Online Victimization of Youth

The report Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later (2006) was produced in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. This national survey of 1,500 youth aged 10 to 17 documented their use of the Internet and experiences while online including unwanted exposure to sexual solicitation, sexual material, and harassment.

The report can be downloaded here: Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later (2006)

Here are just a few of the interesting findings:

• 70% of the girls and 30% of the boys who were surveyed were targeted for sexual solicitations and approaches
• 81% who were targeted for sexual solicitations and approaches were ages 14 or older
• 73% of the perpetrators of sexual solicitations and approaches were male
• 79% of solicitation incidents happened on home computers
• Of the youth who were solicited, 86% met solicitors online, while 14% were people the youth knew in person before the solicitation
• In aggressive solicitations incidents, 75% of solicitors asked to meet youth in person
• In 56% of the cases, youth did not tell anyone about solicitations
• 54% of the boys and 46% of the girls had unwanted exposure to sexual material
• 83% of unwanted exposure to sexual material incidents happened while youth were surfing the Web
• 86% of youth saw images of naked people, and more than half saw more explicit pictures
• 79% of unwanted exposure to sexual material happened at home
• 34% of youth had posted their real names, telephone numbers, home addresses, or the names of their schools online where anyone could see
• 21% of youth in exposure incidents said they knew a site was X-rated before entering
• 28% of youth said they had "made rude or nasty comments to someone on the Internet"