Internet Safety News

Online Kids' Exposure to Pornography: Separate Studies in Two Different Countries

by Anne Collier

Nearly simultaneously, two significant reports on children's exposure to online pornography have been released one in Australia and the other in the United States.

"Youth and Pornography in Australia"

Australia has gone further with federal legislation than the U.S., but even so this latest study by the Australia Institute, a public-policy, think-tank, says the country's regulatory efforts on behalf of online kids are "manifestly failing."¹ After surveying 16 to 17 year olds (younger kids were not interviewed for ethical reasons, the researchers write), the study found that

84 percent of boys and 60 percent of girls have been exposed accidentally to pornography on the Internet.
88 percent of boys and 83 percent of girls "believe that looking at sex sites on the Internet is widespread" among boys of their peer group (7 percent of girls believe the practice is widespread among 16- to 17-year-old girls).
38 percent of boys said they have searched the Internet for sex sites, 4 percent say they use the Internet for this purpose on a weekly basis, and 22 percent access sex sites "at least every two or three months."
2 percent of girls said they have deliberately sought out sex sites.²

The report, which said its findings are "Likely to understate the true incidence of pornography consumption among youth,"³ provides explicit details on the types of sexual activity young Internet users are being exposed to. And the authors preface the report saying, "The debate on pornography in Australia needs well-informed citizens and this includes awareness of some of the more disturbing material that is freely available to children on the Internet."⁴

Since the study was released in February, the Institute has issued two short companion reports. "Parents' Attitudes to Regulation of Internet Pornography" finds that 85 percent of parents are concerned about teens' exposure, 60 percent are "very concerned," and 93 percent want mandatory filtering.⁵ "Regulating Youth Access to Pornography" discusses filters and a new strategy to address the incidence of youth exposure to pornography on the Internet.⁶

U.S. Study: "The Exposure of Youth to Unwanted Sexual Material on the Internet"

Key findings of "The Exposure of Youth to Unwanted Sexual Material on the Internet" include

73 percent of those exposures happened while searching or surfing the Internet and 27 percent while opening e-mail or clicking on links in e-mails or instant messages.
67 percent happened while using the Internet at home; 15 percent at school; 3 percent in libraries; and the rest at other homes, such as friends', and elsewhere.
most of the images were just of nudity, 32 percent showed a sex act, and 7 percent involved violence as well as sex and nudity.
web searches, with search engines or typing in an address like www.fun.com, were the most common route to exposures (47 percent).
in 26 percent of the surfing incidents, the kids surveyed were "mousetrapped" into another sex site while trying to get out of the one they were in.
39 percent of the exposure incidents were reported to parents.
young people are more likely to have unwanted exposure if they use the Internet a great deal, use it in other households, spend time in online chats, use the Internet for e-mail, talk to someone they have only met online, play jokes on or harass people online, or are troubled or reported depression or physical or sexual abuse.⁷

The two reports' findings are useful for parents, policymakers, and children's advocates worldwide. While the Australia study asked 16- to 17-year-old boys, for example, if they'd ever been exposed to Internet pornography and got an 84 percent response, the U.S. study found that 25 percent of U.S. 10- to 17-year-old boys and girls had "one or more unwanted exposures to sexual pictures while online in the past year."⁸ In the U.S. study there was a smaller gap between boys' and girls' unintended exposure, 57 percent vs. 42 percent, respectively, compared to 84 percent and 60 percent in Australia. As for parents' views, the U.S. study's findings were closer to those of the Australian one, though the question was put a little differently, showing that 84 percent of parents surveyed in the U.S. said, "Adults should be extremely concerned about youth being exposed to sexual material on the Internet." Interestingly, just 10 percent fewer (74 percent) of the U.S. kids surveyed said they thought adults should be "very or extremely concerned" about this problem online kids have. Just 38 percent of U.S. parents with home Internet access have installed filtering software in the past year, though 5 percent have stopped using it.⁹

All that said, it's important to note that online pornography is only one online-parenting challenge. Kids and parents need to be just as alert about what information goes out to the Internet from family computers as about what's coming in from the Internet.

Finally, international research isn't easy to conduct. Getting representative samples of youth worldwide or even just in developed countries is difficult, but seeing these two reports released at the same time, both considering an issue of concern to parents everywhere, we can't help but hope researchers will begin to ask the same questions in their respective countries so that we can begin to compare results, see patterns, and work on the problem together.

¹Michael Flood and Clive Hamilton. Youth and Pornography in Australia: Evidence on the Extent of Exposure and Likely Effects. The Australia Institute. February 2003, http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/DP52sum.pdf.
²Ibid.
³Ibid.
⁴Ibid.
⁵Michael Flood and Clive Hamilton. Parents' Attitudes to Regulation of Internet Pornography. The Australia Institute. March 2003, http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/parents'attitudes.pdf.
⁶Michael Flood and Clive Hamilton. Regulating Youth Access to Pornography. The Australia Institute. March 2003, http://www.tai.org.au/WhatsNew_Files/WhatsNew/Dp53prelimsuma.pdf.
⁷Kimberley J. Mitchell, David Finkelhor, and Janis Wolak. The Exposure of Youth to Unwanted Sexual Material on the Internet: A National Survey of Risk, Impact and Intervention. University of New Hampshire. March 2003, http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/Exposure_risk.pdf.
⁸Ibid.
⁹Ibid.

Anne Collier is editor of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and president of NetFamilyNews.org, a nonprofit news service for parents and teachers of online kids.