Kids start watching online porn as young as 6, flirt with cyberspace strangers by 8: survey
SEATTLE, WA, May 21, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – A recent study
of 19,000 parents by online security company Bitdefender has found that
children as young as six are watching online pornography, and by eight,
they’re flirting in real-time with strangers on the internet.
“Kids nowadays are acting like young adults online — just give them an Internet-connected device, and they will find a way to things parents would like to ban forever,” said Bitdefender Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi.
Bitdefender questioned 19,000 parents from the United States, France,
Germany, the UK, Australia, Spain, and Romania and compared their
answers with data collected from their own parental control software.
According to the study, the top web category that most interests children – and that their parents want to block – is pornography, followed by online shopping, file sharing, social networks, news, gambling and online dating.
More than eleven percent of children are actively searching for pornography online, according to Bitdefender’s findings, some of those as young as six. Bitdefender estimates that more than one percent of all six year olds have been exposed to internet porn. Studies have shown that the average age of first exposure to pornography is eleven.
Bitdefender found that the biggest percentage of kids using instant messaging (IM) chat services were just nine years old, representing nearly 23 percent of all users under 18. Next were eight-year-olds, followed by seven-year-olds, six-year-olds, and ten-year olds. Kids older than twelve were less likely to use IM chats as a form of communication, with those between the ages of twelve and fourteen making up only a tenth of underage IM users – roughly equal to the percentage of six-year-olds using such services.
The study revealed that 25 percent of twelve-year-olds and 17 percent of ten-year-olds have a presence on social media, in many cases lying to get around age limits requiring users to have reached their thirteenth birthdays. Both Google Plus and Facebook have a lower age limit of thirteen.
“Kids lie about their age to get access to something they want to explore, in this case a social network,” Virtual Piggy CEO Jo Webber told USA Today. “It's no different than my generation lying about age to get cigarettes or into a bar.”
Added Webber, whose website lets children manage and spend money online under the supervision of their parents, “The Internet is a huge system that houses good and bad. Parents need to stay involved with their children and be ready to explain things that their children may stumble upon.”
Source: LifeSite News
“Kids nowadays are acting like young adults online — just give them an Internet-connected device, and they will find a way to things parents would like to ban forever,” said Bitdefender Chief Security Strategist Catalin Cosoi.
According to the study, the top web category that most interests children – and that their parents want to block – is pornography, followed by online shopping, file sharing, social networks, news, gambling and online dating.
More than eleven percent of children are actively searching for pornography online, according to Bitdefender’s findings, some of those as young as six. Bitdefender estimates that more than one percent of all six year olds have been exposed to internet porn. Studies have shown that the average age of first exposure to pornography is eleven.
Bitdefender found that the biggest percentage of kids using instant messaging (IM) chat services were just nine years old, representing nearly 23 percent of all users under 18. Next were eight-year-olds, followed by seven-year-olds, six-year-olds, and ten-year olds. Kids older than twelve were less likely to use IM chats as a form of communication, with those between the ages of twelve and fourteen making up only a tenth of underage IM users – roughly equal to the percentage of six-year-olds using such services.
The study revealed that 25 percent of twelve-year-olds and 17 percent of ten-year-olds have a presence on social media, in many cases lying to get around age limits requiring users to have reached their thirteenth birthdays. Both Google Plus and Facebook have a lower age limit of thirteen.
“Kids lie about their age to get access to something they want to explore, in this case a social network,” Virtual Piggy CEO Jo Webber told USA Today. “It's no different than my generation lying about age to get cigarettes or into a bar.”
Added Webber, whose website lets children manage and spend money online under the supervision of their parents, “The Internet is a huge system that houses good and bad. Parents need to stay involved with their children and be ready to explain things that their children may stumble upon.”
Source: LifeSite News
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