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Home Internet access has expanded to 84% among young people. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010)
32 percent of teens clear the browser history to hide what they do online from their parents. (Harris Interactive-McAfee, 2008)
16 percent have created private e-mail addresses or social networking profiles to hide what they do online from their parents. (Harris Interactive-McAfee, 2008)
52 percent of teens have given out personal information online to someone they don’t know offline. (Harris Interactive-McAfee, 2008)
50 percent of k-1st grade students do not have adults supervising them when they are online. (Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008)
Almost a third (29%) of teens have downloaded a program without their parents’ knowledge. (The Secret Online Lives of Teens, 2010)
One third of young people say that they “often” or “always” hide their online activities. (The Secret Online Lives of Teens, 2010)
About a third [of children] (32%) say that they don’t tell their parents what they are doing online, and would change their behavior if they knew their parents were watching (31%). (The Secret Online Lives of Teens, 2010)
By the time they’re just 2 years old, 92% of American children already have some form of Internet presence. (cnet.com, 2010)
Media Usage
Over the past five years, young people have increased the amount of time they spend consuming media to 8 hours per day, 7 days per week. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010)
Nearly half (47%) of all heavy media users say they usually get fair or poor grades (mostly C’s or lower). (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010)
84% of teens have a cell phone and a social networking profile. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010)
Pornography
9 out of 10 children aged between the ages of 8 and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet, in most cases unintentionally. (London School of Economics, 2002)
Today, 47 percent of families in the United States report that pornography is a problem in their home. (National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, 2010)
48 percent of K-1st reported viewing online content that made them feel uncomfortable, of which 72 percent reported the experience to a grownup, meaning that one in four children did not. (Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008)
20% of teens and 33% of young adults have sent or posted nude or semi-nude pictures or videos of themselves online. (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2009)
39% of teens and 59% of young adults have sent or posted sexually suggestive e-mails or text messages. (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2009)
44% of both teen girls and teen boys say it is common for sexually suggestive text messages to get shared with people other than the intended recipient. (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2009)
38% of teen girls and 39% of teen boys say that they have had sexually suggestive text messages or e-mails, originally meant for someone else, shared with them. (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2009)
51% of teen girls say pressure from a guy is a reason girls send sexy messages or images; only 18% of teen boys cited pressure from female counterparts as a reason. (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2009)
23% of teen girls and 24% of teen boys say they were pressured by friends to send or post sexual content. (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2009)
Youth exposed to sexual content on television are more likely to overestimate the frequency of sexual activity among peers and have more permissive attitudes toward premarital sex. (American Social Health Association, 2005)
49% of female college students surveyed find pornography acceptable. (Brigham Young University, 2007)
79% of youth unwanted exposure to pornography occurs in the home (Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later, 2006)
One in four internet users look at a pornographic website in any given month. Men look at pornography online more than they look at any other subject. And 66% of 18-34 year-old men visit a pornographic site every month. (Social Costs of Pornography, 2010)
Numerous statistics drawn from the 2008 Internet Pornography Statistics confirm the impression that pornography is widely accessed by Internet users, and that both production and consumption are expanding. Every second, there are approximately 28,258 Internet users viewing pornography. (Social Costs of Pornography, 2010)
Approximately 75% of pornographic websites display visual teasers on the homepages before asking if the viewers are of legal age; only 3% of such websites require proof-of-age before granting access to sexually explicit material, and two-thirds of pornographic websites do not include any adult-content warnings. (Social Costs of Pornography, 2010)
Sexual Predators
There are over 644,865 Registered Sex Offenders in the United States; an estimated 10,000 have been lost in the system. (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2008)
16 percent of teens considered meeting someone they’ve only talked to online and 8 percent have actually met someone they only knew online. (Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later, 2006)
14 percent of students in 10th-12th grade have accepted an invitation to meet an online stranger in-person. (Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008)
14 percent of 7th-9th grade students reported that they had communicated with someone online about sexual things. (Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008)
Nine percent of children in 7th-9th grade have accepted an online invitation to meet someone in-person. (Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008)
13 percent of 2nd-3rd grade students report that they used the Internet to talk to people they do not know. (Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008)
Social Networking and Cyberbullying
84% of teens have a social networking profile (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2010)
54% of children surveyed said they don’t personally know all of the friends accepted into their social network “friends” list (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2010)
43% of teens report being victims of bullying by cell phone or Internet (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2010)
43% of 16-17 year olds chat with people they don’t know in the offline world (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2010)
In a typical day, 40% of young people will go to a social networking site, and those who do visit these sites will spend an average of almost an hour a day (:54) there. (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010)
69% of teens divulge their physical location (The Secret Lives of Online Teens, 2010)
Microsoft’s survey of parents in the United States shows that most (67%) are involved in their children’s social networking activities. A significant number (38%) of kids under the age of 13 have a social networking account, even though the minimum age is often 13. Although parents are aware of the risks, most underage kids with an account got permission from parents to use the site before the child met the website’s age requirements. (Microsoft Online Safety, 2010)
Parents mainly monitor behavior by “friending” their child in their social network (56%), checking their browser history (52%) or logging into their account (49%). They rarely use monitoring software for this purpose (10%). (Microsoft Online Safety, 2010)
One in four kids (25%) report that they wouldn’t know what to do if they were bullied or harassed online. (The Secret Online Lives of Teens, 2010)
20 percent of teens have engaged in cyberbullying behaviors, including posting mean or hurtful information or embarrassing pictures, spreading rumors, publicizing private communications, sending anonymous e-mails or cyberpranking someone. (Harris Interactive-McAfee, 2008)
Cyberbullying victims were almost twice as likely to have attempted suicide compared to youth who had not experienced cyberbullying. (Cyberbullying Research Center, 2010)
SOURCE: Bsecure.com