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NASHVILLE?You have the computer in a very public area of your home so you can monitor its use, and you’ve subscribed to the best Internet filtering system available. Think you’ve safeguarded your family against the threat of pornography? Think again. New technology allows users to download material from the Internet directly to wireless handheld devices, such as the new generation of cell phones and iPods. This “third generation” of mobile devices provides access to digital video content including games, real-time news, and entertainment options, among other advanced features. To make this development even more harmful, it is typically young people who are the most technically sophisticated and the prime users of such equipment. The technology itself is not dangerous; the danger is that there are no regulations or safeguards in place to protect children and teens from being exposed to unwanted, explicit pornographic content that is downloadable to these wireless handheld devices. Privacy and anonymity are even greater when individuals use wireless devices instead of computers to search and view pornography. “Mobile phones and other personal devices that either connect to the Internet or allow a user to download pictures are vastly more private and personal than even a ‘personal’ computer,” says Daniel Panetti, in a white paper for the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families. (The paper, “What every parent needs to know about emerging technology,” is available at www.nationalcoalition.org.) Some telecommunication experts speculate that, unlike most other countries, until U.S. cell phone carriers provide filtering and the means for parents to block the Internet on phones, adult content will not be readily available here. Yet in a Jan. 24, 2006, Scripps Howard release, Pamela Paul, author of “Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families,” told USA Today the mobile delivery of pornography will soon be an industry unto itself. “It’s happening,” she said in the news report. “People say, ‘Oh well, porn will never take off because the image is too small.’ Fifteen years ago, if you asked people if they looked at pornography at their desks, they would be horrified. But today a huge number of men and women look at pornography in their office over the Internet.” Steve Hirsch, an executive with an adult film production company, expects “mobile porn” to eventually account for 30 percent of their sales, notes the USA Today report. “This is going to explode. People want porn in their pocket,” the article quoted Hirsch as saying. The adult-entertainment industry is not the only group excited about the new technology; the gambling industry is exploring ways to expand its virtual operations. It is not a matter of if, but when, graphic sexual content will be readily accessible from wireless handheld electronic devices in the U.S. In anticipation of that day, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention is working closely with the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, and the wireless industry’s trade association through the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families to demand parental education, filters to block adult content, and means to restrict Internet access be provided by the carriers and phone manufacturers.
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