Targetting the Right People…

Latest news out of Stephen Conroy’s office offered up an array of information on a study put out by his office completed by the Edith Cowan University, called the Review of Existing Australian and International Cyber-safety Research.

What caught my eye in the report was an interesting stat with regard to pornography. Apparently 84 percent of 16-17 year old boys have been “accidentally” exposed to pornography, while 60 percent of girls. Also mentioned in the stats was that 38 percent of 16-17 percent of boys and 2 percent of girls deliberately looked for pornography. I kinda feel that only one group of boys is being honest here, but that aside, I’d like to bring up another point.

The government spent just under $126 million on the project, which seems a little bit of an overkill. I haven’t seen the whole report, but I could have told them for free that the vast majority of boys in that age group would have come across porn on the Internet, accidentally or otherwise. Sure, this type of info is important, but what I would have really liked to have seen was this study target children in the 5-17 age bracket – especially those under 14 who are not only more at risk, but more naïve in the ways of the world.

Another stat that would be worth a look see is that 10 percent of these kids say they’ve been bullied at one stage or another, while the world rate is 50 percent. Either there is some under reporting going on there, or us Aussies are a lot nicer than other folk!