Pornography and Children

•One in 17 children ages 10-17 were threatened or harassed over the Internet in 2000

(Report Statistical Highlights. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Crimes Against Children, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2000.)

•70 percent of sexual advances over the Internet happened while youngsters were on a home computer

One in Five Kids Has Been Propositioned for Cybersex. (Legal Facts. Vol. 2, No. 3, 2000.)

•21 percent of teens say they have looked at something on the Internet that they wouldn’t want their parents to know (A World of Their Own. Newsweek, 8 May 2000.)

•A survey of 600 households conducted by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children found that 20% of parents do not know any of their children’s Internet passwords, instant messaging nicknames or email addresses

Ads target online victimization of children. (USA Today, 20 May 2004.)

•Only 5% of parents recognized the acronym POS (parent over shoulder) and only 1% could identify WTGP (want to go private?), both of which are used frequently by teens when instant messaging

•Incidents of child sexual exploitation have risen from 4,573 in 1998 to 112,083 in 2004, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Reports of child exploitation up. (USA Today Snapshots, 17 February, 2005.)

•96 percent of kids have gone online; 74% having access at home and 61% use the Internet on a typical day (Kids stay connected, USA Today Snapshots. 5 January, 2004.)

•Twenty percent of youths received sexual solicitations. Eighty-nine percent of sexual solicitations of youths were made in chat rooms (Internet Pornography Statistics. Internet Filter Review, 2004.)

•The average age of first Internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old (Internet Pornography Statistics. Internet Filter Review, 2004. )

•The largest consumer of Internet pornography is the 12-17 age group (Internet Pornography Statistics. Internet Filter Review, 2004.)

•Child pornography generates $3 billion annually (Internet Pornography Statistics. Internet Filter Review, 2004. )