Who Should Be Responsible For Policing The Internet - Essay Example

Even an innocent research in search engines can turn out to be an accidental sexual offense. Aggressive marketing ploys of many pornography websites trick online users to visiting porn sites using hot links, pop ups with lewd photographs, or trapping users by bouncing them from porn site to porn site, making it hard to leave. The chat rooms are also favourite hangouts of determined paedophiles. These online predators share information with other paedophiles usually in a network, on how to seduce or “groom” a victim.

They constantly roam chat rooms for possible victims. Online predators use social networking sites such as Myspace or Tagged as a way to meet potential victims. Paedophiles also frequent Usenet newsgroups to post and exchange illicit materials and even to discuss various approaches to victimize. The internet is safe haven for many computer child molesters because of the internet’s accessibility, affordability and user anonymity. Several research studies have underlined harm exposure to pornography among children poses. Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins University presented a theory on sexual deviance in his 1986 book Lovemaps.

According to Dr. Money, “sexual deviance can be traced to experiences in childhood (Laaser, 2000, quoted in Cothran, 2004, p.34).” Many clinical psychologists support that pornography causes violence among children. They point to the possibility of desensitization of children. It is general fact that children model what they often see and hear. Exposure to obscene materials may result to children “accepting and carrying such sexual preferences to adulthood (Laaser, 2000, quoted in Cothran, 2004, p. 34).” Sexual addiction also causes alarm.

Sex as an addiction almost always begins with viewing soft-porn material and gradually shifts to hard-core. Laaser (2000, quoted in Cothran p. 35) says that “for substance or activity to be addictive it must create a chemical tolerance.