Pornography, Internet

Exposure to and Usage of Online Pornography

Studies vary in their estimates of the exposure of children and adolescents to online pornography. According to a 2005 study released by Third Way, which bills itself as “a strategy center for progressives,” not only is the largest group of consumers of online pornography youth 12 to 17 years of age, but the pornography industry itself estimates that 20% to 30% of its traffic comes from those under 18. Similarly, a report from the Pew Research Center suggests that while more parents are installing filters intended to protect their children than ever before, and 62% of parents actually check where their children have been online, only 33% of children believe their parents are checking on them. However, Lo and Wei (2005) found that 38% of their sample of 2,001 Taiwanese teens had been exposed to online pornography. Boys reported more exposure than girls, and all reported using Internet pornography more than other traditional forms of pornography such as books and comics.

How does this exposure to online sexual materials affect children? Mitchell, Finkelhor, and Wolak (2003) report that most studies examining questions like this report that exposure to nonviolent pornography has a negligible effect, whereas violent pornography may result in increased aggression toward women. Most such studies are done on college students or adults, they note, and no studies target children under the age of 14. These authors examined the amount of unwanted exposure to pornography experienced by children and found that roughly one in four children who use the Internet encounter unwanted sexual materials. About 6% of children in the study reported feeling some kind of distress from the unwanted exposure—thereby suggesting, noted the authors, that children experience a short-term harm as well as the long-term psychological or moral harm usually discussed.

In their study of Taiwanese teenagers, Lo and Wei (2005) found that the teens' exposure to online sexual materials correlated to increased acceptance of and participation in sexual promiscuity. They further suggested that online pornography effects were stronger than those attributable to traditional pornography.

Filters and other Means of Restricting Access

Filtering software is the broad term for software installed on the user's computer that blocks sites based on the presence of objectionable content. Such filters are usually based either on blacklists of offensive sites or “whitelists” of acceptable sites. Some filters are content-based, scanning websites for offensive words or for large numbers of flesh-colored images.

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