by The first thing to say about Covenant Eyes, the anti-porn phone app used by House speaker Mike Johnson, is did changed my relationship with pornography.
It really increased the amount of time I spent thinking about it.
The word “porn” is absolutely splashed all over CovenantEyes.com, where you can create an account and download the app. It has appeared 18 times on the home page alone. The message is not positive – “porn creates shame”, “shame lives the use of porn” – but the effect cannot be avoided: if porn was not on your mind before visiting Eyes of the Covenant (unlikely), it will be after that.
That’s not the same as Covenant Eyes’ mission statement to turn website visitors into horndogs. The app, which Johnson said he and his family have been using “for a long time”, promises to help people “discover the freedom of living without porn”, essentially through a shame-based method of tracking your phone activity send all to their designated accountability partner.
There is no suggestion that Johnson, who is second in the presidency, consumes a problematic amount of pornography. But it makes sense that the Republican, a Christian whose words describe his worldview as “go pick up a Bible”, would be drawn to the app, since Covenant Eyes is also keen on religion. Looking at the reviews, it seems that its users, too.
“Every Christian man should use it” is one review highlighted on the home page.
“The accountability that Covenant Eyes provides helps me as I seek to honor God,” says another.
The app works – when it works – by taking screenshots of whatever you’re looking at on your phone several times a minute, and feeding the results into its system. From there, AI technology determines what constitutes regular phone use and what it considers pornographic intrusions. When the app thinks you’ve watched porn, it sends an alert to your “accountability partner”, a trusted person you’ve designated to help you on your porn-free journey.
It’s not clear what your partner intends to do with this information – issue a sharp blow, offer an arm around the shoulder, or turn up at your house with a starfish and some holy water. Eyes of the Covenant may be able to identify a pornography problem, but is that alone enough to help people overcome one?
In a video clip from 2022 that resurfaced earlier this month, Johnson, 51, said he was using Covenant Eyes with his son, Jack, who was 17 at the time. The two received a report on each other’s internet use once a week, Johnson said. He added that his son had “got a clean slate so far” but did not comment on the cleanliness of his own slate. After using the app for a week, I can confirm that mine is, unfortunately, dirty.
But unfairly dirty, mainly due to issues with what Covenant Eyes considers porn.
Over the past several days, the app has frequently responded tactfully to numerous pictures of women, repeatedly indicating that particular PG content was inappropriate and sending my accountability partner’s phone into crisis.
An Instagram photo of a female friend on the beach, wearing a bikini, triggered a push notification to my partner’s phone, unfairly accusing me of engaging in pornography. An article about women’s soccer, which featured a picture of two athletes after a game wearing their undershirt garments, did the same.
In general, if a woman’s midriff or upper chest is visible, the Eyes of Covenant do not like it. It serves as a neat representation of the evangelical world within which Eyes of the Covenant operates.
But what could the God-fearing Christian – who was elected speaker of the House of Representatives and who said that the government should not provide “legal sanction” for homosexuality – look for if he was want titillation?
If the speaker of the House were to type “pretty women” into his Google search bar, he would be in hot water. When I tried it, one of the results showed an image of a woman in a blue bikini, and Covenant Eyes immediately cited it as an explicit content. “Attractive dames” also inspired Covenant Eyes, and “conservative hotties” sent the app into a frenzy, after Google produced images of women in swimsuits in front of American flags.
Strangely enough, the app does not have a problem with the male form. When a friend sent a link to an all-male strip club based in New York City, Covenant Eyes didn’t seem to mind – even letting it slide when I clicked through to some photos of the oiled dancers.
Aside from a general (albeit gendered) desire, a problem with Covenant Eyes is that it only works properly on Android phones. The app version of Google will monitor all of your phone activity, over everything. Want to catch a glimpse of hot women on Instagram? Your son/accountability partner will receive an alert. Look for smut on Facebook – where Johnson has 36,000 followers – and your friend will know.
On the iPhone, however, the app is only able to track what you search for in Safari, making it very easy to pry.
Photos from this year’s research hour showed the speaker using an iPhone with three rear cameras. The first iPhone with three rear cameras was released in 2019, which means Johnson could, in theory, avoid a full inspection of Covenant Eyes for four years. However, other images suggest that Johnson also has access to a non-iPhone product. His office did not respond to questions.
In addition to behaving erratically, Covenant Eyes, which costs $18.99 a month, frequently disconnected my phone from the internet. Whole days would go by when it didn’t track my internet usage at all. Separately, in 2022 Google determined that Covenant Eyes violated its policies after a Wired investigation raised questions about the amount of information collected by the app; the app has since returned to the Google Play store.
Covenant Eyes was founded in 2000 by Ron DeHaas, a former “professional Putt Putt” and current “ruling elder” at an evangelical church in Michigan, according to his church profile. Covenant Eyes, which did not respond to an interview request, claims that DeHaas has overseen “over 1.5 million hours in the fight against pornography and sex trafficking”, equating to 171 years.
It’s fitting that a Putt-Put-turned-evangelical senator steeped in the Christian faith has developed anti-porn resources.
In a section on how to control the amount of porn you consume, Covenant Eyes suggests that people should “look God in the face”. Elsewhere he offers harsher advice: “Pray as you are at war.” Because of the unnecessary comments on porn all over the web, by the time a porn watcher comes across this guide, they will need all the prayers they can get. It’s little wonder that Covenant Eyes tries to downplay porn viewing and compares the “intense and graphic” scenes of D-Day.
For Johnson and his son, an app that monitors what you do on your phone — despite questions about the type of phone Johnson uses — seems to be working. Jack has his father’s approval, and while we don’t know much about Johnson’s internet activity, his political career is on the rise.
But for people who don’t necessarily know exactly what their friends or children are doing online, Covenant Eyes – with its touchy-feely approach to photographs of women and pugnacious attitudes about pornography consumption – may not be the way to go.
