Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome to today's episode of Bleeding Daylight. I'm so glad you could join us. If you're looking for more episodes, you'll find hundreds right now at bleedingdaylight.net. The devices that we hold in our hands connect us to information from around the world and more knowledge than could be contained in many, many sets of encyclopedia.
Yet there's also a darker side to this amazing technology. It's not an exaggeration to say that digital addictions and access to harmful material are destroying lives. How do we move forward in our current reality, and perhaps more importantly, how do we parent in these times? Help is on its way from today's guest. Today's guest is someone whose life is a genuine mixture of influences and directions. And that's exactly why I wanted to have him on the episode today.
Doug Moore has spent 30 years moving between three worlds that would normally rarely overlap as a wilderness trail guide, a youth pastor, and as a registered nurse and sexual assault nurse examiner. That combination of experiences led him to write The Vanguard Project, equipping fathers to fight for their sons. It's a field manual for dads navigating one of the most urgent and least talked about crises facing boys today. And Doug brings not just expertise, but a story that's honest and hard won.
While his work specifically targets dads and sons, this is a conversation we all need to have. Doug, welcome to Bleeding Daylight. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. The three areas of your life I mentioned, the wilderness, the church, and the hospital seem to be worlds apart. Tell me how do those three overlap? You know, it's really interesting. As I began to write the book, God just kind of led all these worlds together. I led for years.
I led boys in the wilderness doing backpacking and many adventures. And the stories that I share, those adventures led to many crazy things. As I transitioned into that, I learned a lot about what makes a young man tick. Those observations really were eye-opening. As my life moved on, I became a youth pastor and worked with young men and young women and learned a lot about their struggles, what they struggle with.
But I'll tell you where the reality of all this kind of hit home is once I became a clinical person as a registered nurse and not only getting certified as a SANE nurse, the reality of how God mapped my lives really became clear. One of the things I noticed as we, and I'm going to put me in here, get more and more dependent on our digital devices, our world becomes numb. We start numbing out to things that are really very important in our lives. And we see that a lot in the hospital.
You can see the same thing in all of us and really in our young men and in our young women, how a digital world is really starting to numb out what their sensitivities to are in life. That's kind of how God wrapped all three of these up in my life. Is the problem that we're facing with our young men today that we are in a digital world, or is it the sorts of things that are being consumed in that digital world? I think it's both.
One of the things that I talk about and you, as we do our studies, we realize that we have dopamine in our bodies. Dopamine is our pleasure chemical. So say a conversation like we're having, Rodney, it would be maybe a two or three. It gives us that satisfaction. It's something that we can really handle. But let's say a young man at the age of eight or even older is exposed to pornography or some type of other digital addiction. That really ramps up to say a seven or eight.
It's like putting a go-kart on rocket fuel. That it's something that young men have a hard time translating our lives. So the overstimulation. I mean, digital has been around for years. Computers have been very life-changing. They've made things better. But I think the way we are able to process things has changed. Even with the advent of AI, it has become increasingly difficult to really be able to process things.
So I think as our digital world advances, to answer your question, it becomes more and more difficult. How do we process things? The heart of my desire in the ministry is to really give dads the ability to connect with their sons with authentic relationships and challenge dads to really be a present father, one that leads their sons. That's the idea of the vanguard. One that is in front, not in behind and willing to help attack these things. It's not about shame.
It's about walking alongside of them. You mentioned there the issue that we're facing at the moment, for instance, an eight-year-old who's looking at pornography through this digital lens that we now have. What do the stats tell us? Are young men at this age, or boys really, are they going looking for this sort of stuff? Or because it's all pervasive, are they just tripping across stuff that they were never designed to be seeing and consuming?
Yeah. The average age is around eight years old, and 50% of the boys are exposed by the age of 18. I talk to a lot of dads who have filters, right? And we have devices in our home. You're supposed to have the device put up. I'm not allowed to have it in your room. But here's the reality, and I can share a story. I was involved in a mountain bike team, and one of our team members was even using the Bible app to share images with other people.
We can try to protect our kids, but I think it's just pervasive out there. I think the way kids are exposed, their cousins can share it with them or a family member. I think most young men aren't seeking it out, but I think it is a part of family culture. Wouldn't you agree that probably how we set it up, being engaged with our kids, it's not going to be perfect. We all sin, we've all stumbled.
