The Age, a newspaper in Australia recently published an interesting piece entitled The Virtual Generation. The article describes the virtual world in which children grow and interact and details how it can affect the real world.
Violence and sex are highlighted in the article as the top concerns: "Sex is inescapable." Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Harvard Medical School's Center on Media and Child Health, said "Kids are having their first sexual awareness in an environment where, with one click of a mouse, they can see anyone doing anything at any time." This is particularly frightening when we consider that adolescence, as Dr. Rich explained, is a time spent learning and rehearsing scripts for social behavior. The effects of such early exposure to "disinhibited sex" will have drastic repercussions for our future.
Dr. Rich explained "There is . . .increasingly robust body of data showing that those young people who watch or use media with the most sexual content in it . . . on average initiate sex about two years earlier. They learn from what they watch."
Data from a child health unit at Canberra Hospital showed that the number of incidents of children sexually harming other children grew from 3 per year 10 years ago to 70 incidents in 2003. Nearly all the children involved had been exposed to Internet pornography - and "thought that was the Internet's sole purpose."
It is a tragic tale when the greatest method for communication since the printing press has been so warped and diluted that children think it's sole purpose is to distribute pornography.
Parent's need to be aware what their children are doing online. Technologists need to develop and offer parents better solutions for protecting children from dangerous behavior and content online. Governments and international bodies must recognize that not only is child pornography a heinous thing, but that allowing children uninhibited and free access to pornography online is also damaging to communities and our world.
The CP80 Foundation is pleased to offer free training to individuals who wish to learn more about the Internet, pornography, current laws and the CP80 Internet Channel Initiative.
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