14 DAY TRIAL // A new survey reveals that 4 percent of the US teenagers are asked to offer a sexual picture to send it on the Internet although they communicate with unknown persons. The research included 1500 persons with ages from 10 to 17 and according to News24.com, it was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Basically, the concept works quite simple: a teenager is asked to send an explicit photo with him/her over the Internet although the one who demands it is not always a known person. According to the same source, 65 youths included in the survey really comply with the demand and send detailed sexual photos to other Internet users.
"One of the things we really need to start doing is talk to kids more directly and informing them of the criminal implications of this type of thing, encouraging them to be aware of these situations and to report them," said Kimberly J Mitchell, a research professor at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, News24.com reported. "It's really a matter of too much technology and too much privacy at a sexually curious age," said Michelle Collins, director of the exploited children division of the government-funded National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, added for the same source.
This type of threat is very dangerous for most of the young Internet users since the phenomenon tends to grow up and affect more and more teenagers. Lately, the popularity of the instant messaging clients such as Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger or Google Talk has continuously increased and obviously, the segment of users that is most lured by them is represented by the teenagers.
It was proved several times that the instant messengers can represent a real threat for the Internet users as it might hide all kinds of malicious people able to harm your computer and the information stored on it.