Kid exposure to porn on phones: Study

A new study on kids' exposure to online pornography warns that wireless technology "opens the door for more unsupervised access by minors to online pornography," Wireless Week reports. "The Porn Standard: Children and Pornography on the Internet," released this week by "liberal think tank Third Way" and cited on NBC's Today show Wednesday, found that "one-third of children 11-17 have their own cell phones today," half will have them in the next couple of years; "pornography already constitutes half of the multimedia traffic carried by US wireless carriers outside of their own portals"; and revenues from pornography delivered via mobile devices are projected to increase by more than 50% this year, and "perhaps triple by 2009." For some of those numbers it cited other studies. The Today show picked up on these surprising figures in the report: "The largest group of consumers of adult material on the Internet was 12-17 years old" and "57% of 9-to-19-year-olds with Internet access have accessed online porn." Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) of Arkansas unveiled the study when she announced she'll be introducing a bill called the "Internet Safety and Child Protection Act of 2005." The bill includes a 25% federal tax on Net pornography and "new requirements for adult Web sites to help prevent children from looking at them," the Associated Press reports. (Senator Lincoln is listed as honorary co-chair on Third Way's Web site, according to the Wireless Week report.) Parental controls for cellphones are in the works in the US - for that story, see my 5/6 issue.