to be life-changing for you and your kids and your legacy. Let's go.

Jacob Valk: You mentioned earlier tech-wise and how to lock down your house. A lot of us are parents and grandparents, and we're like, "Okay, he said something about tech. How do I help my son and daughter? What do I need to know and do?" I know we can't do a tech class right now, but...

Ann Wilson: But even what I've seen with our grandkids even is I've been with them when they're at friends' houses, and you've got a seven-year-old and the 12-year-old pulls out the phone and now they're on it. So those are questions like, "That's a big deal."

Jacob Valk: Let's dive in. I think one of the things to start off—I hear this day in and day out with my job—is parents will come to me and say, "I'm not a techie. I just can't do this stuff." I get it. Finally, I'm younger; I'm getting to the point where I'm like, "We're on iPhone what now? 18? 17?" I don't know.

But for every parent here, there was a period where you weren't a driver, but you learned. You got driver's ed, you had to go with some awkward stuff, you took time. But for most of us, we were motivated enough to say, "I want to get places and hang out with friends," that you learned the reasonably complicated process of driving a car and all the road signs and all the stuff. And now you don't even think about it.

So you're saying we all have to get our license a little bit? Yes. It's possible. I think the lie the devil likes to slip in is this lie that you will never get techie enough to make a difference. As a parent, you are equipped with the tools you need, both broadly as a parent—God gives us everything we need for the work He calls us to do—but also there are tools out there that will give you enough of what you need to make a radical difference in your home for safety.

Some of those tools include things like Covenant Eyes—software you put on your phone, any device—amazing. Bark is a really great one. Bark (B-A-R-K)? Yes, B-A-R-K. They're another amazing parental control software. We've made a series called TechSafe, which is a tutorial set for every single device in your home giving you what you need to lock it down.

Some of this stuff is kind of esoteric, but I want to walk you through a bit about how you can think of safety in your home. For anyone listening, hang in there. This will make sense. It's cerebral, but it'll click. Let's think about how an image, let's say an sexually explicit image, is going to get to the device that you're holding. Let's follow the journey.

First, it's stored in servers way out where; you've got no control over that. But as it comes into your house, it comes through either wires or satellite over the internet and it arrives at the first stop in your home, which is your modem—your modem, your Wi-Fi router. Then it gets sent out over the Wi-Fi and it arrives at your phone. Then it's processed by your phone and then it's processed by whatever app is being used and then it displays it on a screen. That's the journey it took.

What we can do is if we can go back and retrace that step, we can find out what you can do as a parent at each step of the journey. Stored in a server out in pick-your-place? Can't do anything about it. But when it comes to your house, it first has to go through your Wi-Fi router. You have an unbelievable amount of control at that point in the journey.

Bark is one of them. Griffin is another. They make Wi-Fi routers that pair up with super user-friendly apps that allow you to do so much with your Wi-Fi. For anyone, you could nuke the Wi-Fi at 9:00 p.m. at night if you want, which is one of the times where it's most accessed. So if you just kill your Wi-Fi...

Ann Wilson: It's so amazing. Literally, it's a toggle. Your Wi-Fi is gone.

Jacob Valk: You can isolate specific devices in the house to turn off at 9:00 p.m. If you're the parents and you want to get until 10:00, that's fine. You can set up multiple firewalls of different explicit content. You can lock YouTube if you think my seven-year-old doesn't need YouTube. There's a lot of explicit content on YouTube. All of that before it even gets over the Wi-Fi to a device.

But let's say that it goes to a device. On the device, you can have device-specific monitoring. This is where Covenant Eyes comes in. Bark has some of them as well. Accountable2You. There's lots of great stuff over there; you can do some research. Let's say an image gets past your Wi-Fi level router controls and gets to the device. These programs act as a filter before it even gets to the app and says, "Hey, that's explicit. We're going to cut that out." So even the app itself doesn't have access to it.

The final thing is even if it comes onto a screen—like we've had some conversations about talking to your kids about these things—they have the option of self-control, of discipline, of saying, "My mom told me what that is. I'm not going to look at it." We just talked about two layers of security you can add that is really helpful.

Here's a third. That phone might be so dumb that it couldn't get that photo to begin with. These phones—there are these phones called Light Phone or Wise Phone—they're black and white, hyper-minimalist. They are an amazing phone to give to a 10-year-old because it's a 10-year-old that can call you at baseball, they can text you when they're coming home, but they couldn't get an explicit image if they tried. The phone just can't do it; they're dumbed down to oblivion.

Ann Wilson: So it has no apps on it?

