The polling company MORI has done a survey on, among other things, internet use in the United Kingdom and in America. One result, which has gotten press attention, is this, as the Telegraph anxiously reports:
More than one in ten children has had a sexually explicit conversation online, according to a study that details how youngsters spend their time on the internet and their mobile phones.
The problem here is that the report defines children as aged 11-18. Yes, that is right. An 18 year old is a child. (The full report is here.) More seriously, in all the report's panicked phrasing, there is no distribution of responses by age. For all we know, the 10% figure could be heavily weighted towards 17 and 18 year olds. We do not know, and so the panicked tone of both the report and the press accounts are based on little more than infantilizing adults. An 11 year old is a child who cannot maturely talk sex; an 18 year old is a child who cannot maturely talk sex.
