The 'Wallpaper' of Children's Lives
Figure 5: Children encountering sexual images online
- 22 per cent of girls and 26 per cent of boys aged 9 – 16 report having encountered sexual images online or offline in the past 12 months.
- 8 per cent of 11 – 16 year olds report that they have seen online sexual images including nudity.
- 6 per cent have seen images of someone having sex.
- 6 per cent have seen someone's genitals online.
- 2 per cent say they have seen violent sexual images.
- Among children who have seen online sexual images, 41 per cent of parents say their child has not seen such images, while 30 per cent recognise they have and 29 per cent say they don't know.
Source: Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig and Ólafsson, 2010
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Parents are, with schools, a key source of information on digital safety (Ofcom 2011(2)). The UKCCIS Click Clever, Click Safe code (Directgov (1)) was set up to be an effective and popular way for both parents and children to remember a set of simple online behaviours
– "Zip It, Block It, Flag It'" – to help avoid common risks online. It is to be hoped that funding will continue to be found to support and promote this excellent initiative.43.
Opinions are divided about the robustness of existing academic evidence that exposure of children to pornography directly causes harm, although Papadopoulos is strongly of the view that it is detrimental to young people's development (Papadopoulos, 2010; see also Flood, 2009). However, many contributors to the Review, including child protection organisations, schools, local authorities, child psychologists, youth workers, agony aunts, women's organisations and internet safety organisations amongst others, provided compelling examples to illustrate their concern that pornography has a negative impact on children and young people. For example, children became convinced that they had to behave and look like the on—screen participants in order to have 'proper' sex; which generally meant sex without any basis in love or display of affection or equality; and to conform physically to some very narrow gender stereotypes. And since research does show that people convicted of serious crimes of violence and sexual violence often have a history of using pornography (Papadopoulos, 2010), many respondents advocate a common sense approach to accept the potential for real harm to be caused to children by the ready access to such material. We accept this as a persuasive argument for strong measures to be taken.
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