Jacob Valk: It has four or five apps on it, but no App Store to get apps from. Now look what we've done. Maybe your 10-year-old needs a way to communicate with you guys. Great. Dumb phone, Covenant Eyes on any devices that aren't a dumb phone, and router-level blocking. You just put in three levels of wisdom that still gives your child an ability to communicate and be responsible, but you've just set up so many wise practices.

Thinking of it in that terms also begins to think of other devices like your TV. Do we realize that your TV is a computer? It has a browser; you can search stuff on it. We don't intuitively think that way; we think of TV for Netflix. But you can search the internet on a TV. Having this protection at a Wi-Fi level just cuts out all the garbage before it gets to the TV. But even TVs often have pretty robust parenting controls set up inside.

Stuff you might be listening to, going, "I just couldn't."

Ann Wilson: Like, "Where's my tutorial?" and you're saying you have that?

Jacob Valk: We built that. It's one of our resources. If you just sit down, a lot of these tools, especially the ones like Bark, they were built for parents, not tech wizards. You don't have to go dig up a VPN or know how to wire a mainframe—I don't even know what that means. They're built for you to protect your family.

Ann Wilson: So they would go to what?

Jacob Valk: If you decide to go to our series first, we link to all of our best resources. It just really takes you sitting down with a cup of coffee and a half-hour just trying to think about how these things work, and you'll be shocked at how much you can actually understand a device with just a bit of effort.

Ann Wilson: And I'm just going to say as a parent, you're probably sitting at practices or waiting in a carpool line. Check it out on your phone as you're waiting because this is something we need to make time to do. I know that I had this with my kids when they would go to friends' houses. Maybe my kids didn't have a phone then, but their friends do. So how do we protect our kids and what does that conversation sound like from their friends' phones?

Jacob Valk: So much harder. There are a couple of ways you can tackle this. The most idealistic way—this is hard—is building communities, talking about these things together. Here, I'm going to plug our Parenting and Pornography Masterclass. Let's say you've got a couple of close friends and your kids are the same age. Gather together for a Wednesday night and watch for nine Wednesdays in a row. This is logistically hard; I get it.

But our series walks through all of these issues in parenting and pornography and helps you understand all the steps you need to think about this issue. The upside of doing it with your friends with the kids of the same age is that you can have conversations that were harder to have before, so you don't sound accusatory when you look over at Dan and Susie and be like, "Are your devices...? What are you saying about us?" But now you have a vocabulary of saying, "Hey, what are your devices set up? Because I'm not saying anything special about you; I'm just saying devices have access points, which we know. We share vocabulary; we share values." Having friends who you can count on that they've set up security and thoughtfulness in their home goes a long way to being able to say, "Yeah, you guys go hang out at their house. I know what their M.O. is as parents too."

But your children will encounter explicit material at some point. That is just a given. You don't want to hear it, but it's true. There's never, ever a substitute for having conversations with your kids. It can be as easy as just repeating rhythms like, "Hey, there are these videos out there of naked people. If you ever see one, know that Christians don't watch stuff like that. If you see it, shut it down, come tell me. I promise I won't be angry with you. I'll be glad you told me." Scripts like that that you loop over and over and over give them something where if they see explicit material they can go, "That's what mom told me." And if it's their friends, they can go, "I'm not about this."

Dave Wilson: AI porn.

Jacob Valk: I'm not an AI alarmist in a sense. I use ChatGPT; it's a tool in our toolbox to do things. But AI pornography does two things that are terrifying. Someone's perverted sinful desire can be spelled out to a AI video engine, and that engine will spit them back what they want. There's a famous porn website that I won't name here that releases a recap every year. The most searched porn words were terms that are all distortions of God's design. It's all horrible things. This is the underbelly that no one wants to talk about of the sin that we consume as a nation. America is the number one consumer of this.

You guys are married and you've been married—you have a beautiful marriage for many years. So much of marriage is dying to yourself. It's faithfulness, it's long-term love, it's quirks and annoyances you have to deal with and talk about.

Ann Wilson: It's spiritual and physical intimacy, which is beautiful, which is God's design. And you're saying this just...

Jacob Valk: What AI porn does is it allows you to mold and shape someone else to suit your exact whim. It's so depraved on so many levels. That's a Tower of Babel that we've never encountered before.

But the other thing that AI is doing is it's adding a relational component to porn that we've never quite had before. Porn has always been: you go into it, you get out, and that's that. Now there's the chatbots, the conversational partners are so good that you'll actually be conversing and chatting with this AI companion, maybe hours.

Ann Wilson: Did you see the woman in Japan that married her AI chatbot? Did you see it? What in the world? It's not even a person; it's an AI bot.

Jacob Valk: You're chatting with a made-up person—the person you made up. That's it. And so what's fascinating about it is it's trying to distort it and sinfully trying to redeem something out of pornography that pornography has cut out—relationship.

