Parental Monitoring Software

This is part 9 of our statistics series.

• 69 percent of teens regularly receive personal messages online from people they don’t know and most of them don’t tell a trusted adult about it. (National teen Internet survey was funded by Cox Communications in partnership with NCMEC and John Walsh and was conducted in March 2007 among 1,070 teens age 13 to 17. The research was conducted online by TRU. survey_results_2007.ppt).

• While 16 percent of teens say they’ve considered meeting face-to-face with someone they’ve talked to only online, that marks a significant drop compared to the 30% of teens who were considering such a meeting in 2006. In 2007, 8 percent of teens say they actually have met in person with someone from the Internet, down from 14 percent in 2006. (National teen Internet survey was funded by Cox Communications in partnership with NCMEC and John Walsh and was conducted in March 2007 among 1,070 teens age 13 to 17. The research was conducted online by TRU. survey_results_2007.ppt).

• When they receive online messages from someone they don’t know, 60 percent of teens say they usually respond only to ask who the person is. Compared to the 2006 survey, there was a 10-percentage-point increase in teens ignoring such messages (57 percent vs. 47 percent). Still, nearly a third of teens (31 percent) say they usually reply and chat with people they don’t know, and only 21 percent tell a trusted adult when they receive such messages. (National teen Internet survey was funded by Cox Communications in partnership with NCMEC and John Walsh and was conducted in March 2007 among 1,070 teens age 13 to 17. The research was conducted online by TRU. survey_results_2007.ppt).

• 50 percent of high school students “talk” in chat rooms or use instant messaging (IM) with Internet strangers (Market Wire. November 6, 2006. i-SAFE Inc. December 12, 2006 release_id=180330).

• 20 percent of students in middle school as well as high school admit that they have met face-to-face with someone they first met on the Internet (Market Wire. November 6, 2006. i-SAFE Inc. December 12, 2006 release_id=180330).

• Approximately 1 in 7 (13 percent) was solicited in 2005, compared to approximately 1 in 5 (19 percent) in 2000; however, aggressive solicitations, in which solicitors made or attempted to make offline contact with youth, did not decline. Four (4) percent of youth Internet users received aggressive solicitations - a proportion similar to the 3 percent who received aggressive solicitations in 2000 (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).

• 4 percent of all youth Internet users in 2005 said online solicitors asked them for nude or sexually explicit photographs of themselves (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).

• In a survey conducted by the Intelligence Group, Dateline questioned 500 teenagers across the country, ages 14-18, about their computer habit. When asked if someone they’ve met online has wanted to meet them in person, 58 percent said “yes” and 29 percent said they’ve had a “scary” experience online (Most Teens Say They’ve Met Strangers Online, MSNBC Interactive, April 26, 2006, displaymode/1098/).

• Half of teens ages 13-18 often communicate through the Internet with someone they have not met in person (Internet Safety: Realistic Strategies & Messages for Kids Taking More and More Risks Online. December 21, 2005. Polly Klaas Foundation. February 17, 2006. pkfsummary.pdf).

• One-third of youth ages 8-18 have talked about meeting someone they have only met through the Internet (Internet Safety: Realistic Strategies & Messages for Kids Taking More and More Risks Online. December 21, 2005. Polly Klaas Foundation. February 17, 2006. pkfsummary.pdf).

• Almost one in eight youth ages 8-18 discovered that someone they were communicating with online was an adult pretending to be much younger (Internet Safety: Realistic Strategies & Messages for Kids Taking More and More Risks Online. December 21, 2005. Polly Klaas Foundation. February 17, 2006. pkfsummary.pdf).

• 30 percent of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chatroom. Only 7 percent, however, told their mothers or fathers about the harassment because they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online” (Girl Scout Research Institute, 2002).

• 86 percent of the girls polled said they could chat online without their parents’ knowledge, 57 percent could read their parents’ e-mail, and 54 percent could conduct a cyber relationship. (Girl Scout Research Institute, 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.