The Myths Of Growing Up Online

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Livingstones study did indeed find that 57 percent of 9 to 19 year olds who went online at least once a week had seen porn on the Internet. But broken down by age, the statistics looked somewhat different, and less shocking: only 21 percent of children 9 to 11 had encountered pornography, compared with 80 percent of 18-19 year olds.

As a culture, we have profoundly mixed views about how much adolescents should be protected from adult realities and almost uniform agreement that children should be protected from pornography. Childhood may be an age of innocence but adolescence is a time of transitions and sexual discoveries. Most adult menand a good number of adult womenborn since the 1950s probably looked at Playboy in their teens; in that context, it's hardly surprising that most teens today encounter porn on the Internet. The challenge is how to protect children from premature exposure to pornography and how to help youth think through their initial encounters, wanted or unwanted, with sexually explicit material. Right now, we aren't doing a great job with either.

The shock value of the Daily Mails story hinged on the idea that "children" were accessing sexually explicit material behind their parents' backs. But the study actually showed something quite different. Based on her interviews, Livingstone cautioned that the youngest children often didnt fully understand which images their parents saw as pornographic. Some felt that all nudity constituted pornography, for example, though many adults would disagree.

Still, lets assume that a certain percentage of British youth are encountering hardcore pornography. Statistics about digital porn are only meaningful when looked at in the context of other media. And according to Livingstone's study of British children, 52 percent of respondents reported seeing pornography on television (presumably through cable or pay per view), 46 percent had seen adult magazines, and 30 percent had seen explicit videos. In a country where postcards advertising prostitution are plastered inside most phone booths, one encounters unwanted pornography just trying to phone home. Internet access increases the risk of exposure to pornography but not as dramatically as many people might imagine.

For the most part, the children responded to such chance encounters in ways many adults would find appropriate. According to the study, 65 percent of children and adolescents surveyed said they deleted pornographic files without opening them and 56 percent of those who accidentally clicked onto a porn site said they left immediately. I get more vile and disgusting spam every morning than I care to look at before breakfast and don't have trouble believing that many kids find themselves in similar situations. That said, it would naive to deny that a fair number of adolescents take advantage of the privacy and ease of accessing porn online to deliberately explore some forbidden sites. (I suspect a high percentage of my readers have done the same.)

The kids' reactions to porn was equally telling: 54 percent did not think too much about it, 20 percent thought it was disgusting, and less than 10 percent found it appealing. Children and youth, no less than adults, were concerned about the place of porn on the Internet.

One can certainly debate these findings. Did the children tell the truth to the adult researchers? Do some kids exaggerate their access to porn to sound cool and mature? Is pornography something any of usadults or childrencan discuss with total honesty? Until we find ways around such problems, these figures are as good as we are apt to get and Livingstone's combination of survey collection and more extended interviews helps to ground the findings in a more complex picture of these kids' everyday experience.

Overall, these findings are grounds for reflectionbut not hysteria. Livingstone respects the concerns of parents who think any exposure to pornography is a gross violation of childhood innocence. Yet she rejects moral panic in favor of a more pragmatic focus on what should be done to reduce the amount of pornographic spam, to help children develop greater skills in protecting themselves from exposure to unwanted images, and to educate parents about the challenges of protecting children in the digital environment. And, we might add, to help parents develop the courage to have meaningful and age-appropriate conversations with their offspring about sex and pornography.

As the Livingstone report notes in its conclusion: "Some may read this report and consider the glass half full, finding more education and participation and less pornographic or chat room risk than they had feared. Others may read this report and consider the glass half empty, finding fewer benefits and greater incidence of dangers than they would have hoped for." Unfortunately, many more people will encounter media coverage of the research than will read it directly, and its nuanced findings are almost certainly going to be warped beyond recognition. If we cant talk about youth access to new media thoughtfully and calmly, then we have little hope of avoiding the greatest dangers or achieving the best potentials these media offer us.