The desire is just to really help educate dads and sons on what to look for and how to guard our hearts and forge ahead. If we look at these statistics, we know that there's a large percentage of men who are viewing pornography. So I imagine a lot of the dads who are wanting their children to grow up well are also viewing pornography. So how can they be the ones that lead their sons and say, hey, this is not a good thing, if they know that in secret, they're actually doing the same thing?
I have a group of men that I've sat down and we were flushing out this topic and our conversation was like, we can't even start talking about this with boys until we fix men. But we know the reality is that then we would never start advancing forward with our young men. So the core message that I like to have here is that our scars, they don't disqualify us, they actually make us the right person because we fought the battle, we've been in the fog, and we can teach our sons how to get out.
You know, our wrecks, as I like to say, and we're redeemed by Jesus, they become our trail markers that can show our boys the way home. So again, our past doesn't disqualify us. We have the opportunity to flip our script. We have credentials and a father that's been there and knows the way out. So the first step that I always say is that bring that to God and then have a confidant of someone that you can share this with.
Ask someone that you trust to walk alongside of you to know that we're not perfect men, but we can forge ahead and there's grace. It's a battle. It really is. And it's more and more challenging every day. We know that there are various forms of digital addiction. Pornography may be the big one, but there are other forms as well. And we know that in that digital world, the algorithms keep serving us what we want to see.
And so whether it's a political view, a radicalized understanding of the world or whatever it is, that is going to grow in the feed of our young men and everyone really. So how do we guard against that sort of thing to be able to say, you know what, you need to have a reasoned point of view and not just what you're being served up every day. I do still use social media and some days I'm on there and I'll read something. I'm like, is that true?
With the advent of AI running, you know, it's a scary landscape out there that it's hard to authenticate what you're seeing. So I want to share this as a little bit of a sidetrack, but with the advent of AI, even the advancements, they're great. We use them to help us navigate things. I'm trying to be positive, but I see a lot of negative right now. Our young people are even being served up digital AI companions that are hard to navigate.
And as parents, we can try to limit the device, but what we're really trying to educate our kids on is how to be responsible with the devices. My background in wilderness leadership, I really feel like the more we can get kids unplugged and outside or doing something outside, getting their feet dirty, their hands dirty, and just understanding that there's more than what we're even doing here, which is ironic, that it awakens it.
I will share this story that I have something I've written about called The Boy That Can Never Be Bored. And really, that story is a young man that we took on a camping trip. All he could talk about was Fortnite, Fortnite, Fortnite, Fortnite. That's all the first day. And the second day, that kind of fades. And then it was like a young man that came out of a coma. He started breaking a stick over his leg the first time, or building a fire, or just hearing nature and hearing birds.
It doesn't have to necessarily be nature, but it is an amazing thing just to reawaken our senses, I believe, as God really created us to do. And not everybody has the advantage or the privilege to go camping, but I think just being able to unplug and even having a conversation around a table is beautiful. I think that's how we really combat it, to be honest. Most of us, even if we can't go camping, would live somewhere near even just a park where we can be in nature.
And it occurs to me as you're speaking there that one of the tools of the enemy here is to numb us to the creation that God built. And so we're unaware of God's creation around us. Scripture tells us that we're aware of God through his creation at times. We're being numb to that as well. So it's very much a part of the enemy's strategy of having us to bury our face in something that is not what God has created and becoming the people that God has not created us to become. It is numbing us out.
I like to say that it's muting the mic of what God intends for us to be. And yet the enemy wants to use as many distractions. And I think even putting things in between us, that's part of my story that I like to share. My father really encouraged us to do a lot of camping. My dad was a great dad, but he worked really hard. So that's really how we related was being in the outdoors.
It wasn't until I got older and I started leading trips with young men and young women, but mostly young men, that I realized that being in nature, that's where God really comes alive for us, or being outdoors and just really understanding creation. Earlier in college, before I became a nurse, I studied a lot of biology, and I love to think about the body, the anatomy of how you and I are just breathing right now. We are not having to ask ourselves to breathe. God designed us that way.
And I believe when you get out in nature or in a park, you can see the beauty of God's creation and understand the heartbeat and what it's really truly all about. I know that people will be able to get a better handle on this through your book, The Vanguard Project, but maybe you can give us a bit of a thumbnail sketch, because I'm sure that people are wondering, how do I take those early steps to get my child away from their digital device?
