Study: Children Bombarded With Online Porn

(CBS/AP)  More children and teens are being exposed to online pornography, mostly by accidentally viewing sexually explicit Web sites while surfing the Internet, researchers say.

Forty-two percent of Internet users aged 10 to 17 surveyed said they had seen online pornography in a recent 12-month span. Of those, 66 percent said they did not want to view the images and had not sought them out, University of New Hampshire researchers found. Their conclusions appear in February's Pediatrics, due out Monday.

Parts of the study were released last November and found that one in seven had received "unwanted sexual solicitations or approaches in the past year."

Some kids, like cyber-savvy 10-year-old Ryan Morano, already know how to cope, CBS News technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg reports.

"Something could pop up at any time," Morano said. "And if you don't have a pop-up blocker, you could be exposed to these bad pictures."

Online pornography was defined in the study as images of naked people or people having sex.

"It's so common now, who hasn't seen something like that?" said Emily Duhovny, 17.

The Marlboro, N.J., high school senior said X-rated images pop up all the time when she's online. Duhovny said the first time she saw one, it was shocking, but now, "more than anything, it's just annoying."

"It doesn't have to be a negative thing, but that shouldn't be how you learn about sex education," said Duhovny, an editor for Sexetc.org, a teen-written Web site on sexual health issues affiliated with Rutgers University.

In the survey, conducted between March and June 2005, most kids who reported unwanted exposure were aged 13 to 17. Still, sizable numbers of 10- and 11-year-olds also had unwanted exposure — 17 percent of boys and 16 percent of girls that age.

"It comes as no surprise that teens are exposed to both wanted and unwanted sexual material online. That's all the more reason for parents to keep in close touch with their kids, keep computers in a central area of the house and – if necessary – use parental control software that blocks inappropriate sites," CBS News technology analyst Larry Magid said.

More than one-third of 16- and 17-year-old boys surveyed said they had intentionally visited X-rated sites in the past year. Among girls the same age, 8 percent had done so.

The results come from a telephone survey of 1,500 Internet users aged 10 to 17, conducted with their parents' consent.

Overall, 36 percent had unwanted exposure to online pornography, including some children who had willingly viewed pornography in other instances. The 2005 number was up from 25 percent in a similar survey conducted in 1999 and 2000.

The latest survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Online use that put kids at the highest risk for unwanted exposure to pornography was using file-sharing programs to download images. However, they also stumbled onto X-rated images through other "normal" Internet use, the researchers said, including talking online with friends, visiting chat rooms and playing games.

Filtering and blocking software helped prevent exposure, but was not 100 percent effective, the researchers said.

Better methods are needed "to restrict the use of aggressive and deceptive tactics to market pornography online" without also hampering access to legitimate sites, the researchers said.

University of Chicago psychiatrist Sharon Hirsch said exposure to online pornography could lead kids to become sexually active too soon, or could put them at risk for being victimized by sexual predators if they visit sites that prey on children.

"They're seeing things that they're really not emotionally prepared to see yet, which can cause trauma to them," Hirsch said.

Exposure also could skew their perceptions about what constitutes a healthy sexual relationship, said Janis Wolak, the study's lead author and a researcher at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center.

Still, many survey participants said they were not disturbed by what they saw, and Wolak said research is needed to determine how exposure to online pornography affects kids.

[love_you-2009]

When i was 14 or 15 years old kid i spent half of my free time watching porn movies!

And sometimes i was ready to give one of my legs to see a proper porn movie.

I think you guys don't remember your early ages!!

Those studies are ***!

[gaye5]

hey CoolTherapy, there are no children in this house, I gather it can come in piggy backed on something else???? can anyone tell me if this is true????

