My dad is a boomer, born and raised in a Spanish speaking country, but he’s been in the US for nearly 30 years and is fluent in English. He’s a really intelligent guy when it comes to numbers but particularly struggles with emotional intelligence and of course, *computers*. The guy watched me simply open his downloads folder and said “Wow, you make it all look so easy!” He doesn’t even fully understand the concept of browser tabs. I’m a gen Z kid, or I guess “Zillennial” might be more accurate. Born and raised in the US, grew up living and breathing the internet. Been through a lot of shit, went to therapy, and I generally consider myself to be very emotionally mature. I’m also a lot more sensitive/empathetic than I’d like to be if I had the choice. If my dad is uptight so am I. When he’s stressed, I’m stressed. It’s also extremely draining on me when anything upsets him because I’m the one who has to listen to him talk in circles or throw a fit.
Anyway, I was helping him order something online today and when I opened a new tab in Google Chrome, I saw his frequently visited webpages. The first one was very obviously a random porn site. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to mentally confront the fact that my father watches porn, as I had accidentally found it in his browser history like a year ago. So it’s not like I was stunned. My mom passed away a few years ago and he just recently started seeing someone new, plus he’s only human. I’m not judging him. Initially when I first found out yeah I was grossed out but by this point it’s whatever. I get it. I try not to think about it. I don’t care.
What I *do* care about, is that he isn’t using safe/reputable sites and now his PC is clearly ridden with so many viruses. It’s incredibly slow and has these random like “photo suite” toolbars on the desktop that I know he didn’t set up himself. It’s bad. Could always be worse I guess but I also don’t like the idea of him checking his bank account on a PC that could have malware on it.
I didn’t recognize the porn site that came up in his history and it definitely seemed super sketchy to me. I don’t think the man has any idea that PornHub exists but someone has to tell him. Pretty sure I’m the only “someone” who’s able. I’m just not sure how to go about it. My dad doesn’t handle embarrassment well and can get really volatile. I’m afraid if I bring it up he might end up getting hot headed and yell at me. My boyfriend (24M, been together nearly 4 years) offered to talk to him about it for me, but he and my dad just aren’t close like that. Plus it would totally out me for talking to my boyfriend about my dad’s porn usage which is weird and I don’t think my dad would be too happy about that.
So how to heck do I go about this conversation? I know it’s impossible to fully spare his pride here, but I’d rather embarrass him a bit than wind up with someone stealing his banking info etc. because of stupid unsafe internet usage. I just need advice on how to bring it up, and I guess some advice on how I can handle it if he ends up getting hot headed. Pls help.
4 comments
Why don’t you just clean up his computer, and then leave Pornhub open as a tab on his browser for him? He will find it, be like “oh sweet here’s a good site,” and hopefully just use that one. 🤷🏼♀️
Not so much talking to him about it, but I would introduce an article of some sort that list common reasons, ONE of them being unsafe sites (like porn). So you’re not talking about porn, but it’s a huge hint.
Don’t have the porn talk. Recommend AVG or something like K9 VPN. There are a number of applications that will allow porn but block malicious sites.
I would just add that I wouldn’t assume it is only porn sites. I have seen trash accumulate from free game sites, clicking pop ups, etc.
I would second the clean it up and leave an article that talks about sources of viruses.