THE INTERNET, CYBERPORN, AND

SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN:

MEDIA MORAL PANICS AND URBAN
MYTHS FOR MIDDLE-CLASS PARENTS?
R o b e r t o H u g h Potter and L y n d y A. Potter

2192 Dering Circle, Atlanta, GA 30345

(hbp3@cdc.gov)
The Internet as a popular media is not even one decade old. From its early
days of wide access, concern with the dangers posed to children and teens has
been a staple of news media and moral entrepreneurs. Concern with sexual
predators, "cyberporn" (or "pornographic" material housed on "nodes" of the
World Wide Web) became media-induced moral panics of the mid- and late1990s. This paper examined the Internet and children in the context of the
United States and Australia. Studies of children's access to the Internet and
it's effects were examined. Particular attention was paid to the aspects of
Internet danger as a form of "urban legend" aimed at middle-class parents
who are able to provide access to the technology required to access the "dangers" of the Web. The intersection of urban mythology, technological change,
and morals campaigns of the 1990s was explored. The role played by concern
with the Internet in the on-going history of moral movements and parental
responsibility was discussed.

Introduction
Dire warnings regarding children having access to "pornograp h y " on the Internet, and stories o f children being lured into sexual
exploitation b y adults prowling the Internet bring to m i n d the experience o f listening to a morning current affairs s h o w featured on the
Australian B r o a d c a s t C o r p o r a t i o n ( A B C ) R a d i o National in 1996.
T h e host was talking to a 15-year old girl f r o m W e s t e r n Australia
a b o u t the worlds the Internet had o p e n e d up for her. After ascertaining that the girl was using her brother's a c c o u n t through a uni31

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versity (the improper nature of this apparently was lost on the host),
the second question was whether the girl had accessed pornography via the Web. Her response was something along the lines of:
No. It's a little like X-rated videos. You can get them by ordering from
Finland, but if you don't want them, they won't find you.

The innocence of the girl regarding the fact that X-rated videos
were legally available by mail-order from either the Australian Capital Territory or the Northern Territory (as well as allegedly a mysterious black van in her own city) was outweighed by the simple
observation that, if you don't go looking for them, they aren't likely
to find you.
The host of the program, who expressed disbelief that the girl
had not accidentally encountered smut on the Internet, then turned
to questions about being propositioned or asked to meet strangers
via the Internet. Again, the girl stated that, although no such encounters had occurred, if they had she would simply follow the
same approach she would if a stranger called her and asked her on
a blind date. She would arrange to meet in a public place accompanied by trusted friends until she came to know the person well
enough to feel safe going anywhere with them. Again, sensibility
on the part of the girl seemed to be the order of the day. The crusade by the host continued unabated with a more sympathetic academic guest who was more than willing to emphasize the dangers
associated with the Interuet and sex.
The Australian version of Time (Elmer-Dewitt, 1995; see also
Elmer-Dewitt, 1993, 1994) had just recently published a cover story
on Cyberporn that featured prominently stories of "unsolicited"
thumbnail pictures of pornographic acts being emailed to pre-teen
children and the contact of young boys by pedophiles seeking prey.
Stories of library computers being used by school boys to find and
down-load "pornography" were then being featured in the Australian media as almost staple "filler" for slow news days. Generally
these referred to the same incident at a metropolitan school, with
requisite interviews with local school librarians who would agree
that, yes, the same thing could happen here. To a person, however,

The Internet, Cyberporn, and Sexual Exploitation of Children

33

they always noted that it had not yet happened as far as they knew.
In fact, there were very few documented cases of school-aged children accessing "pornographic" sites either at school, public libraries, or in their homes.
It was at this point that we became interested in the role that
children, "pornography" and the Internet were playing in the shaping of public opinion ahead of governmental policy on the regulation of the Internet in Australia. This was toward the end of the
Australian Federal Parliamentary inquiry into the regulation of OnLine Services. Upon returning to the United States, the debate over
the Communications Decency Act (CDA) had just resulted in the
passing of that act. Shortly after, the law suits began that ultimately
led to the Supreme Court of the United States nullifying the CDA.
What became interesting in both instances was the "generation gap"
in knowledge about the new technology between children and parents and the role that sexual content played in establishing the "danger" of the new technology. That there was precious little systematic
empirical evidence to back the isolated "horror stories" led us to
examine the role that "mythology" about the sexual content of the
Intemet was playing in warning parents about the dangers of allowing their children unsupervised and unregulated access to this
new technology. Therein lies the crux of this article.

What is Cyberporn?: On-line Content and Access to Explicit

Sexual Sites
Cyberporn is the term given to "pornographic" bulletin boards,
digitized images, and "interactive" sites available through locations
on the World-Wide Web (WWW). More specifically, the term refers to such information located on "nodes" of the broader information superhighway. Some of the information and images available
there are nothing more than what is available in most news agencies throughout Australia or at news counters in North American
areas. Others clearly violate the guidelines for on-line services in
Australia (Hansard, 1995), and apparently at least some U.S. states
(e.g., Blade, 1993). Unlike the concepts of "pornography," "obscenity" or "(in)decency" the components of the Internet are de-

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finable. Beyond that, however, they become a bit more confusing.

