Step Away From Your Parent’s Phone
Dear Dr. Darcy:
Okay, so I don’t know if you’re the right person to ask, but I’ll just go for it because I really need to get this out. I am a teenage girl and just recently I was messing around on my dad’s smart phone for an innocent Google search, and I accidentally came across some… inappropriate items in his search history, if you know what I mean (PORNOGRAPHY, in case I wasn’t clear enough). As well as being completely mortified, for some reason I find this deeply upsetting. I feel like I’ve been exposed to a side of him I never wanted to know about, and I just can’t get over it. There’s no one I’d be able to talk to about this. I love my dad. He is one of my favorite people and one of my best friends. I usually talk to him about everything that bothers me, but of course I can’t tell this to anyone, especially not him, I wouldn’t want to embarrass him like that. Would you have any advice or comforting words for me? I feel like I’m the only person to ever have a problem like this, and it’s killing me because I really want to just forget about the whole thing.
ANSWER
I can only imagine how upset you must feel. No one wants to imagine their parents as anything other than parents – and certainly not as sexual beings. It’s enough to make your skin crawl, right? Well, it’ll get better with time. Right now those images are burned into your mind. In time, the image will fade and you probably won’t be able to remember exactly what you saw… You’ll just remember feeling gross because you saw a side of your father that you didn’t want to see. Anyway, now let me help you wrap your head around what you saw:
This happens all the time to kids. I don’t know why parents presume that their children, who are much more obsessed with and skilled with technology, won’t find themselves playing with their parent’s phone at some point, but it doesn’t seem to cross their minds when they’re doing their ‘adult thing.’ For what it’s worth, having porn doesn’t make your father a creep or a perv. It’s very normal. I’m going to use what happened to you as an opportunity to get the world out so that maybe we can save a couple of kids from experiencing this:
PARENTS: Your children, no matter how old, will get their grubby little hands on your phone at some point. Given that they are technological geniuses and will always surpass you in their skill level, make the decision today to not use the phone to watch your porn, cruise dating sites, house any sexual photos, sext their other parent, or sext anyone for that matter. You’ll never remember to clear your history, delete the files, etc., and my time will be consumed with consoling your traumatized (using the word in the pop-culture sense) children, for which I do not get paid.
TEENS: Step away from your parent’s cell phone. Your parents will not listen to me. They are old, set in their ways, and they believe that they are smarter than both of us. Consequently, I am left beseeching you to be the mature one, the one with impulse control. Do you want to stumble upon your parent’s porn? Do you want to read their steamy words in texts? Or worse, do you want to see their sexy pictures in which they themselves may be photographed in the act? I think not. No matter how bored you are, no matter how badly you want to play a game on their phone, no matter where you were in a text conversation when your phone died, do not turn to your parent’s phone as a solution.