One in 25 youths who surf the Internet are asked at some point in a year to transmit a sexual picture of themselves, says a new study reported by USA Today. Kids who comply could become both victims and perpetrators of child pornography, says co-author Kimberly Mitchell, a psychology professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. “They’re being asked to produce child pornography,” Mitchell says, noting that doing so is a felony. “We think most children don’t fully understand the stakes here. They may just see it as rudeness or sometimes even flattery.”
The research is based on a 2005 survey of 1,500 youths ages 10 to 17. Nearly 10 percent, or 136, were asked to send photos of themselves; 65 were asked for sexual pictures. Only one sent sexual images. More kids are posting personal photos online and becoming victims of child porn, says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. He says that of the 1,100 kids his center has identified as victims of child pornography, 5 percent produced the photos themselves. He says kids must understand that when they post something, they are “potentially sending it to the entire world and can’t get it back.” He says 89 percent of the 500,000 tips about child exploitation that his center has received in the past nine years at www.cybertipline.com involve child pornography.
Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-19-kids-sex-pics_N.htm