And so what these AI bots are doing is covering it with this veneer of relationality that makes it feel more wholesome, makes it feel more real. Or not as bad. The greatest lies of the devil are always inching closer and closer towards the truth. So as long as I think the devil's perfectly content to give you a more fulfilling, more richer—hear the air quotes—pornography in this relational dynamic as long as it keeps you out of what God's true and beautiful design is.

Ann Wilson: Trying to mimic God.

Jacob Valk: It's dark. But understanding these things, I think, just highlights for us why we can never let off the gas of proclaiming marriage.

Ann Wilson: Do we have that conversation with our high school kids of what's happening?

Jacob Valk: They know. They know. And at the end of the day, AI porn is no different than regular porn. It's still sin. It's still going outside of God's covenant for marriage for sexuality. The way to get out of it is no different than it is for normal porn. It's good to talk about because I think it gives us—it may give us an in to teenagers—of saying, "Hey, here's this is the new threat on the block. What do you guys think about this? And I know about this." Like, "What?" But at the end of the day, it's just the gospel that we believe in redeems us from regular pornography and AI pornography alike.

Ann Wilson: One of the questions that we get most often this time of year—and I get it personally—is when women come up to me and say, "What study should we do with our small group this year?" Have you gotten that?

Dave Wilson: Yeah, I get it from guys, I get it from couples. Here's the thing: you can pick. We've got The Art of Marriage, we've got The Art of Parenting, we've got Vertical Marriage, we've got all kinds of video studies and workbooks tailor-made for you and a group of couples in your home that literally can change their life. We've done this and you want to do it as well. Let me tell you right now, the FamilyLife videos and workbooks are 25% off right now through the end of August. So you can go to familylife.com/shop. You don't need a discount code; you just go there, pick the one you want to do, you put it in, you hit play, and you watch God work.

Ann Wilson: It's so good, you guys. I really hope you'll take advantage of this sale. Again, it's 25% off. Just go to familylife.com/shop.

I had a woman direct message me two weeks ago, and she said, "My husband—I looked at the computer and I've seen all this stuff he's on." So I confronted him; he lied. And she said, "This is one of the people I would have told you my husband would never, ever struggle." And she said, "I'm leaving him." I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on." She said, "I know I've read your book. I know that you and Dave have gone through this." I said, "And there's hope. There's great hope. But just to leave him, to say it's over—maybe God has allowed you to see it because maybe you're part of that healing. Maybe you're part of that journey."

I'm not saying you just look the other way. I'm saying maybe it's time for him to come into the light and you're part of that journey. I said, "I responded horribly—yelling, mad, you lied, you did this, how can I trust you?" And I said, "I really regret my response now because I know that I had a big part to play in Dave's recovery."

Dave Wilson: She's my partner. We're a team. It isn't me; it isn't her. We're a team now. If you struggle, I'm struggling. And I have my own things that I struggle with.

Jacob Valk: There's part of me—I'm thinking there's a guy listening or watching and he's living with that secret. He wants to turn it off. For some reason, he keeps listening. I know why you're listening: because God is speaking to you saying, "You want freedom. It's a step away." His name is Jesus; you know Him. But if you're not walking with Him and you're hiding this secret, I'm just thinking maybe today's your day. Tell a brother, maybe. But you've got to tell your spouse eventually. But maybe start with a brother. Sometimes that's a good start to say, "Would you be my partner? Will you help me take the next step because I'm scared to death to tell my spouse?" Maybe that's where you start. Would you agree?

Amen. And that I think keys into a really great thing. What's the action step for anyone today who's listening? The action step is: first, just pray. Pray to God and be honest. God has heard a lot of prayers from a lot of broken people over the last few thousand years. He can take it and He loves you. He cares enough about you; He sent His Son to die. That's an easy Christian thing to say, but just think about what it's like for a man to hang on a cross. That's love for you in your sin.

Then you need to think about and identify a mature Christian in your life to go confess your sin to and ask for help. This is one of the roadblocks I think the devil fights so hard to convince us no one's going to listen, no one's going to want to hear me, no one's going to actually help me. Because the devil just hates it when we're real with our sin and we bring it into community. But that's one of the most important steps because a mature Christian in your life will want to help you, they'll want to give you steps forward, they'll want to hold you accountable.

There's something really refreshing on the other side of being honest with someone. If you're married, it might not be to your spouse right now; this is a long-term strategy to get there.

Ann Wilson: And be praying for your spouse to get ready.

Jacob Valk: Absolutely. And then another step is going to be locking down your devices. Take radical measures. What we did with the ministry is we built a series called TechSafe, a tutorial set for every single device in your home—laptop, TV, smartphone, gaming console—and walks you through how to lock that thing down. We made that for the parent and for the struggler. It's free on the website. If you want some tools as you're going to a trusted brother or sister saying, "Hey, I need help," you can come with some tools to say, "Hey, can you help me cut off access to this content?"

