Pornography Facts
With the advent of the internet, the problem with child pornography has exploded.
– Ernie Allen, National Center for Mission and Exploited Children
Child Pornography
- The number of internet child pornography images has increased 1500% since 1988.
- Approximately 20% of all internet pornography involves children. (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
- Approximately 20 new children appear on the porn sites every month – many kidnapped or sold into sex slavery (Combating Pedophile Information Networks in Europe, March 2003)
- The U.S. Customs Service estimates that there are more than 100,000 Web sites offering child pornography – which is illegal worldwide.
- These unlawful sexual images can be purchased as easily as shopping at Amazon.com. “Subscribers” typically use credit cards to pay a monthly fee of between $30 and $50 to download photos and videos, or a one-time fee of a few dollars for single images (Red Herring Magazine, 1/18/02).
- Of those arrested in the U.S. for Internet-Related Crimes between 2000 and 2001:
- 83% had images of children between 6 and 12
- 39% had images of children between 3 and 5
- 19% had images of infants and toddlers under age 3
(National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Child Pornography Possessors Arrested in Internet-Related Crimes: Findings from the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study, 2005)
It is more torturous and sadistic than it was before…The typical age of children is between 6 and 12, but the profile is getting younger…Demand for pornographic images of babies and toddlers on the internet is soaring.
– Prof. Max Taylor, “Combating Pedophile Information Networks in Europe”. March 2003
Children & Porn
- One in three children is accessing a “tsunami” of explicit pornographic images on the internet by the age of 10. (YouGov research and a study by child behavioral expert Tanya Byron)
- Four in five teenagers regularly look up unsuitable photographs or film on their computers or mobile phones. (Ibid)
- The average age of first internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old
- 80% of 15-17 year olds have had multiple hard-core exposures
- 90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed porn online (most while doing homework)
- 26 children’s character names (Pokemon, Action Man, Mario) are linked to thousands of porn links. (http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html)
- 20% of children (10-17 years old) receive unwanted sexual solicitations online. (“The Porn Standard, Children and Pornography on the Internet, A Third Way Report,” by Sean Barney, Senior Policy Advisor, July 2005):
- 56% were asked to send a picture online
- 27% of the pictures were sexually oriented
- 44% of the solicitors were under the age of 18
- Pornography and sexualized media push teens to become sexually active.
- Pornography and sexualized media distort the way teens view themselves and others: many teenage girls attempt to alter their dress and physical appearance to correspond to the sexualized modles they see in the media
- “Pornography and sexualized media, are teaching teens that sex without responsibility is not only acceptable but preferable and desirable. Teenagers are being bombarded with ‘adult’ sexual images and situations long before they have the emotional maturity, wisdom, and life experiences to make informed decisions and choices.” (Excerpted from The Drug of The New Millennium)
- Children are notorious for imitating what they’ve seen, read or heard. Studies suggest that exposure to pornography can prompt kids to act out sexually against younger, smaller or more vulnerable children.
- Experts in the field of childhood sexual abuse report that any premature sexual activity in children always points to two possible stimulants: experience or exposure. This means that the sexually deviant child may either have been molested or simply exposed to sexuality through pornography.
- In a study of 600 American males and females of junior high school age and above, researcher Dr. Jennings Bryant found that:
- 91% of the males and 82% of the females admitted to having been exposed to X-rated, hark-core pornography.
- Over 66% of the males and 40% of the females reported wanting to “try out” some of the sexual behaviors they had witnesses.
- Among high school students, 31% of males and 18% of females admitted to actually doing some of the prurient things they had seen in the pornography within a few days of exposure. (Donna Rich Hughes, Kids Online: Protecting Your Children in Cyberspace, published by Fleming H. Revell, a Division of Baker Book House Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 1998, p.88)