We know when it comes to the things that we eat, if we get a sweet tooth, it's hard for us to stop eating the sweet stuff and eat stuff that's healthy for us. And I'm sure it's the same with digital devices. How do we start that conversation with our young people, apart from telling them, no, you don't have access to it, and I'm going to drag you outside? How do we start that conversation? I have a section in the book, I call them on-ramp questions, and really it begins the conversation.
They're non-threatening questions. They're questions that we can ask our boys, like, hey, how was your day today? But it is engaging them, really starting the way we can first build a relationship if you already don't have that. That's the beauty of the on-ramp questions. But I also have conversation scripts. In those scripts, it's how to have those first conversations. How do you talk about pornography? How do you talk about what pornography is? Because it's scary to mention that.
Well, I don't really want to mention this to my child, because I don't want them to know that it's out there. But if we don't take the time to mention it to our kids, somebody else is going to in this world. Someone else is going to take the time to expose them, and we want to give them the tools so they'll know. One of the protocols that I give us to follow is called the halt, and it's when our kids are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, they start seeking for something else to do in their lives.
So we may have the most perfect kid in the world, but the curiosity when devices are there, so just starting to have the conversations and saying, look, this is out there. There are pictures out there, and teach them what to do when they find it. I call it shield up. My son, Gus, he's 11. We talk about this. If you see something, close the device. You can use the word. We just use this word, shield up, and come to dad. We'll talk about it. It's not going to be shame.
I'm not going to yell at you. We're going to be a team. We're like, figure out where we're going to go forward. That's where I would start in the book. I have the on-ramp questions. They're low-pressure questions designed to open the conversation, creating an on-ramp, not an ambush, and then I have the conversation scripts that really are helpful for me.
That's the way I was taught and parented in a lot of ways, and I really love that it can be a non-threatening and a very loving way to go through the conversation. It's not always going to be easy. It's definitely awkward, and I've definitely had my kids run away from me when we started like, dad, I don't want to talk about that. I imagine that this process starts a whole lot earlier than that.
I have seen an alarming increase in the number of parents that will just give their device, the mobile phone or a tablet or something to a child in a pram just to keep them entertained. We're actually training our young people that that's where you find something that is going to satisfy you, something that is going to grab your attention. How important is it that we start way back there? Right.
We're training them, right, because we may be the person just sitting there scrolling through our devices because we are trying to numb out from the day. One, it's modeling, right? We need to model that behavior. The first thing audit that we need to do is really check our hearts and where we're putting the devices.
One of the things that we really challenge ourselves to do, and I like what you said, I've been in restaurants, and I see mom and dad and everybody just on their devices and scrolling and scrolling, kids watching Bluey, and nobody's having any conversation. Nobody's engaged. I think the first thing that we like to do is we stack our devices or we even leave them in the car. Parenting is hard. I get it.
And sometimes the last thing you want to do is deal with little Johnny or Susie with their whining like, oh, I don't like to do this. But I think it is just takes effort and really being willing to engage them. Our first step is with us, right, putting down our devices and willing to engage our children in conversation and modeling for them. Well, if we don't, they're just going to think that is the norm. You've touched on a couple of things.
You touched on the fact earlier that we have basic needs and we need them to be filled. One of those needs is to have that interaction. And we have a deep down desire to interact with those authority figures, our parents. And so if that's not there, we look for that somewhere else. And again, you mentioned that as parents, we can model the wrong behavior to young people.
How do we start to see things differently, recognizing that we need to turn the mirror on ourselves and see, are we giving our children the attention that they really deserve before we start accusing the device or the digital world or the pornography that's all pervasive? How do we start to turn the mirror on ourselves and start that journey? Well, I like to call it the eyes up moment. When our son or daughter walks in the room, we put our phone down, not in a minute, but immediately.
Parenting's hard. So I have this principle that I shared called the shield wall. The whole idea behind the shield wall is modeled around the Romans war, when all the shields are planted in front and it is the guard and everybody is working together. My idea that I share is not only is it you, but you have some people walking alongside of you, that you have like an uncle-like figure, our grandfather, our pastor, or even a buddy.
