Online sexual predators lurk in the darker corners of cyberspace, but fewer kids are receiving sexual solicitations because they're getting savvier about the communities where they spend time. At
least that's the finding from a telephone-based survey sponsored by the government-funded National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
"It may be signs people are paying [attention] to
warnings they receive about online dangers," Janis Wolak, one of the study's authors, and a professor at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, told the Associated
Press. "They are being more cautious about who they are interacting with online."
However, the study also found that aggressive solicitations--those involving requests for contact by mail,
by phone or in person--remained steady, compared with a similar study conducted five years earlier. The study also found growth in online harassment and unwanted exposure to pornography, the AP
reported.
The report defines solicitation broadly, as any request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information --as long as it was unwanted or came
from an adult. Not all requests were deemed by the youth as distressing.
In the latest study of online kids ages 10 to 17, conducted from March to June 2005, 13 percent of respondents
reported a sexual solicitation, compared with 19 percent in a 1999-2000 survey. In both studies, about 4 percent reported aggressive solicitations. Many of the contacts came from other teens rather
than adults, according to the survey.
"A significant portion of what they are calling sexual solicitation is merely teens being teens," Nancy Willard, an online safety expert, told the AP.
Willard added that the decline demonstrates that "the dangers are real but they are not as significant as they have been hyped in recent months."
Parents, school administrators and
law-enforcement authorities have been increasingly warning of predators at online communities, including MySpace. Lawmakers have responded by trying to restrict access to MySpace and other
social-networking sites from schools and libraries that receive certain federal funds. A bill the House overwhelmingly passed last month is pending in the Senate.
While MySpace's usage
was much smaller when the 2005 survey was conducted, Wolak said she did not believe the conclusions would be different today. She said solicited kids had been engaging with strangers the same way, be
it through a chat room, instant messaging or a social-networking site.
The survey found that kids responded to solicitations by leaving a Web site, blocking solicitors, or ignoring them.
Relatively few incidents, however, were reported to law enforcement or school administrators.