Online visits leave many teens uneasy

By BRIDGET CARTER

Nearly a quarter of teenage girls using the internet feel unsafe online.

A survey on internet safety among young New Zealand women found the teenagers were unsettled by sexual threats, although only half said they would tell their parents.

The survey, by Auckland University's psychology department, was commissioned by the Internet Safety Group. It questioned 347 females aged between 11 and 19 who had visited the www.nzgirl.co.nz website.

Results showed that one in three users had had a face-to-face meeting with someone met online and 26 per cent had communicated with the person by telephone.

Of those surveyed, 22.5 per cent said there had been times they felt unsafe or threatened.

Only half of those who had felt unsafe said they would tell their parents, 14.5 per cent would tell the police and 10 per cent would keep it to themselves.

Sixty per cent of those surveyed said they gave an address or phone number or sent a photo of themselves to someone they met online.

The Internet Safety Group called this "unsafe behaviour."

The findings have prompted the group to request that education on internet safety be introduced to the national school curriculum.

The clinical manager of the Auckland Sexual Abuse Help Foundation, Kathryn McPhillips, said that in the past two years the foundation had had two reports of internet-related sex attacks on young women.



She suspected many would not report incidences.

"There is a high level of self blame and the victim is therefore unlikely to tell anyone about it," she said.

She aligned internet-related sex attacks to sex attacks on those who sought a meeting through a personals advertisement or a dating agency.

People did not like to admit having used such means, she said, which was why they were often reluctant to report attacks.

The head of the police sex abuse squad, Detective Sergeant Phil Kirkham, agreed that reported internet-initiated sexual crimes were still rare.

But he suspected the number represented "the tip of the iceberg" of the danger children and teenagers were getting into on the internet.

The Internet Safety Group said the illusion of anonymity in cyberspace encouraged both the naive trust of young people and the predatory behaviour of those who victimised the young.

Introducing internet safety education into a school's curriculum would help establish a safe internet environment. But Secondary Principals Association president Tom Robson said he doubted school education would deter teenagers from exploring internet chatrooms. He said the responsibility lay with the parents.