And these are people, these not only are people walking alongside of you, but these are your accountability people that you can lean into. And you can just be honest with your own struggle with them. And also be honest with your children that, you know, I check my phone too much, but I'm working on it. And that vulnerability does more than anything that we can ever say, that our children see a person who's fighting the same battle, being honest about it, and that continues to model it.
And then the people that are walking alongside of us can also help us be accountable. I think that's the beauty of the church, is that if we can be vulnerable to each other, the accountability matters. You mentioned the church's place in having that accountability. Does the church have a larger part in this, in being able to bring up our children well, and especially our sons in the inputs that they receive?
Being a former youth pastor, that's a little bit of a sticking point for me because I would have many parents drop off their kids at youth group and we would go through our teaching. And then they would come to me and say, you know, little Johnny, little Susie, they're struggling. They're not listening to me. They're not growing. Our job as leaders in the church is to give the tools to the parents. And that's part of this book is to give the tools.
But our job is to grow in the Word, plug ourselves into Bible study, get resources. The person that really needs to be the voice in their life is the parents. The church cannot replace the father. The church, like I said, can equip, support, and surround by the conversation, the kitchen table. That's the dodge top. Do you think there's a problem with us outsourcing our kids' upbringing?
We outsource education to school, and our schools are great places where kids can get an education, but we lay so much on them. We outsource the spiritual formation of our children to the church. How much do we need to, as you say, take back the responsibility in those areas that these are good resources for us, but they're not the final word? JS So you're talking to a homeschool dad.
We've got a great school system, but one of the things that we really wanted to do is give our children a biblical worldview. We are the voice that our children hears. They get plenty of socialization, whether it be mountain biking or karate or dancing or whatever it has, but we have the privilege to do that. So not every parent can do that. I understand that. So yes, schools can teach math. They can teach all the skills, but they don't teach manhood.
They don't teach biblical principles, and that's our job. Even in sports, some coaches are great. They can shape boys, and they can build them into athletes, but the father is building a man. To answer your question, yeah, I think we do outsource too much. None of those are bad. I mean, schools, churches, coaches, mentors, they all matter. But again, the shield wall is where I think this really comes in, gathering men around you that can really help you teach your boys.
David I can imagine that there would be some women listening who are saying, well, I don't have that luxury, so to speak, because I'm a single mom, or it could be that they say, my husband is apathetic towards this. I desperately want this for my husband and our son, but I can't see it coming through this man that I'm married to. How do we react in those situations?
How can moms actually make a difference for their sons, or even invite their husbands in to start bringing some of this for their sons? Yeah, that's a great question, because not every household has a present or engaged father, or may not even have a father. Let's say the single mom, she's doing the work of two parents. She's exhausted. She can't be the father, but she can put men alongside of her son.
Her job is to get men around her son, a youth pastor, a coach, an uncle, a grandfather, a friend in church. She can't have the man-to-man conversation, but she can have someone that she trusts to have that conversation with her son. She can have her own version of that. It may sound different from a mom, but that's okay. She can say, I love you too much to pretend the world isn't dangerous. I can't be your dad, but I can be honest with you.
For that single mom, I really recommend that she could build a shield wall around her. Most good churches, I know in our church, we really try to help out the single moms. The mom who has a husband is apathetic. I share a story of a young man trying to put up his tent and having a lot of difficulty in the same time. The dad's just 10 feet away, just scrolling on his device, not even realizing that his son needs help.
A lot of men went alongside this young man and helped him out, but the son is just screaming for his dad to be present. That is one of the hardest situations of all. The mom sees the danger, but the man, he doesn't, or he won't. The best thing is not to go to war with her husband. If she pushes too hard, he's going to dig in and the son will end up in the middle, but to start with a question, not an accusation.
I know my wife has done this with other things when it comes to eating or trying to help me understand. Not that you need to talk to your son about this. Instead, saying, maybe I read something that really scared me. Can we look at this together and just hand him one chapter or an article or stat and just let the information just kind of seep in. Plant a seed and give it time. Some men may need to hear it from another man. So suggest a man's event or something of that nature.
Hand him the book without commentary. Be the safe place. Don't shame him and just build the bench. And I get a lot of moms that email me more than dads do. They actually see this first. They feel it first. So it's not an odd question. My wife and I talked to many moms. Too many of them are fighting this battle alone in their homes. You're not alone. You're not powerless. You have more influence than you think.