[lavampire]

r_bayless,
my point has nothing to do with the access to pornography, but rather to the Internet being an easy vehicle to access not only pornography but also violence, lewd acts, and just behavior that robs a young mind of the most precious commodities: time and innocence.
Surely, before the Internet, we as adolescents boys could easily go into a liquor store and view the pages of the Hustler, the playboy, or the Oui that were just next to Sports Illustrated or US News and World Report, but we had to go outside the home, walk to the store and hope to God that some adult we knew did not catch us. Now, a couple of clicks of the mouse and a few www....., and bingo, we are in the world of the flesh.
My point is that why complain about the problem if after all parent's rely on the Internet for education purposes. Afterall, does not the Internet provide various learning and education websites, such as www.whitehouse.com. OOOPPSS!! I mean, whitehouse.gov (whitehouse.com is a pornsite).
Anyhow, 30% of young people nationwide failed to graduate from high school in 2006, regardless of race or ethnic background, and young children simply do not need another vehicle or medium that can rob them of their learning time and youth.
Books work and have worked, and I do not mean Penthouse or Playboy, I mean non-fiction and fiction books.

[nothappyatall]

The internet was originally a military/Govt communications, then it became public and it was basically adults using it, when did these dam KIDS get involved in all this? kick em off, shut off their computers and unplug them instead of forcing all the rest of us to deal with other people's kids!
I've seen 12 year olds coming into chatrooms for people over 18, we don't want babies in there and have to adjust our words BECAUSE a stupid minor is there- where is MOM and DAD and why is a 12 year old up on a chat room for people over 18 at 11 on a Sunday night?

[cooltherapy]

I am a college student and use the internet religiously for contact with old friends, research, fun, etc. I have NEVER run across random pornography popups. If you haven't had someone on your computer viewing it before, I see no reason why it should pop up. Just watch what websites your children (and you) are looking at and there shouldn't be a problem.

[klingon69]

I remember sneaking copies of my father's playboy mags when I was about 8 or 9. Checking out the mags on the rack in the corner grocery store at 11-12. I remember buying Hustler, OUI, Gallery...etc from the local 7-Eleven and EZ-Mart. Not to mention all the friends in the neighborhood who would sneak out mags. And let's all not forget playing doctor with the neighborhood girls growing up. Anybody else remember this'"I'll show you mine, if you show me yours."

Nothing really changes, just gets easier or more difficult.

[lily_ayanami]

Firefox, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Adaware seem to get most of it for me. But that's the ads. I've heard NetNanny is good, but you have to know that these programs are NOT infallible. The best thing to do is to talk to your kids and watch what they're doing.

I feel bad for the parents who are not technologically-inclined. In their cases, using these programs won't work if they don't know how to use them properly.

[seanv137]

again if you want to "make it all go away" and don't want to spend any money use:

Firefox browser
Spybot Search and Destroy
Spyware Blaster
CookieCop

they are all free programs that work very well. i see zero advertisements from anyone, and zero pop-ups.

if your kid is still hunting for porn pay the $35 and buy Net Nanny.

[gaye5]

Use Opera or Firefox and the problem abates. Opera is particularly resistant to this, hit F12 and select your options.
Posted by rikedoid

Oh thankyou rike, so this is why I havent had any trouble for about three years,,,
Yes there is a lot of stuff kids can see in shops etc, but does that make it right??? we now also have school shootings, rapes are up, violence is up, murders are up etc but does that make it right, maybe it is just because of what our kids see on TV, companies seem to think TV has a massive effect on us that is why they spend trillions of dollars on stupid few second adds, if it didnt work they wouldnt waste their money..
and you are right that kids naturally want to see it also. A further bit from my last bog, in my husbands school some kids used the school internet to axcess their own home hotmail account on which they had already stored porn material so as they could go into that and access porn from school..

[gaye5]

I would have to agree and disagree with some of you here. I agree that many kids look for it and then say it was an accident, but I also know that it can just come up when looking for something, I have had it happen to me twice and I couldn't get rid of the darned thing, I actually had to turn my computer off and start again, they weren't at all pleasant and from having seen this I can understand that if a child saw what I saw that he would be disturbed, it was not the normal sort of ***.

Also, my husband found at school that even if the children were careful about what they put into the computer when looking up subjects for school projects, that an innocent looking subject which was in reference to what they wanted could also produce porn...it is done deliberately for the reason of getting at kids or weak people, the ones who want to see porn go straight to the subject...
I have actually written to a vitamin company complaining that they had porn on their site, to be told that they didn't know what I was talking about...it had just popped up...hmmmm and I tried twice thinking that I had pushed the wrong keys the first time...