A new study led by a cybercrime expert from Michigan State University has found that it's not just strangers who are harassing children online.
Around one in four children have reported that they were pressured by their online friends to talk about sex. The study was conducted on a group of 439 middle- and high-school students with age between 12 and 16.
According to a report published in Science Daily, Thomas J. Holt, Michigan State University associate professor of criminal justice, declared that his study is not having the goal to downplay the risks of kids meeting pedophiles online, but rather to draw attention to other types of dangers as well, particularly to the potential threat of child sexual harassment by their own friends and classmates. These people who are closet to children are actually also those with whom kids spend most of the time online.
This is one of the first studies to examine child sexual victimization factors. The study was published online in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice.
According to the conclusions of the research, kids with low self-control and girls are more likely to be sexual victims. However, an unexpected finding was the fact that 24 percent of study participants were sexually harassed online. Keeping the computer in an open space where the family can watch the online habits of children as well as parental-filtering software did not seem to reduce the issue.
Holt declared that this problem doesn't seem like something that can be solved by technological means, or at least this is the case for the moment. He added that it seems that this issue has to be resolved through good communication and conversation between child and parent.
It is true that such conversations can be difficult at times, especially when they involve talking about sex. However, parents really need to talk with their kids about what their habits online and what they are asked by their friends as well as strangers to do online. Holt also said that only this kind of open dialogue could help minimize the risk.
