Internet sexual encounters drop

Posted by Felix Mckenna On Saturday, December 31st 2011 in Education

Good news for the concerned parents. Their children have a much lower risk of having any type of internet sexual encounters. The researchers believe that this occurred as a result of the rise in public awareness. “Trends in Youth Internet Victimization: Findings From Three Youth Internet Safety Surveys 2000-2010”, appeared in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Medical News Today reports.

The researchers at the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center observed that there have been registered droppings in two types of internet sexual encounters that affected children browsing the web in the last years. One of them is the sexual solicitations and the other is the exposure to pornography. The experts have noticed that since 2005, the sexual requests made to minors has declined from 13 percent to 9 percent. The exposure to pornographic contents has dropped from 34 percent to 23 percent.

The study is based on surveys taken at a national level between 2000 and 2010. The participants were children and teenagers with ages 10 to 17.

One author of the study, researcher Lisa Jones says: “The constant news about Internet dangers may give the impression that all Internet problems have been getting worse for youth but actually that is not the case.” Another researcher in the team, Kimberly Mitchell, explains why the dropping in percentages: “The arrests, the publicity and the education may have tamped down the sexual soliciting online.”

The experts caution that, when it comes to sexual solicitations made to minors, the predators are not necessarily adults. Despite the general belief, it has been observed that in reality, many of the solicitors are other youth.