Parental Monitoring Software

This is part 7 of our statistics series.

• Of students aged 13 and 14 from schools across Alberta, Canada, 90 percent of males and 70 percent of females reported accessing sexually explicit media content at least once. (Thompson, Sonya. “Study Shows 1 in 3 Boys Heavy Porn Users”. University of Alberta Study, 5 March 2007, keys=porn-rural-teens.)

• Of students aged 13 and 14 from schools across Alberta, Canada, 4 percent reported viewing pornography on the Internet; 41 percent saw it on video or DVD and 57 percent saw it on a specialty TV channel. (Thompson, Sonya. “Study Shows 1 in 3 Boys Heavy Porn Users”. University of Alberta Study, 5 March 2007, keys=porn-rural-teens.)

• The study revealed that boys do the majority of deliberate viewing, and a significant minority now plans social time around viewing porn with male friends. (Thompson, Sonya. “Study Shows 1 in 3 Boys Heavy Porn Users”. University of Alberta Study, 5 March 2007, keys=porn-rural-teens.)

• Porn has become a major presence in the lives of youth, and while a majority of teens surveys said their parents expressed concern about sexual content, that concern has not led to discussion or supervision, and few parents are using available technology to block sexual content. (Thompson, Sonya. “Study Shows 1 in 3 Boys Heavy Porn Users”. University of Alberta Study, 5 March 2007, keys=porn-rural-teens.)

• The author of the study, Sonya Thompson concluded that parents need to improve dialogue with their children and their own awareness level. They need to be the ones setting the boundaries in the house. (Thompson, Sonya. “Study Shows 1 in 3 Boys Heavy Porn Users”. University of Alberta Study, 5 March 2007, keys=porn-rural-teens.)

• Overall, boys aged 13 and 14 living in rural areas are the most likely of their age group to access pornography. (Thompson, Sonya. “Study Shows 1 in 3 Boys Heavy Porn Users”. University of Alberta Study, 5 March 2007, keys=porn-rural-teens.)

• Forty-two percent of Internet users aged 10 to 17 surveyed said they had seen online pornography in a recent 12-month span. Of those, 66 percent said they did not want to view the images and had not sought them out. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The results come from a telephone survey of 1,500 Internet users aged 10 to 17 conducted in 2005, with their parents’ consent. (Wolak, Janis, et al. “Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users.” Pediatrics 119 (2007); 247-257.)

• In the survey, most kids who reported unwanted exposure were aged 13 to 17. Still, sizable numbers of 10- and 11-year-olds also had unwanted exposure — 17 percent of boys and 16 percent of girls that age. (Wolak, Janis, et al. “Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users.” Pediatrics 119 (2007); 247-257.)

• More than one-third of 16- and 17-year-old boys surveyed said they had intentionally visited X-rated sites in the past year. Among girls the same age, 8 percent had done so. (Wolak, Janis, et al. “Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users.” Pediatrics 119 (2007); 247-257.)

• Overall, 34 percent had unwanted exposure to online pornography, up from 25 percent in a similar survey conducted in 1999 and 2000. (Wolak, Janis, et al. “Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users.” Pediatrics 119 (2007); 247-257.)

• Online use that put kids at the highest risk for unwanted exposure to pornography was using file-sharing programs to download images. However, they also stumbled onto X-rated images through other “normal” Internet use, the researchers said, including talking online with friends, visiting chat rooms and playing games. (Wolak, Janis, et al. “Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users.” Pediatrics 119 (2007); 247-257.)

• Filtering and blocking software helped prevent exposure, but was not 100 percent effective, the researchers said. (Wolak, Janis, et al. “Unwanted and Wanted Exposure to Online Pornography in a National Sample of Youth Internet Users.” Pediatrics 119 (2007); 247-257.)In 2000, more than one-third of youth Internet users (34 percent) saw sexual material online they did not want to see in the past year compared to one-quarter (25 percent) in 2005 (Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later. 2006. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Crimes Against Children Research Center, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. December 4, 2006. pdf/CV138.pdf).

• More than three-quarters of the unwanted exposures (79 percent) happened at home. Nine (9) percent happened at school, 5 percent happened at friends’ homes, and 5 percent happened in other places including libraries (Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later. 2006. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Crimes Against Children Research Center, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. December 4, 2006. pdf/CV138.pdf).

• According to a New Zealand Internal Affairs study, the largest single age group viewing child pornography is young people aged 15 to 19, accounting for a quarter of 202 convicted child porn users. (New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs. Internet Traders of Child Pornography: Profiling Research. By Caroline Sullivan. October 2005. January 10, 2006. polingupdate2.pdf

• 70 percent have accidentally come across pornography on the Web (Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-Olds. Victoria Rideout, Donald F. Roberts. Ulla G. Foehr. March 2005. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. 17 November 2006, 18-Year-olds-Report.pdf).

• More than 11 million teens regularly view porn online (”Protecting Kids Online.” Editorial, The Washington Post, July 1, 2004).In 26 percent of cases where youth accidentally stumbled into pornographic websites, the youth stated being exposed to another sex website when they were attempting to exit the initial website. (Mitchell, K.J., Finkelhor, D., and Wolak, J. “Victimization of Youths on the Internet.” The Victimization of Children: Emerging Issues, Ed. J.L. Mullings, J.W. Marquart, and D.J. Hartley. New York: Haworth Maltreatment & Trauma Press, 2003).

• 23 percent of youth were “very” or “extremely” upset by exposures to sexual content online. (Mitchell, K.J., Finkelhor, D., and Wolak, J. “Victimization of Youths on the Internet.” The Victimization of Children: Emerging Issues, Ed. J.L. Mullings, J.W. Marquart, and D.J. Hartley. New York: Haworth Maltreatment & Trauma Press, 2003).

• Adolescents’ access to sexual and reproductive health information is minimally affected by pornography-blocking software when installed at moderate settings while blocking 90 percent of pornographic content. (Richardson, C.R., Resnick, P.J., Hansen, D.L., Derry, H.A., & Rideout, V.J. “Does pornography-blocking software block access to health information on the Internet?” Journal of the American Medical Association, 288 (22), 2002): 2887-2894).

• Nine out of 10 children aged between eight and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet. In most cases, the sex sites were accessed unintentionally when a child, often in the process of doing homework, used a seemingly innocent sounding word to search for information or pictures. (London School of Economics January 2002).

This statistics series is provided by Parental Monitoring Software. We quote and link to sources used whenever possible.

If you find these statistics alarming and you have kids who use the internet, we strongly recommend using a monitoring software product wherever possible.

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