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BOX 5.3 | Youth, Pornography, and the Internet | Dick Thornburgh and Herbert S. Lin, Editors | Committee to Study Tools and Strategies for Protecting Kids from Pornography and Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content | Computer Science and Telecommunications Board | National Research Council


Box 5.3
Some Paths for Deliberate and Inadvertent Exposure to Sexually Explicit Material on the Internet


Deliberate Exposure

  • Searching for sexually explicit terms in a search engine and clicking on the links returned
  • Receiving e-mail with sexually oriented content after subscribing to a mailing list known to provide such content
  • Going deliberately to a Web site that the user is told contains sexually explicit material
  • Trading sexually explicit stories and images among friends and acquaintances through email and other forms of online interaction

Inadvertent Exposure

  • Receiving unsolicited e-mail containing sexually explicit material or links to such material (as the result of having been in a chat room--thereby displaying e-mail addresses--or subject to some other technique of "harvesting" e-mail addresses).
  • Improperly guessing the address of a Web site and receiving inappropriate material as a result.
  • Searching for terms with both sexual and non-sexual meaning in a search engine and clicking on the links returned (some of which may contain sexually oriented material).
  • Mistyping a request for information or the address of a Web site
  • Clicking on a link without really knowing what is to be expected at the site to which the link refers.




Copyright 2002 by the National Academy of Sciences