Irish children half as likely to see net porn as Danish children

Irish children are half as likely as their Danish counterparts to have seen sexual images online or offline in the last 12 months, according to a study.

The report, published by the EU Kids Online project run by a department at the London school of Economics, ranked the experiences of seven European countries based on two separate studies into internet usage — the 2010 EU Kids Online study and Net Children Go Mobile which began last year.

It found across both reports, Irish children were only ahead of their counterparts in the UK when it came to the likelihood of them having seen sexual images in the past year.

Some 23% of Irish children were reported as having seen sexual images on or offline in the past 12 months in the 2010 study, and 21% gave the same answer in the most recent study.

By contrast, 52% of Danish children said they had seen sexual images on or offline in the past 12 months in the Net Children Go Online study — 10% more than the number who gave the same response to the 2010 study.

The latest report, entitled Experiences with Sexual Content: What we know from the research so far, states: “Lower ratios in Ireland and the UK might be a result of more than one factor: political initiatives for children’s protection online and a greater visibility of children’s online safety agenda.

“In this respect, we consider the intensification of campaigns for children’s protection online, government initiatives of pornography banning, and the increasing visibility of research about children’s experiences online as possible explanatory factors of lower self-reporting of sexual content.

“Children’s advanced internet literacy and self-regulation, alongside parents’ enhanced literacy and regulation strategies, could also play an important part in this change,” the report read.

Across all seven countries and both reports, more girls than boys said they had seen sexual images on or offline in the previous year, while the percentage of children who had seen such images increased with age — from 13% and 14% of nine and 10 year olds, to 42% and 44% of 15 and 16 year olds.

Television and films are the most likely platforms on which sexual images are seen, although for older age groups internet ‘pop ups’ and social networking sites are also likely to showcase sexual images.