Protect Young Minds® Blog
The best way to keep your family safe from pornography is to stay up-to-date with the latest news, resources, tips, and threats. Our blog will help you do just that.
Sexual Assault Nurse Links Porn to Child-on-Child Abuse: Interview with National Expert Heidi Olson
Heidi Olson is a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) who shines the light on the links between pornography and child-on-child sexual abuse and online sextortion. Her job at a Kansas City hospital involves examining children who are the victims of sexual abuse....
7 Tactics a Child Predator Uses to Lure Kids: Red Flag Phrases Every Parent Needs to Know
This is a guest post written by Kimberly King, an award-winning author, teacher, and authority on the subject of sexual abuse prevention. As parents, we all want to keep our kids safe from harm. We teach our kids to wash their hands, cover their mouths, buckle up the...
Online Safety Refresher! 3 Checklists to Protect Your Kids
Now’s the perfect time to brush up on your online safety strategies! In fact, several of our readers asked for an Online Safety Refresher, and that’s exactly what we developed! (In just a few minutes, you can go from fear to fearless--so check it out!) These three...
Miranda Sings: YouTuber Promotes Raunchy Content Like Incest but Dodges Parental Controls
We're grateful one of our readers warned us about a YouTuber who is popular with kids who now has her own Netflix show. The child-like main character, Miranda, is played by an adult and the episodes often contain very adult themes. But with an obviously young...
Coronavirus Has Your Family Overwhelmed and Exhausted? Slow Down and Do These 3 Things to Find Calm in the Chaos
I don’t know about you, but the Protect Young Minds team is feeling it. The communal panic is palpable. Parents are scrambling. Children are disoriented. New COVID-19 schedules are flying around the internet making every parent feel like they now have to embrace...
COVID-19 School Closures: Our Best Tips for Digital Safety, Emotional Wellness and Family Time
Has your school announced a closure? Are you worried? Your first question might be, “What am I going to do with these kids?!” Already an estimated 22,000 schools have closed or are scheduled to close due to COVID-19 and yours may be next. Honestly, this is very...
I Blew Up At My Kid!!! 5 Steps to Heal Your Relationship When You React Badly
We’ve all been there: our child does something inappropriate, but how we respond is also not so great. When we discover our child is using pornography it can be particularly difficult not to react in ways that alienate our children. The question arises; what can we do...
Best Phones for Kids: Parents Give Honest Reviews on Gabb Wireless
Note: This article was originally published 2/20/2020 and updated on 6/11/2020. Last fall Gabb Wireless launched a new phone designed especially for preteens. It generated a lot of attention from parents seeking the best phones for their kids. Tech sites called it the...
Healthy Sex vs. Porn Sex: 7 Crucial Comparisons to Teach Your Kid (Before XXX Hijacks Their Future)
Today’s parents are competing with the porn industry for the hearts and minds of their children. Tragically, pornography is manipulating the way children think and feel about sex. That’s why kids need a powerful and persuasive comparison between healthy sex and porn...
Is YouTube (Finally) Protecting Children?
We love sharing good news! Here's some good news about the new YouTube changes! After a $170 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), YouTube is finally making some changes in an effort to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act...
Booty Shaking & Sexy Costumes in Children’s Dance: How to Find Healthy Studios That Won’t Objectify Your Kid
This guest post was written by Mary Bawden of DA:NCE (Dance Awareness: No Child Exploited). Is there anything more innocent than a child joyfully dancing? Every spring I’m over the moon with excitement while watching my grandchildren participate in their recitals....
10 Ways Porn Culture Will Target Your Kids in 2020 (Be Prepared, Not Scared!)
It’s not difficult to look around and surmise that porn culture targets kids. We meet and hear from parents all the time who are full of fear over this. And for good reason. With the ease of access to porn and its harmful effects on children, porn is a formidable...
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What 10 Parents Learned When Their Child Was Caught in a Porn Trap [Part 3]
In this 3-part series, 10 parents give their unique perspective on helping a child overcome the addictive pull of pornography. Today, in our final segment, they describe the transformations that have taken place since beginning this journey. As well, advice on what...
Don’t Let Devices Ruin Your Holiday! 12 Tech Tips for Parents
The Christmas Tech Safety Countdown is On! In just a few weeks, the kids are going to toss their backpacks and school books aside for a well-earned break. This also means that they will be looking for things to do! Some of those things will inevitably involve tech....
