Suzanne Stanford – My Internet Safety Coach
Internet Safety Education Speaker – (949) 644-9650; (949) 295-9650
and Vice President Internet Safety Affairs – Children’s Educational Network
My Internet Safety Coach will educate and empower you and your children on how to be safe from online predators

The Internet is a valuable and necessary tool in today’s world.  It continues to explode in population (computer users) due to affordable computers and connectivity, and ever improving “user friendly” technology.  Unfortunately, this has resulted in increased child predation.  Every day, “somewhere”, children are being victimized.  Predators are being “unwittingly” invited into your home.  They hide behind the anonymity of the Internet and prey upon unsuspecting youths.

It is imperative that every adult, teen, and child know the strategies to be safe online, know how to recognize danger, and not be afraid to report it should it occur.
 
As you review the following facts and statistics, be aware that the studies indicated below are not conducted on an annual basis thus, you will notice information prior to 2006.  Best efforts have been made however, to provide you with the most up-to-date “validated” information available.

If you have any questions, or would like me to speak at your event, business, or school, please call.

“The safety of every child is the heart of my business”

                    Suzanne Stanford

  My Internet Safety Coach

INTERNET FACTS

• The rate of growth of Internet use in the United States is currently two million new Internet users per month.
  (According to:  A Nation Online:  How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet, 2002)

• 13 million youth use Instant Messaging.
  (Pew Study reported in Journal of the American Medical Association, a.k.a. JAMA)

• Ninety percent of children between the ages of 5 and 17 (or 48 million) now use computers. 
  (According to:  A Nation Online:  How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet, 2002)

• 1 in 5 youths receive unwanted sexual solicitation online.   (National Center for Missing And Exploited Children, a.k.a. NCMEC, 2000)
  89% of sexual solicitations were made in either chat rooms or Instant Messages.                                                                                                                                             (Pew Study reported in Journal of the American Medical Association aka JAMA, 2001)                                                               
  87% of U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 currently use the Internet, representing about 21 million youth. Of those, approximately 11 million teens go online on a daily basis.
  (Pew Internet and American Life, “Teens and Technology,”July 27, 2005.)

• The size of the wired teen population surges at the seventh grade mark. While about 60% of sixth graders use the Internet, by seventh grade the number jumps to 82%.
  (Pew Internet and American Life, “Teens and Technology,”July 27, 2005.)

• 47% of children received e-mails with links to pornographic websites.
  (Symantec market research report, June 9, 2003)
• Over half (51%) of parents either do not have, or do not know if they have, software on their computers to monitor where their teenagers go online and with whom they interact.
  (Cox Communications and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, “Parents’ Internet Monitoring Study,” February 2005).
• 57% or more of parents were unable to correctly decipher the meanings of several common instant messaging abbreviations.
  (Cox Communications and The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, “Parents’ Internet Monitoring Study,” February 2005).
• 28% of teens said they use code words on a daily basis to hide their online conversations from their parents –example: “PIR” means “parent in room”
  (Teen Research Unlimited, “Topline Findings from Omnibuss Research,” October 2005.)
• 81% of parents and 79% of teens state that teenagers aren’t careful enough when giving out information about themselves online. 65% of parents and 64% of teens say that teenagers do things online that they wouldn’t want their parents to know about.
  (Pew Internet and American Life, “Protecting Teens Online,” March 17, 2005.)
• Some 57% of parents worry that strangers will contact their children online. These worries are well grounded. Close to 60% of teens have received an instant message or email from a stranger and 50% report emailing or instant messaging with someone they have not met before. Despite this, teens themselves are not particularly worried about strangers online; 52% of online teens say they do not worry at all about being contacted online and only 23% express any notable level of concern.
  (Pew Internet & American Life, “Teenage Life Online,” June 20, 2001)
• 30% of teenage girls polled by the Girl Scout Research Institute said they had been sexually harassed in a chatroom.  Only 7 %, however, told their mothers or fathers about the harassment, as they were worried that their parents would ban them from going online.
  (Girl Scout Research Institute 2002)
• 86% of the girls polled said they could chat online without their parents’ knowledge, 57% could read their parents email, and 54% could conduct a cyber relationship.
  (Girl Scout Research Institute 2002)

• 44 percent of children polled have visited x-rated sites or sites with sexual content. Moreover, 43 percent of children said they do not have rules about Internet use in their homes. (Time/CNN Poll, 2000) While 75% of parents say they know where children spend time online, the truth about kids’ Internet habits show 58% of teens say they have accessed an objectionable Web site: 39 % offensive music, 25% sexual content and 20% violence. (Source: WebSense, USA Today, 10/10-12/99)

