The Church in the Archdiocese of Kupang, capital of predominantly Catholic East Nusa Tenggara province, expressed concern on October 10 over a survey conducted recently by the province’s Indonesian Broadcasting Commission revealing that 67 percent of children in the town have accessed porn sites, mostly via cellular phones.

The survey, which was started in April, involved 300 respondents aged under 13 years old.

“Children and teenagers are the next generation of both the nation and the Church. Their growth should be monitored well … particularly in preventing them from accessing such negative stuffs which can harm their mental growth and characters,” said Sister Maria Agnes Wathun, who heads the archdiocese’s Pontifical Mission Aid Societies.

The Religious of the Virgin Mary nun added that nowadays parents and teachers often faced difficulty in monitoring their children and students. “It is easy for children and teenagers to go to the Internet cafes or to access porn sites via cellular phones,” she continued.

She said the Pontifical Society of Children and Youth Missioners (SEKAMI) is a good medium of formation for children and teenagers, but it cannot monitor children’s activities outside the group.

“We cannot ignore the issue since it is like a time bomb. It can even threaten the national character,” she said.

Johanes Seo from Assumption of Mary Church in Kotabaru suggested that those managing the Internet cafes should vet visitors. “If the visitors are children, they should be accompanied by their parents,” he said.

He added that schools in the town “will be more serious in monitoring their students who bring cellular phones” and SEKAMI will always be enlivened “since it is a place where children and teenagers can gather so that they can be saved from such bad influence of the technology growth.”

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