I own shares in Yahoo and saw an article in the New York Times concerning the company. I was surprised to learn that sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Google, Yahoo and others have viewers who spend eight hours a day viewing some of the most depravities harbored on the Internet. They are there to edit what goes on to these sites. It isn’t unusual to see photographs of graphic gang killings, animal abuse and twisted forms of pornography. The world is not what we think it is! One recent example was a photo of two teenage boys gleefully pointing guns at another boy, who is crying.

An Internet content reviewer looks at photographs that are uploaded to a social networking site and keeps illicit material, and there is a ton of it, from being posted. With a number of Web sites built from material contributed by users, screeners have never been in greater demand. It’s not a job for just anyone or the weak of heart.

The article states that these jobs can have mental health consequences for the reviewers. When a person accepts the job they do not realize some of the most despicable and illegal images they will see could stick with them the rest of their lives. Some say these jobs are comparable to combat veterans, completely desensitized to all kinds of imagery. A staff of 50 may see as many as 20 million photos a week. Congress has recommended that the federal government provide financial incentives to address the psychological impact on employees of exposure to these disturbing images. Each company offers counseling as part of the standard benefits package for workers.

Most of us are unaware of the worst material posted. People will post material like sexual images involving children. There is material that is best not covered in this blog. Companies have to pay millions to keep sites to meet certain standards.

The article ends stating that many employees become depressed or angry, have trouble forming relationships and suffer from decreased sexual appetites. Small percentages said they had reacted to unpleasant images by vomiting or crying.

My wife and I have taken the Reader’s Digest forever. I read 100% of the humor and 50% of the stories monthly. As I was reading I was telling my wife about a particular story and was saying how fortunate we were to have raised our children before the Internet.

A mother writes of her seven year old son, who has not learned to read, going on the internet to find pornography. She said by accident she turned on her iPhone that he had been playing with and up popped a web page.

The story goes on to say, “It’s pretty appalling how pornography is transforming our lives, our relationships and our families.” We being grandparents had no idea what she was really talking about. So we proceeded to go online and selected the web page that was in the Reader’s Digest. We must be fairly naïve! What we saw was shocking. It was one of the most explicit sites imaginable. My first reaction was to become angry at the Reader’s Digest for printing the web page.

After a time of consideration we concluded that if any parent were to go to that site and realize how easy it was for children to bring up pornography, as young as seven years old, they would make sure that children were never on the Internet without supervision.

President Obama says that we are no longer a Christian nation. If we continue to take God out of the lives of our children I am afraid that may come true. All we have to do is study the Old Testament and realize that God only puts up with so much. I don’t know, to what extent, we are becoming a godless nation but it could be in our future. We must start doing a better job of protecting our children from all of the modern technology available. Do all parents realize what can be brought up on an IPod and others devices?

Take God and prayer out of our schools and look what we have! Do you think we need to pray about our world and where it is headed? Does America need a spiritual revival?