“Can I Play This?” Video Game Decisions Made Easy in 4 Quick Steps
Chances are that the kid in your life asks about a new video game on a regular basis. Kids hear about games and apps from their friends or advertisements and come home begging for them. There are plenty of clever, high-quality video games out there, but there are also...
Parent Alert: Worried about Alexa? 4 Tips to Protect Your Kids
Every couple of months, I see a new article being shared around my social networks about the possible dangers of voice assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa. But many of these articles contain a lot of speculation without a lot of experience, especially in the area of kids...
Helping the Kid Who Doesn’t Want Help
Nothing has caused me to feel more powerless than my little toddler. You’ve had those situations, right? Like the car seat. It’s time to buckle in and she planks. A full-grown man hunched over a tiny girl, with no chance of success. I’m a big bad wolf blowing at a...
3 Scary Things Haunting Your Kids Online
Halloween is just around the corner, which means that you may be carving pumpkins, getting costumes ready, buying candy, and thinking about how to keep your kids safe while they’re out and about trick-or-treating. But have you thought about how to keep them safe in...
![What 10 Parents Learned When Their Child Was Caught in the Porn Trap [Part 2]](https://www.protectyoungminds.org/wp-content/uploads/2019_10_22_Feature_my-child-is-looking-at-inappropriate-things-400x250.jpg)
What 10 Parents Learned When Their Child Was Caught in the Porn Trap [Part 2]
In this 3-part series, follow along as 10 parents describe when they discovered their child looking at inappropriate things and their journey of helping a child overcome the addictive pull of pornography—and the advice they hope to pass along. Today, we’ll examine the...
Should You Give Your Kid a Phone? Easy Guide with 3 Great Options: Relay, Gabb and ClearPhone
We agonize over when to give our kids their first phone, but what kind of cell phone to give them is becoming just as big of a question. Retailers are swooping in with phones directed at this new “first phone” market, like Relay, Gabb Wireless, and ClearPhone. But...
3 Ways Grandparents CAN Help Kids Reject Pornography
This week, one of my best friends asked me how she could talk to her daughter about pornography. The catch is, her daughter is a grown woman with children of her own. And it’s her grandkids she’s worried about. My friend (we’ll call her Frances for fun) adores these...
Schools Turn Cell Phones Off to Turn Learning On
Great News! Schools are helping kids get off their phones! There’s a growing trend that’s making waves this year in classrooms around Canada and the United States: mobile phone bans in classrooms! San Mateo High School in California is using a novel approach to limit...
Growing Up With Smartphones: Millennials Warn Parents
Young adults today straddle the line between Millennials and the upcoming Gen Z, myself included. We dimly remember the screech of dial-up, and spent adolescence transitioning from chunky flip phones to sleek smartphones. As the first generation to grow up with cell...
Parent Alert! A Timely Tech-Check for Your Kid’s Back-to-School Safety
A Tech-Check is Essential for Back-to-School Safety Have you finished your back-to-school preparations yet? While you are taking care of new backpacks, clothes, and haircuts, consider doing this: a tech-check to help your family start off the year with good digital...
4 Ways to Help Kids Deal with Discomfort: Life Skills that Build Emotional Resilience
I recently surveyed a group of parents to discover the reasons they avoid discussions about pornography with children. One of the top responses was, “I’m afraid I’ll make my child uncomfortable.” This surprised me at first! But as I reflected on my own parenting, I...
Parent Alert: Is Roblox Safe for Kids? Watch Out for These 4 Dangers
Our regular Parent Alert! news updates help parents stay ahead of the trends affecting kids in our hypersexualized culture. 4 Dangers of Roblox Do your kids enjoy Roblox? It can be creative fun, but you also need to understand and guard against some significant risks...
4 Misunderstood Signs of Child Abuse: A Sexual Assault Nurse Speaks Up
People naturally want to see evidence of damage done from an accident or a crime. Whether it’s the smashed front end of a car from a wreck, or a bruised eye after an argument, we want to see the wound, the stitches, the blood. We want proof. We are socialized to...
About Us
Led by Kristen A. Jenson, author of the best-selling children’s book Good Pictures Bad Pictures, Protect Young Minds™ (PYM) seeks to help parents “porn-proof” their kids before they come across highly addictive and easily accessible internet pornography.