'Not for the faint hearted'
2:57 AM
Today's digital youth culture is not a place for the faint-hearted. As I talked to teenagers, I began to realise that there was more than a digital divide separating us.
What I see as soft pornography, totally inappropriate and disturbing for children to make or pose for, some of them see as harmless, if provocative, teenage fun.
The 'sexting' craze is affecting teenage girls from all walks of lives
The 'sexting' craze is affecting teenage girls from all walks of lives
When boys told me they had been sent pictures by girls of themselves posing topless and even naked, it seemed to most of them a bit of a joke - until I told them that looking at such material of underage girls was illegal.
In the past year, there have been at least two cases where police have been called into schools after footage of pupils performing sex acts has been discovered on their phones. One involved youngsters as young as 13. One of the teenagers I spoke to acknowledged that filming sex sessions does happen.
'It's nothing to do with how you are brought up,' she said. 'It's just out there now.'
David Wright is a leading online child protection officer who was called in to investigate computer use in schools after the Soham murders. He tours the South-West of England talking to parents, teachers and pupils.
He believes that it's often the most well-off children - those with laptops in their bedrooms, digital cameras and wireless access in their homes - who are the most at risk.
'Up to 39 per cent of parents say they have never spoken to their children about how the internet should be used,' he says.
'Police forces tell us that children at most risk online are 11 to 14-year-olds from professional families, all with internet access in their bedroom.
'You might not necessarily classify those as society's most vulnerable, but they're the ones that the police are dealing with on a weekly basis.'
It usually starts at around 11 or 12 years of age. Parents who buy their children computers to help them study at secondary school often recoil in horror as they see them pout, preen and pose for that first all-important 'profile picture' for their networking site.
These pictures are then uploaded to illustrate their pages on networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo. Though these sites have a minimum age requirement of 13, many parents, and most sites, appear unable to enforce this.
And then there's the avalanche of pornographic material beamed onto every computer screen unless it is actively blocked. According to one U.S. software producer, 25 per cent of all the daily search engine requests are for pornographic material, and it's estimated that one in ten of all websites is pornographic.
Much of the internet's professionally produced porn is available free. What was once the subject of an obscenity trial is now just two clicks away.
