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för pornografi på Internet

More children and teens are being exposed to online pornography, mostly by accidentally viewing sexually explicit Web sites while surfing the Internet, researchers say.

Forty-two percent of Internet users aged 10 to 17 surveyed said they had seen online pornography in a recent 12-month span. Of those, 66 percent said they did not want to view the images and had not sought them out, University of New Hampshire researchers found. Their conclusions appear in February's Pediatrics, due out Monday.

"It's beyond the wild West out there. You've really taken away the age of innocence," said Dr. Michael Wasserman, a pediatrician with the Ochsner Clinic in Metairie, La., who was not involved in the study.

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University of Chicago psychiatrist Sharon Hirsch said exposure to online pornography could lead kids to become sexually active too soon, or could put them at risk for being victimized by sexual predators if they visit sites that prey on children.

"They're seeing things that they're really not emotionally prepared to see yet, which can cause trauma to them," Hirsch said.

Exposure also could skew their perceptions about what constitutes a healthy sexual relationship, said Janis Wolak, the study's lead author and a researcher at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. ¹

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