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Posted on 12/14/2001 5:28:13 AM PST by truthandlife

n obscenity watchdog group is concerned with the results of a recent study showing that 70 percent of teens surveyed have "accidentally" encountered porn on the Internet.

"Clearly, there is a major failure in adult responsibility when almost three out of four teens report they have accidentally come across pornography on the Web," Morality in Media President Robert Peters said.

"But the biggest failure of responsibility lies with federal and state prosecutors who turn a blind eye to obscenity on the Internet," he said.

"If obscenity laws were being vigorously enforced, the last thing hardcore pornographers would want to do is draw attention to their vile wares by engaging in reckless marketing methods. If vigorously enforced, there would also be much less pornography to accidentally stumble across," Peters added.

The study, "Generation Rx.com: How Young People Use the Internet for Health Information," which was conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, also found that 57 percent of teens surveyed believe porn exposure would have a "serious impact on kids under 18." Forty-one percent said that exposure is "no big deal."

CNSNews.com reported on the study Dec. 11 and 12.

Parents shoulder some responsibility for inadequately monitoring teens' use of the Internet or not installing screening technology on their home computers, Peters said, noting, however, that "no technology is perfect and technology on home computers cannot protect kids when they are at school or work or at a friend's house or the library."

Internet service providers should block illegal porn even without a parent's request while libraries and schools should install screening technology, Peters said. "Many libraries and schools refuse to install screening technology," he said, "arguing that rules and monitoring computer use can protect children from Internet porn."

Patrick McGrath, Morality in Media's director of media relations, described the amount of federal obscenity enforcement in the past few years as "downright pitiful."

"Had the obscenity laws been properly enforced, that percentage would have been much, much smaller. I couldn't say that it would go down to zero, but it wouldn't have been 70 percent. It would be a number at a more rational level," he said.

Bill Lyon, executive director for The Free Speech Foundation, the trade association for the adult entertainment industry, said that there is nothing wrong with using obscenity laws to punish those who are producing truly obscene material such as child pornography, but "none of our members are producing anything that would qualify as obscenity. It is all protected speech," Lyon said.

McGrath admitted that the term being used by the Kaiser Foundation is a more general application of the word obscenity, which makes it hard to tell how much of the study is based on obscenity or just pornography.

"They use the generic term [of obscenity], not the legal term, so it is hard to say. I think a major chunk of it would come under the classification of hard-core pornography or obscenity, but we do not have an exact figure about that," McGrath said.

Lyon said he believes there is a major difference in younger teens and older teens for the purpose of the study.

"Older teenagers are going to be less affected than a 13- or 14-year-old would. Nobody in the adult entertainment industry wants to have kids going on the sites and we do everything we can to keep them away from it," he said.

McGrath said the study highlights teens defined as ages 15-17, but "they did also ask up to age 24."

Lyon acknowledged that children do see inappropriate content on accident. "It certainly is possible that a kid might get onto a site by accident. I realize that, but everybody has tried to clean up the so-called front porches of their site. All of our members have tried to do that," he said.

A "front porch" is the opening page to a site that requires age verification, Lyon said.

He believes it is a stretch to buy into the Kaiser Foundation study that shows viewing pornography is harmful. "There really is no scientific evidence that children are particularly harmed by seeing something like this," Lyon said.

McGrath, however, believes that Mary Anne Layden of the University of Pennsylvania and Judith Reisman have shown that viewing porn is harmful to teens. They are "both going on real data on brain research and how images can get implanted into the brain," he said.

He said Layden outlined the fact that pornography is the "only kind of addiction in which there is no hope for detoxification because you can't detoxify these images out of your mind."

"If you're learning about sex through hardcore porn, you are basically just turning into an animal without any thought at all to restraining yourself, calmness or rationality," McGrath said.
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Hunter is CNSNews.com's evening editor; Pyeatt is a CNSNew.com staff writer. Used by permission. (BP) file photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: INTERNET DANGERS.

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