• Online teens admit that they frequently communicate with people they have never met: 54% have Instant Messaged a stranger, 50% have emailed a stranger, and 45% have participated in a chat room discussion with a stranger.
  (Teen Research Unlimited, “Topline Findings from Omnibuss Research,” October 2005.)
• 27% of teens said that they have known a friend to actually meet someone whom they only knew online. (Teen Research Unlimited, “Topline Findings from Omnibuss Research,” October 2005.)
• In late 2004, teachers at Montevideo Middle School in Virginia, surveyed 178 sixth grade students at their school.  The resulting data was alarming: 1 in 4 had become friends with a stranger online and 1 in 10 had attempted to meet an online friend face to face.
  (Montevideo Middle School, “Sixth Grade Computer Survey,” December 9, 2004)
• Study of 4 million children aged 7-17 who surf the net, 29% would freely give out their home address and 14% would freely give out their email address if asked.
  (NOP Research Group, 2002)
• One in five children who use computer chatrooms has been approached over the Internet by pedophiles. (Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Akerman, Telegraph.co.uk January 2002 )
• Sex is the #1 searched for topic on the Internet. (Dr. Robert Weiss, Sexual Recovery Institute, Washington Times 1/26/2000)
• Nine out of 10 children aged between eight and 16 have viewed pornography on the Internet. In most cases, the sex sites were accessed unintentionally when a child, often in the process of doing homework, used a seemingly innocent sounding word to search for information or pictures. (London School of Economics January 2002)

Among the 95% of all 15-17 year-olds who have ever gone online:
• Seventy percent have accidentally stumbled across pornography online, 23% “very” or “somewhat” often.
• A majority (55%) of those who were exposed to pornography say they were “not too” or “not at all” upset by it, while 45% were “very” or “somewhat” upset.
• A third (33%) of those with home Internet access have filtering technology in place there.
• Among the 76% of all 15-17 year-olds who have sought health information online:  Nearly half (46%) say they have been blocked from non-pornographic sites by filtering technology.

• 26 popular children’s characters, such as Pokemon, My Little Pony and Action Man, revealed thousands of links to porn sites. 30% were hard-core.  (Envisional 2000)
• “Child abusers have been known to seek out unsuspecting victims by posting seemingly innocuous messages in computer chat rooms.”  (BBC News, June 16, 1999)
• “Sex on the Net is like heroin, it grabs them and takes over their lives. And it’s very difficult to treat because the people affected don’t want to give it up.” (Dr. Mark Schwartz, Masters & Johnson Institute, St. Louis, MO) The Internet is Never before in the history of telecommunications media in the United States has so much indecent (and obscene) material been so easily accessible by so many minors in so many American homes with so few restrictions.  (U.S. Department of Justice, Post Hearing Memorandum of Points and Authorities, 1996)
• “Pornography is one of the largest and fastest growing segments of the Internet.”                                                                                                           (Christopher Young, President/C.O.O., Cyveillance)
• “… in April 2001, there were 22.9 million unique visitors to porn sites.”                                         (Neilsen/Net Ratings, Inc.)
• 87% of girl-child molesters and 77% of boy-child molesters studied admitted to regular use of hard-core pornography.  (Report on the Use of Pornography by Sexual Offenders, Dr. William Marshall for Canada Federal Department of Justice, 1993)
• Experts in Internet crime estimate there are about 23,000 Websites dedicated to pedophilia.
• The U.S. Customs Service estimates that there are more than 100,000 websites offering child pornography – which is illegal, worldwide (Red Herring Magazine, 1/18/02)
• According to recent Forrester Research figures, pornography sites generate $700 million to $1 billion a year in gross revenue. (Forrester Research)
• Estimates for the number of X-rated sites on the net range from 20,000 to 7 million.  (CNET.com, “Sex on the Web,” April 28, 1999)
• 60% of all website visits are sexual in nature.  (MSNBC Survey 2000)
• The Adult Internet industry says some traffic is 20-30% children.  (NRC Report, 2002)
• A primary pornography consumer group is boys between ages 12 – 17.  (Attorney General’s Final Report on Pornography, 1986)
• 345% increase in child pornography sites between February, 2001 and July, 2001.  (N2H2, 8/01)
• The online pornography industry generates approximately $1 billion annually with growth projections to $5-7 billion over the next 5 years, barring any unforeseen change.  (NRC Report 2002)
• 74% of adult commercial sites display free teaser porn images on homepage.                                                                                                             (Child-proofing on the World Wide Web: A survey of adult web servers 2001, (NRC Report 2002)
• 25 million Americans visit cybersex sites between 1-10 hours per week.  (MSNBC Survey 2000)  
• Cyber-sex is the crack cocaine of sexual addiction.  (Dr. Robert Weiss, Sexual Recovery Institute, Washington Times 1/26/2000)
• Cyber-sex reinforces and normalizes sexual is orders.                                  (Dr. Robert Weiss, Sexual Recovery Institute, Washington Times 1/26/2000)
• Cyber-sex is a public health hazard exploding because very few are recognizing it as such or taking it seriously.                                  (MSNBC/Stanford/Duquesne Study; Associated Press Online, 2/29/2000)
• “Sex on the Net is just so seductive and it’s so easy to stumble upon it, people who are vulnerable can get hooked before they know it.”  (Dr. Jennifer Schneider, physician, Tucson, AZ)
• “In my clinical practice, I have treated both children and adults who have been unequivocally and repeatedly injured by exposure to pornography. If anyone still has doubts about pornography’s effects, I would suggest that he or she get invited to some meetings of “Sexaholics Anonymous” and personally witness the pain and trauma first hand.  (“Pornography’s Effects on Adults and Children”, Victor B. Cline, Ph.D.)
• “600 American males and females of high school age and above were interviewed about their “out in real life involvement with pornography.” 91% of the males and 82% of the females admitted having been exposed to X-rated, hard-core pornography. Two-thirds of the males and 40% of the females reported wanting to try out some of the behaviors they had witnessed.”  (1986 Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, study by Dr. Jennings Bryant)

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