More than half of Finnish teenagers visit Internet picture galleries
Unabashed chat and revealing pictures on youth-oriented message board
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Sixteen-year-old Sunbeam has taken pictures of her cleavage and her buttocks for the youth-oriented Kuvake.net picture gallery website. Her profile reveals that she is a member of a number of discussion clubs with overtly sexual names.
In the Kuumat ("Hot")section, Kloyt bends over wearing very short shorts. Her age is difficult to ascertain, and it is not revealed in her profile.
"Oooh, mama...sexy...", comments 16-year-old Miggo along with other users.
Under the rules of Kuvake.net, users of the "Hot" pages should be no younger than 16, but the age limit is impossible to enforce.
Well over half of Finns aged 13 to 17 are registered on Internet picture galleries. Helsingin Sanomat went into some of the most popular sites and followed events there for a week.
Registration was very easy. However, the most confidential discussions take place in invitation-only discussion groups.
Most of the content is ordinary exchange of communications by young people. However, sometimes it is possible to find very unabashed messages and revealing photographs.
For instance, many teenagers participate in the forum Itsetyydytys.org ("Masturbation.org"), which includes lengthy discussions on subjects such as "the size of the willies of boys aged 14-15". It is clear that there are middle-aged men among the participants.
Eqey wants to see pictures of the genitals of boys aged 13 to 17. Tony responds: "Will a 5-cm one from a 10-year-old do?" after which bi-hoitsu ("bi-nurse") asks Toni to send a quick message to a private e-mail.
Markus the moderator tries to intervene: "or perhaps 18-20-year-olds, because pictures of kids aged 13 to 17 are actually not permitted here".
The discussion continues regardless of Markus.
Do the parents of Sunbeam, Kloyt, Toni, and the others know what their kids are doing on the web?
They probably do not. Parents usually have no knowledge of what their children are doing on line.
Studies indicate that web surfing habits of teenagers in Finland are similar to those in Ireland, Britain, and Norway.
The problem has two levels: parents have no idea about their kids’ web-surfing habits, and teenagers are reluctant to tell their parents about bad experiences they have had.
For instance, Norwegians aged 9 to 19 say that they have an average of two or three e-mail addresses that their parents do not know about.
One reason that children do not talk to their parents about their web surfing is that they are afraid that they might be forced to stop using the Internet.
One positive finding in studies is that teenagers appear to look at websites with a critical eye, and are aware of the data privacy issues involved. A vast majority of Internet contacts go well.
On the other hand, a survey by the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare (MLL) indicates that 42 percent of Finnish young people say that some of the members of picture galleries are too young, and that they give personal contact information and revealing photographs of themselves too easily.
Sometimes girls will give their best friends their password into a picture gallery. When there is a falling out, the "friend" might use the password to sabotage the gallery page.
Of the 11,300 children who responded to the MLL survey, 65 percent say that they have encountered harassment on the Internet. Usually this involves disparaging comments about someone’s appearance or opinions. One in five say that they have seen pictures of themselves published on the web without their permission.
Other bad behaviour includes spreading groundless rumours and gossip, sending messages using another person’s name, as well as discrimination and racism.
In extreme cases there are death threats, as well as "virtual gang fights", in which friends start to defend friends, until finally dozens of young people are involved in the "gallery war".
In Norway, Internet habits of young people were analysed this year for a second time. Harassment and overt violence on the Internet had increased from 2003 when a similar study was conducted.
More teenagers than before say that they have been in "bad trouble" after meeting someone on the Internet.
Many users of picture galleries say that they have received unwelcome sexual comments. In Finland about one in three said that they had such experiences.
Also in Finland, one percent of respondents said that they knew someone who had been a victim of physical harassment by someone the person met in a gallery.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 31.10.2006 - TODAY |
 More than half of Finnish teenagers visit Internet picture galleries
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