Then if you want to also then start going into discipleship and say, "Maybe you're in a position where can we meet once a week?" you could walk through the documentary series. That'll help you get some good theological handholds on this issue that are going to help. Because the first step you take, I think God gives a lot of grace for our first step. He'll often give us extra motivation, extra power initially; keeping the momentum is hard.

Ann Wilson: And this is all free? Your resources are free?

Jacob Valk: It's great, hey? The website is intothelightministries.com.

Dave Wilson: We'll put a link in our show notes at familylifetoday.com. You can get to Into the Light through there as well. I tell you what, that's a step you have to take. You just have to take it. Start there and see where God takes it.

Ann Wilson: I think that you're going to want to check out this website because you have a lot of resources.

Jacob Valk: God is good. We've been able to build some stuff. For the mom or dad who's listening to this, we have a whole masterclass built for you. The four parts of the masterclass are: the first part's talking about your marriage. How are you guys doing? How did you learn about sexuality in your home? What's some of the history there? Let's just make sure as a married couple you're doing all right. Then it equips you to think about God's good design for sexuality because you can't teach what you don't know. So we brought in an amazing professor, Dr. Walker, to really lecture on theology of sexuality.

Julie Lowe came in. She's written a book called Safeguards and a bunch of other books. Really talking about age-appropriate categories for your kids. Then the final episode, Justin Whitmel Earley, we flew him in to speak about setting up your home safely. It's a bootcamp for parents on really thinking through all these issues well with just some amazing speakers.

Ann Wilson: And let me add, just as a woman and as a mom, maybe you're a single mom and you're thinking this is uncomfortable for me to talk to my sons about this. I would have the conversation. And maybe you know somebody from your church, some other men, but don't be afraid to have the conversation with your boys. I talked to our boys a lot, and your mom had a huge impact on you, Jacob. Also, if you're saying to your husband, "I want you to have the... You have the conversation, you have the conversation." It may be awkward; I'm not sure why, but don't be afraid to initiate the conversation.

Dave Wilson: Do it. It is awkward. You have to go there. And actually, it's not as awkward as you think.

Jacob Valk: I have a close friend of mine whose parents never breathed a word about anything related to sexuality. He had to just figure it out by himself. He now has seven kids and he's got to the point where, "I don't want to do what my parents did. I'm going to talk to them about these issues." I was like, "Let me know how it goes. I just want to know how these conversations with your daughter go." He gets back to me kind of laughing but kind of angry and he's like, "It was not that hard. I just kind of spelled out some of the basics, talked to her, asked her if she had any questions. She's like, 'No, Dad.' And she's like, 'All right, well maybe we'll talk about this again in a few weeks.'" And he's just like, "Why did I have so much fear? This wasn't that hard."

How awkward is a seven-year-old going to make you? They're seven. Just tell them some of the basics. If you mess up the conversation, that's fine; do it next week. They're seven. Age-appropriate categories, right? You're not doing too much. But have these conversations be a regular rhythm of talking to your kids because it's not a one-time conversation. It's going to be a lifetime, which makes it less stressful because then you don't have to nail this perfect conversation where you get all the theatrics inside one like that. Who wants to do that? Then you can just kind of keep coming back on it.

My mom, I don't even know how many times my mom would come back to me, and two or three weeks would go by and she'd be like, "Hey, Jacob, remember we had that conversation about sex?" "Yeah." "Have any questions?" "No." "All right, well if you have any questions, just know I'm here to answer." "Okay, Mom." I rarely came back to her, but I always knew if I had questions, I could ask her. And then that was that.

Dave Wilson: What's so cool is she spelled out: "If this happens, here's what you do." And you knew what to do. So important.

Ann Wilson: Well, this ministry that you have, Into the Light Ministries, thank God for your ministry, seriously. I'm amazed that all your resources are free. Like, it's so fun. Thank you for that. I feel like as parents, we have to dive into this world if we want to raise kids that we can protect them but also enlighten them to know this is what God's design is and we don't want you to walk into this because God has so much more for you.

Jacob Valk: Amen. Keep going, man. The website is intothelightministries.com.

Dave Wilson: And we'll put a link in our show notes at familylifetoday.com. You can get to Into the Light through there as well. Grateful. Thanks for having me on, guys. I love this conversation.

Ann Wilson: Oh, it's so good.

Dave Wilson: We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife helped them when they needed it the most. And that's what being a FamilyLife partner is all about—helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here.

Ann Wilson: And we'd love for you to join us. So click the donate button at familylifetoday.com and become a partner today.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry. 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.