Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Bang With Friends is the latest app for Facebook. It’s a brand-new way for you to ask your Facebook friends for sex.
Forget roses, chocolates, or an expensive trinket. You no longer have to think about another person in order to express love; all you need to do is satisfy your own banal instincts by downloading this app, and Voila! You’ll see pictures of your friends with the button, “click to bang,” underneath. If they have the app installed, they’ll get a notification that you want to get together.
No parent in her right mind wants her daughter or son to engage in this type of ridiculous and demeaning behavior, so take a look at the apps that your teen or preteen has on his or her phone. Maybe she doesn’t want to participate, but she may because she doesn’t want to look like the prude in her group. How sad is this for our children?
First of all, the idea of soliciting or engaging in “sex” via electronic gadgetry is for those who don’t have the mental or emotional integrity to come face to face with their sexual partner or potential partner. They might argue that being in the same room with their sexual partner is unnecessary because, well, cyber sex really isn’t sex, is it? But that’s not what bothers me most about this app. The real sordidness of this lies with the extreme lack of intimacy and debasement of the individual.
Add to that the fact that the one asking for sex does so with multiple partners. Those who agree to have sex with numerous people would argue that monogamy—even “cyber monogamy”—is outdated and reflects the values of an emotionally inhibited, prudish, sex-fearing person. Quite the opposite is true. In fact, those who love sex and get the most out of it are the ones who don’t throw it about, allowing it to become trash in another person’s yard.
The peculiar thing is that deep down, even those who like having sex with multiple partners and advocate for it know that it is harmful to relationships. Think of how many husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends are hurt when their partner has had sex with someone else. Nothing hurts a relationship more than sexual cheating.
So why, then, do we think that encouraging kids to have sex or experiment sexually with people, including some they barely know, is OK? Even if it’s cyber hooking up, the idea that someone’s loved one is thinking about the naked body of another causes grief to the one who loves him or her.
Ask any woman or man who’s been in a serious relationship longer than one month. They know that sex outside of the union causes unbearable grief. It’s high time that we teach this to our children early on. Monogamy keeps relationships trustworthy, strong, intimate, and flourishing on many levels. Cheating destroys.
How cruel then, to encourage kids to experiment with sex when they are young. Our culture trains them to want to have a lot of sex before they are “tied down.” And this is done for one reason only—so those who sell it can make money.
Even though Bang With Friends is a free app (from what I can tell), I guarantee that its creators stand to profit from its adoption and use. If you have a teen in your home, stand up for them and tell Facebook what to do with this new app. Having it land in the garbage is too good for it.
