The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

instances of harassment as extremely upsetting, while 20 percent reported extremely upsettingsolicitations, and 23 percent of youth felt extremely upset when exposed to sexual material. Theauthors found that young people at risk for unwanted solicitation, harassment, and exposure tosexual content on the Internet tend to be troubled, older adolescents who use the Internetfrequently and engage in high-risk online behavior. However, they also found that half of theyouth reporting unwanted solicitation, harassment, or exposure to sexual materials were nottroubled, high-rate Internet users or frequent online risk takers.Mitchell, Kimberly J., David Finkelhor, and Janis Wolak. “The Exposure of Youth to UnwantedSexual Material on the Internet: A National Survey of Risk, Impact, and Prevention.” Youth andSociety 34, no. 3 (March 2003): 330–58.Analyzing data from the First Youth Internet Safety Survey (2000), which the Crimes AgainstChildren Research Center at the University of New Hampshire designed to determine theincidence of and risk factors for youth exposure to sexual material on the Internet, theresearchers sought to identify a subset of unwanted exposure described as very or extremelydistressing. Twenty-four percent of the 1,500 youth surveyed in this nationally representativesample reported feeling very or extremely upset about exposure to sexually explicit material, 21percent reported feeling very or extremely embarrassed, and 19 percent reported experiencing atleast one stress symptom related to the episode. Youth reporting symptoms of stress said thatthey had stayed away from the Internet after the incident, could not stop thinking about theepisode, felt jumpy or irritable, or had lost interest in their usual pursuits. In 43 percent of theepisodes, the youth had not disclosed their exposure to anybody. Those that did report it usuallytold a parent, friend, or sibling. When the youth or their family reported the incident to anauthority, they most frequently told a teacher or school official or the Internet service provider,but they had never reported the incident to police.The authors of the study discussed the survey’s flaws, such as the lack of standardized, validatedprocedures for collecting data on children exposed to sexual material on the Internet. Theyconclude that the study indicates the urgent need to collect further evidence to inform publicpolicy aimed at protecting youth from unsought exposure to sexually explicit material on theInternet.U. S. General Accounting Office. “File-Sharing Programs: Peer-to-Peer Networks ProvideReady Access to Child Pornography.” Report to the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member,Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, no. GAO–03–351, Washington,DC, 2003.The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) produced this report in response to a request fromthe House Committee on Government Reform that GAO investigate the ease of access to childpornography on peer-to-peer networks; the risk of inadvertent exposure of juvenile users of peerto-peernetworks to pornography (including child pornography); and the extent of federal lawenforcement resources for combating child pornography on peer-to-peer networks. Agents at theCustoms Cyber-Smuggling Center performed searches, and GAO performed analyses based onkeywords and file names only, finding that child pornography is easily found and downloadedfrom peer-to-peer networks. Depending on the keywords used, child pornography comprisedF-18