Kids Online Are Safer
By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2006
It’s hard to find a young person who hasn’t been warned against chatting with strangers online. Now, it seems that message is paying off.
A recent survey by the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center has found that 13 percent of American children aged 10 to 17 were targets of unwanted sexual advances in 2005. That’s down significantly from 19 percent recorded in 2000.
“The good news is these messages are being heard,” says Kimberly Mitchell, a research professor with the center and coauthor of the study, financed by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, with a grant from the U.S. justice department. “Fewer [youngsters] are engaging in conversations online with people they don’t know.”
Still, that’s not to say that students, educators, and parents should let their guards down. Exposure to unwanted sexual imagery, such as online pornography, actually increased among the study group of 1,500 children, from 25 percent in 2000 to about 34 percent in 2005. This despite the use of Internet filters at schools, libraries, and in many homes.
Another area of concern? Young people who have encountered aggressive sexual solicitation, which Mitchell describes as someone trying to meet a young online acquaintance in person or over the phone. These cases, four percent of subjects in the study, have stayed the same since 2000. “That means a greater proportion of their encounters are aggressive,” she says.
