Press Release: OC Register

NEW CHILDREN'S BOOK: Danielle Tiano, right, author of a new children's book about the dangers of Internet porn, and Karen Child, a therapist who contributed to the book
MARK MARTINEZ , THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Eight-year-olds, despite their parents' best efforts, are often rambunctious. They're hopelessly loud, at times uncontrollable.

At least not anymore, say two Newport Beach women, authors of a rhyming, illustrated children's book about youthful vulnerability to Internet porn addiction.

“There (are) absolutely zero tools out there” to help parents deal with the raunchy menace, author Danielle Tiano says in explaining the paperback's impetus.

Published last month, “Temptation of a Generation” tells the tale of Timmy, a preteen who pulls all-nighters ogling nude bombshells after discovering the treasure trove of smut that is the World Wide Web.

In doing so, Timmy goes from fun-loving youngster to XXX-craving recluse, eschewing his skateboarding hobby in favor of his Web-surfing obsession.

It's more dramatization than fiction, Tiano says, arguing that digital-age technology has made it all but inevitable that impressionable youngsters will encounter decidedly adult material. Statistics from www.internet-filter-review.com say that 90 percent of children ages 8-16 have viewed porn online – usually while doing homework.

“The difference with today's youth is they don't find a stash (of girlie magazines),” says Karen Child, a Newport Beach therapist who specializes in sex addiction and helped with the book. “It's in their home, it's in their school” – anywhere computers are available.

Said Tiano: “They don't go looking for it – it finds them. They could be doing a report on Betsy Ross and all of a sudden there's a big-(breasted) woman on their screen.”

Such experiences, while often innocuous, can easily snowball into full-blown infatuation, Tiano and Child say.

Many experts agree, saying that porn is as addictive – or more addictive – than drugs such as heroin, because its lusty pleasures can be relived just by thinking about images.

In November 2004 testimony before a Senate subcommittee hearing on pornography addiction, Judith Reisman of the California Protective Parents Association described “erototoxins,” defined by her as “mind-altering drugs produced by the viewer's own brain.”

The lurid phenomenon “affects children and teens especially deeply,” Reisman said. “Their still-developing brains process emotions differently, with significantly less rationality and cognition than the adult brain.”

Once addicted, those prepubescent years become even more tumultuous, as porn-addicted children become plagued with doubt when trying to form relationships, the authors say.

Boys are “looking at (girls) comparing them to the girls on the screen,” says Tiano, author of several self-help children's books, including one on childhood obesity that was handed out at an Angels baseball game in 2006.

More broadly, Internet pornography addiction mirrors a fixation with television or video games, Tiano says: “They stop skateboarding. They stop going outside. They stop being a kid. They're just on the computer 24/7.”

And that's where parents – and the book – come in. The story paints the dark side of Timmy's addiction, with rhyming verses such as: “Since I found naked bodies, it's all that has been on my mind, and now I feel shame and don't know how to unwind.”

By reading about Timmy's struggle, and seeing him sweat as blond hotties appear on his computer screen, parents and children can tame the exotic allure that makes porn addictive, the authors say.

“You kind of try to demystify it, so kids don't feel like they've stumbled on the secret that nobody else knows about,” Child says.

The authors don't expect talking about porn with kids to be easy for parents, but they think the children's book format will help make the conversation a bit less awkward.

A kids book explores dark side of the web - internet porn

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