Children Much Safer on Social Networking Sites Than Instant Messaging, Chat Rooms

Sites such as MySpace and Facebook have come under fire in recent times for allowing children to post as much as they want about themselves, which in some tragic cases hooks pedophiles up to pubescent girls. For a while, this was the only type of news coming in: bad press for social networking sites of any kind. Fortunately, things are changing. A recent study conducted by the University of New Hampshire confirmed what teenagers could have told you years ago: social networking sites are nothing compared to instant messaging clients and chatrooms. The University of New Hampshire took 1,600 healthy 10-15 year olds, and asked them to report any instances of sexual solicitation while on the internet. Roughly 4% said they were solicited while on a social networking site, and 9% said they were harassed. While these figures are nothing to dismiss, much more dire figures were found when children were asked if they had ever been solicited/harassed on an instant messaging/chat client. An astounding 59% of children were harassed while instant messaging, and 19% were harassed while in a chat room.