The internet definitely provides the people with a much wider and larger range of information which could be easily gathered and connects everyone around the world. Internet encyclopedias, online dictionaries, and other reference books are mostly available online which has not only enabled us to reduce those bulky books, they have also become easier to search.
Often, teenagers are referred to the computer generation since it has become a necessity in the modern home. As this may indicate, the teenagers are mostly the ones who are surfing on the internet. The problem is that to many teenagers aren’t quite mature enough to deal with some problems of the internet. Since it is difficult to detect people’s identity through the internet, putting age qualifications upon the content is hard since there are few ways of doing so. Therefore those 77 million children who are surfing on the net are in danger of reaching these sources.
Sexual contexts which should be tightly restricted to teenage users are one of the most challenging problems. These sexual contexts include pornography, sexual abuse by others and others of these kinds. To investigate the seriousness, The Crimes against Children Research Center at New Hampshire University had conducted a survey where 1500 children aged 10 to 17 had participated in 1999. The results were shocking and indicated that there was definitely a need for something to be done.
The results were as the following.
*One of every four children surveyed had an unwanted exposure to pictures of naked people and naked people having sex.
*One in five had received a sexual solicitation over the Internet.
*One in 17 was harassed or threatened by a predator.
*One in 33 had an aggressive sexual solicitation, where they were asked to meet somewhere, were asked for their phone number or address, or were sent money or gifts as an enticement to meet away from home.
*Only 3 percent of the children told their parents about it. And they probably didn't because they were afraid their parents would take away their Internet access.
Not to mention, this survey was conducted 6 years ago, and since then the usage of internet has grown exponentially.
The facts that the internet has no boarders between countries or language, since it is afforded in every language, is the biggest attraction as well as the biggest problem as it becomes a global issue rather than a issue of one nation. Due to this often it is hard to find and punish the people responsible for crimes through the internet.