We know that as well as the boys that are disappearing into a digital world, there are a lot of girls that are finding themselves going the same way. And studies would show that there has been an alarming increase in the number of girls who are pornography as well. I imagine in the same way as you're suggesting that fathers lead their sons, you're suggesting that mothers are going to be leading their daughters.
Are there resources around or is there something that moms can do to help their girls? Because I think sometimes we can look the other way thinking that no, our daughters won't be into this. You know, it's almost worse. We are actually working on a resource. My wife and I are. Part of the conversation that we're having with moms seeing their daughters struggle, it's a different struggle, right? The influence of social media.
There's some influencers out there that live in Florida in a house called the Bop House. And it's a lot of young college age, young ladies live in a lavish lifestyle, jet setting, but they all have websites where they're selling themselves to others for subscriptions. And so that's one of the things that we are seeing. There's actually people, recruiters that go on to college campuses to recruit young ladies to do this. The data on the girls is alarming. Most parents aren't looking at it.
You know, we grew up that it's just a boys issue, but studies show that nearly one in three girls have seen pornography by the age of 13. For girls, the damage is different. Boys tend to become consumers. Girls tend to become the content through sexting or social media pressure being lured into these homes. One of the things I have learned as I've become a sexual assault nurse examiner is that most pornography, the participants aren't willing. They have been trafficked.
As I've sat down with some boys to help them conquer this before I read the book, I'd love to share that stat with them that what you're viewing is not by willing people. These are people that are being entrapped into this. AI chatbots are very prevalent with young women and men where they can have boyfriends that never will turn them down. For the boys, it's going to be as explicit content, but for girls, it looks like comparison, validation, and the desperation and need to be seen.
They're not really searching for pornography per se. They're learning their worth by what men are portraying to them. There is a one by Defending Young Minds, and it's called Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, and there's one for young men, and there's also one for young women. It's not biblically based, but it's a great resource that we've used for our children, so that's actually one that I recommend to start with.
Throughout this conversation, we've worked on the assumption that pornography is a bad thing for our young people, and in fact, that pornography is bad for anyone of any age, and we haven't really dug down into it.
You've mentioned a couple of the things there of the problems that it brings up, but I guess we need to state that there is a lot of research around the fact that pornography warps the mind of young men into the way that they interact with women and the way that they believe women should behave. It warps the minds of young women to commodify them, to make them believe that they are a commodity for the consumption of men.
Are there studies or are there things in your book that actually help us to understand a little bit more of this? Because there is this pervasive thought at the moment that, hey, porn, everyone's doing it, everyone is looking at it. We see it joked about in sitcoms and in comedy shows as if it's just a normal part of life. How do we start to actually look at the data and say, you know what, this is actually destroying generations of young men and women? So it does. It rewires the boy's brain.
Studies have shown that. My book's not really a stat book, but I do share that it does rewire our young men's brain. As I mentioned, it's the dopamine release, the tolerance buildup and the escalation. It becomes numb. One of the things that we know is there is guilt with it. And the developing brain doesn't have the PFT, the prefrontal cortex maturity to know how to regulate the pornography consumption. We're handing children a neurological weapon and expecting them to exercise restraint.
And their brain is not physically capable of doing that. The algorithms curate our reality. We can say porn is bad and we need to have purity, but we can just look at the way our society, and this is my opinion, but the way society is going and the content that is put out there constantly. We'll see male and female teachers having inappropriate relationships with students. We'd see affairs. There's only one powerful weapon that has been used to perpetuate that idea, and that is those pictures.
And we see how it just destroys lives and destroys families. That same brain science that explains while we're vulnerable also explains how to help the heal. The brain has a plasticity. It can be rewired, but it takes a parent, a dad who understands the fight and is willing to step in. And there's grace. God gives us grace and helps us rewire that. We can only do it through the gospel.
I know that there would be many people who have been very concerned about this topic, but not knowing where to go. Well, there is a place to go now. The Vanguard Project, equipping fathers to fight for their sons, has just very recently been released and is available. And there's a link in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find that quickly. Doug, it's been a great conversation.
We've just touched on so many things, but I know that the resource is there for those who want to go further, for those who want to bring some sense of understanding of how we are created to be in the Vanguard Project. So as I say, the link is in the show notes. But Doug, thank you so much for spending time with me today on Bleeding Daylight. Thank you, Rodney. I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
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