Facts about online predators

86% of children chat online without their parent's knowledge.

50% of teens communicate online with someone they have never met.

30% of teenage girls are sexually solicited in chat rooms.

77% of children targeted by Internet predators are 14 or older. Another 22% were users ages 10 to 13.

64% of teens do things online that they don't want their parents to know.

Only 25% of children solicited told a parent.

75% of children are willing to give personal information for goods or services.

Close to 60% of teens have received an e-mail or instant message from a stranger and half have communicated back.

Over 75% of Internet crimes involving sexual solicitations of children is not reported to police or parents.

One in 33 youth received an aggressive sexual solicitation in the past year. This means a predator asked a young person to meet somewhere, called a young person on the phone, and/or sent the young person correspondence, money, or gifts through the U.S. Postal Service.

75% of the solicited youth were not troubled by the solicitation.

Teenage Behavior

Chat room participants with female usernames received 25 times more threatening and/or sexually explicit private messages than those with male or ambiguous usernames.
SOURCE: Science Daily

According to the American Psychological Association, chat rooms may normalize and encourage self-injurious behavior and add potentially lethal behaviors to the repertoire of established adolescent self-injurers, and that the Internet provides a powerful vehicle for bringing together self-injurious adolescents.
SOURCE: Developmental Psychology

22 percent of student-age kids admit they send instant messages while their parents think they're asleep.

Because chat room use serves as an indicator of heightened vulnerability and risk-taking, parents and others need to be aware of potential dangers posed by online contact between strangers and youth.
SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health

Above facts attributed to: National Center for Victims of Crime, Pew Study reported in JAMA, Girl Scout Research Council, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, MSNBC Interactive and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.