Kids as Their Own Worst Enemies

Sexual Solicitations are Down, but Bullying and Proactive Photos are Not

Published: November, 2006

The CCRC (Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire) was responsible for some of the first studies about children as victims on the web. The oft-repeated statistic about one in five youths reporting being solicited for sex online stems from the Center’s research done in 2000. In August, just about five years after the original study, CCRC published the results of a new study that looks at the changes in Internet crimes against youth. The results might surprise you since the biggest increase in “crimes” comes from deeds done by friends and acquaintances, not strangers.

Here’s a summary of what they found:

• Sexual solicitations are down. In 2007, one in five kids reported being solicited in some way (send a photo, meet, engage in sexual talk) on the web. Today it’s one in seven. This is despite the fact that kids are now social networking.
• Exposure to porn is up. This is despite increased use of Internet filters. This is probably because there is more porn than ever, being marketed more aggressively than ever.
• Peer harassment (cyberbullying) is up. Cyberbullying is done by friends and acquaintances, not strangers. Forty-four percent of harassment incidents involved offline acquaintances, most of them peers, and a significant portion happened “when youth were using the Internet in the company of peers” (group think and peer pressure as noted elements in cyberbullying).

Here’s the summary of a recent study out of Fresno State by Dr. Tamara Pierce. Pierce looked at 700 MySpace pages and found that the youngest MySpace users - 14-15-year-olds - had the more sexual poses on their sites (71% of their sites) than older girls. She also cited the prevalence of “aggressive material”:

• 54 percent of the sites included profanity
• 37 percent included sexual profanity (”f” word or “mother “f” er)
• 16 percent included gang-related visuals (i.e. gang hand signals or gang graffiti)
• 6 percent included a photo of a weapon

As for bullying, I can tell you about my own research in junior high schools and high schools, mostly up and down the East Coast. I talk to dozens of educators a month. Without exception, their schools have had to intervene in some form of bullying incident where students were acting inappropriately towards each other or towards faculty.

Many parents are now familiar with the dangerous that can come from outside predators, but few are looking at their children’s own communities with the same scrutiny. They should be. Kids will be kids, and as risk takers, hungry for new experience they’re just as likely to take risks in cyberspace as in the real world.