Teens' exposure to sex online: Study

For this study, the professor decided to see for herself what teenagers encounter in online chat. UCLA psychology professor Patricia Greenfield "entered a Web area devoted to teenagers - whose motto was 'Be seen, be heard, be you' - and was 'shocked' by what she found there, including unsolicited sexual advances from strangers," according to the press release of UCLA's Children's Digital Media Center, of which Greenfield is director. She writes, "The sexuality expressed in a teen chat room was public, linked to strangers and had nothing to do with relationships. It was very explicit and focused on physical acts, and often associated with the degradation of women. I started to receive private instant messages, including a crude sexual advance, just by hanging out at the chat room, even though I had not participated in any of the ongoing conversations." One of the study's conclusions: "Not only will children seeking pornography 'find it all over the Internet,' but children who are not seeking pornography are often inadvertently exposed to it when they conduct Internet searches on perfectly appropriate subjects." Here's a report on the study from Child Health News and here's the Children's Digital Media Center page at the University of California, Los Angeles.