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Virtual innocence?

Many public bodies, NGOs and private companies around the world are dedicating resources to determining the impact of the Internet on young people and how to protect them from its harmful effects. One such group is the Save the Children organization, which has worked with us to produce these pages. Open your eyes to reality, your children could be in danger!


1. 25 percent of five-year olds use the Internet.

As early as 2001, 25 percent of five-year olds in the USA used the Internet. This figure reached 75 percent for children between 15 and 17-years old. Surprising data, revealed by the “Computer and Internet Use by Children and Adolescents in 2001” study carried out by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, and which reflects the early age at which children begin to use the Internet, and the role that the Web plays in the lives of adolescents.

2. In 2004 more children used the Internet than adults.

“Children have overtaken adults in terms of average access to the Internet”. This is one of the conclusions of the Association for the Research of Communication Media after carrying out in 2004 the “Sixth AIMC survey of Internet users”. Specific data points to the fact that children between 8 and 13-years old make up half of the total number of Internet users. Most of them access the Web from home and the most frequent activities are browsing, chatting and playing games online.

3. 44 percent of children have felt sexually harassed on the Internet.

According to the “Child security and use of the Internet by minors” survey, published in Spain by the Child Protection Agency in 2002, 44 percent of minors that use the Internet regularly have felt sexually harassed at one time and 11 percent admitted having encountered this experience on several occasions. In other cases, the offense may take the form of insults from other Internet users or unsolicited mail with offensive content.

Worryingly, 14.5 percent of children in the survey had arranged a meeting with a stranger via the Internet and 8 percent had done so on more than one occasion. Ten percent of these attended on their own and 7 percent had not even told anyone that they were going to meet someone.

4. 28 percent of minors visit pornographic web pages.

According to the survey in the previous section, 19 percent of children access pornographic pages at some time or other and another nine percent do so frequently. This same survey also revealed a series of data about children accessing dangerous content:

  • Children accessing pages with violent content: 38%
  • Children accessing pages with racist/xenophobic content: 16%
  • Children entering chat sessions about sex: 26%

5. 50% of children use the Internet alone.

In 2003, the “Safe Internet” study by the Catalan Research Foundation highlighted how half of the minors interviewed were unaccompanied when they surfed the Net. The same study noted the risk that situation represents for children given their propensity to use chat forums. Submerged in written conversations in these forums, it could be difficult for them to spot the true identity of the person they are talking to; and if this virtual conversation became a face-to-face meeting… it doesn’t bear thinking about.

The study also mentions the risk of children visiting games pages alone, as many of these are pirate sites with a high proportion of pornographic advertising in the form of pop-ups. This type of window opens up automatically on-screen, often with images that could be highly offensive for children.

Unaccompanied use of the Internet by children can also have series consequences on your pocket. The Internauts Association (Spain) has detected an increase in the number of incidents involving “porno dialers”: programs that offer pornographic content without the need to use credit cards. These programs make a modem connection from the computer, dialing a high-rate number and the first thing you know about it is an astronomical telephone bill.