Thirteen and posing with a sexual smirk… the reality of cyberspace

Sex. It’s primal. It’s necessary for the survival of the species and today’s youth are far more clued into sexuality than their parents or grandparents were at a similar age.

Children however have been given an education in sex that is not prescribed, without boundaries or safeguards. Sites such as Bebo are to the fore in propagating this pedagogy through social networking.

The ease in which social networking sites have infiltrated youth social norms has been astonishing.

Sites like Bebo offer children a less confrontational and less challenging road to acceptance. Entire cyber communities known as ‘groups’ have developed where kids are encouraged to become members of a particular interest peer network.

Many of these groups simply require the ability to find their homepage to be an accepted member. However increasing number of teens regularly use these facilities to share explicit imagery of their own bodies and to meet up for sexual encounters.

Some profiles publically share personal contact details. Instant Messaging addresses, which allow children to chat live to others, VoIP systems such as Skype and Web Cameras are an invitation to engage in inappropriate activities.

There are profiles all over wesbites purporting to belong to Irish teens aged between 13 and 17 with images of varying degrees of sexual explicitness. Some profiles include invitations to meet up for sexual experimentation.

Although Bebo has strict restrictions on the content of imagery, images of teens in various states of undress and arousal seem to be perfectly acceptable to Bebo visitors. The lack of identity verification means children who agree to meet someone purporting to be of the same age, may in fact be agreeing to meet someone much older.

The practice of ‘meets’ and sharing of this explicit imagery is more common amongst children who identify as gay or bisexual, or who are currently exploring their sexuality. The vast majority of the profiles viewed fell into this category.

An examination of the ‘friends’ of these teens highlights a disturbing pattern of adult subscription. The groups that these children are members of such as ‘Curious Guys Dublin’, ‘Gaybiireland’ or ‘Bi’s/Gays 16 or Unda’ include members as old as 50 who are openly communicating with children, inviting them to chat or to join their own private Bebo pages.

Groups such as ‘Bi-Gay-Msn-Ireland’ have over 900 members and includes photo streams from members’ pages showing images of teenage boys with invitations to add them to chat. Although the invitation itself may be harmless, the intent of the viewer may be very different.

The group ‘Gay-Bi-Ireland-Pride’, which purports to advocate gay pride, includes links to the official Labour Lesbian, Gay,Bisexual and Transgender Bebo page. It has young children offering their email addresses and using highly explicit sexual language. The Fine Gael LGBT Bebo page is a member of the group ‘Gay is okay’ which contains images and messages from various teens. It is important to note that neither Fine Gael nor Labour have control over the content of these groups.

Nevertheless, one has to enquire whether membership is an implicit endorsement of this behaviour, and should political groups such as these screen their memberships more carefully?

It is important to monitor children’s internet activities. There is the constant danger of paedophiles and cyber-bullying. Bebo, MySpace and YouTube have allowed kids to express themselves in ways that could not have been conceived ten years ago. However, the premature sexualisation of children is a sinister by-product.

In the world of Bebo and MySpace children can explore and experiment with sexual activity in a virtual environment or by arrangement, totally unbeknownst to their parents or friends.

Children can be unaware of the dangers that the unpoliced, unsupervised and unforgiving internet harbours. Most adults choose to parent from the sofa, entrusting a net-nanny to guard their off-spring from the digital dangers of the information highway (a recent survey indicated that only 15% of parents were confident enough to install such software).

Parents can easily abandon their kids to their ‘technology rich’ bedrooms, deluded that they are watching the latest educational documentary or playing with their Wii. It is this lack of monitoring and knowledge that allows (albeit virtually) paedophiles into family homes.

Technology has always been the playground of the young. Older generations often struggle to keep up with the pace, as children simply tag along for the technological ride. It is a haunting reminder of our own mortality; that to stand still is to be lost in the chaos of progress. The internet, one of technologies greatest advances has afforded humanity unparalleled access to the wealth of human understanding and discourse. It has also revolutionised the way we communicate, build social groups and learn.

However increasingly the 21st century family seems to be, as the psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple put it, ‘fabricated from a social milieu in which every kind of child abuse and neglect flourishes, in which age of consent has been de facto abolished, and in which adults are afraid of their own offspring once they reach the age of violence’.

Are we prostituting our progeny to technology, abandoning our moral objections to a processor?

You decide.