Here we will briefly outline some of the major components related
to the issue of cyberporn for the interested reader.
The Time (Elmer-Dewitt, 1995) article began by noting a very
important, though not necessarily recognized, qualification about
the infamous Rimm (1995) study, namely, that most of the data
about pornography were collected from Usenet, not the Internet. If
that begins to confuse you, you are among most casual users of the
information superhighway. These are important distinctions because
each has a set of concerns about content that often become fused
into an overall concern with something called the "Internet," though
it may be something related, but distinct.

The Danger Posed by the Internet

A Synopsis

There are many "dangerous" ideas, products, and people that

might be encountered by an individual "surfing" the web. Among
these are instructions in violence (Elmer-Dewitt, 1995), information from hate groups and cults (Australian Broadcasting Authority [ABA], 1995), gambling (ACOSS, 1997), invasion of
privacy, infringement of intellectual property rights, gender imbalance of gender equality, cultural imperialism (ABA, 1995), and
the focus of this paper, forms of sexual information and representation. In short, every conceivable form of dangerous information,
activity, and persons found in society might also be found in
cyberspace.
Returning to the illustration at the beginning of this article, evidence was presented to the New South Wales Police Royal Commission of pedophiles using the Internet to establish contacts with
young males and then to lure them away from home for immoral
purposes. Some of the contacts were even made from overseas,
according to the testimony (Meade, 1997). The Rimm (1995) study,
widely disseminated by Time magazine (Elmer-Dewitt, 1995),
pointed to the use of the Internet to access sites deemed to be "pornographic?' Still other stories exist of young people seeking and
receiving instruction in the construction of pipe-bombs and other
violence, especially in the United States.

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35

We may conclude that any form of "deviance" conceivable in

the physical world is potentially available in cyberspace. Whether
or not it is actually accessed (or easily accessible) is another issue.
Let us now turn briefly to empirical studies of the availability of
"cyberporn."

Evidence of the Danger

It is legitimate to state that there are many sites on the W W W
that present themselves as containing sexual content. Exactly what
that content is, and how it is accessed, becomes different levels of
the issue. There is relatively little empirical study of the types of
sexually explicit material available and the ease of access to this
material. For example, in a July 14, 1997, "All Things Considered" (U.S. National Public Radio) segment Brooke Gladstone
presented her results of searching the Internet for sexual content.
She noted that there were many sites that featured animated characters, come-ons requiring credit cards, and "soft porn." However,
it was only on the Usenet portion of the Internet where she found
"hard core" materials freely available. Her journalistic excursion is
consistent with most other accounts of searching for sexual content
we have gathered from faculty and students at several universities
and in their private homes. There is a lot of promise, but not a great
deal delivered; depending upon one's definition of "pornographic"
of course.
Anecdotes and media reports abound of sexual predators using
the Internet to contact and lure children and teens for sexual exploitation, yet there remains very little empirical research on the subject. An early systematic excursion into the sexual content of the
Web was provided in the lead-up to the "Investigation into the Content of On-line Services" (ABA, 1995). The Australian Office of
Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) conducted a 27-hour
targeted search for WWW sites containing sexually explicit materials for the A B A . At that stage it was the only government-sanctioned study of internationally-available sexual content. There is
an additional advantage to employing this search, as well. The
OFLC is responsible for classifying all videos, films, and video

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g a m e s s h o w n or h i r e d in Australia. T h e s e c l a s s i f i c a t i o n s i n c l u d e
an " X " rating for v i d e o s a n d C a t e g o r i e s 1 (e.g., P l a y b o y ) a n d 2
(i.e., " h a r d c o r e " s e x u a l l y explicit) f o r print literature, as well as
the r e a s o n s w h y m a t e r i a l m i g h t be " r e f u s e d c l a s s i f i c a t i o n "
(banned), w h i c h specify the level o f sexual content allowable (See
A p p e n d i x ) . T h e results o f this r e s e a r c h i n c l u d e d ( A B A , 1995:
39-40):
No child pornography located after seven hours of specific searching;
An extensive list of bomb-making recipes was found after one hour of
searching;
Categories 1 and 2 material was advertised as being available or was suggested to be available on the Web. However, after searching for seven
hours, none was able to be immediately downloaded;
Approximately 90 percent of the category 1 and category 2 level listings
on the Web had on-screen warnings of content and an age recommendation, while 10 percent had no specific warnings but contained material of
an unrestricted (non-sexual) nature when accessed;
Approximately 60 percent of sites required the searcher to apply to an
address with details and/or credit information before the material could be
obtained;
Eight hours of searching in Usenet found 17 still photos of refused classification level material including pornography, bestiality, bondage and
instruction in matters of crime (bestiality, extreme bondage, and instructions in matter of crime are banned in Australia);
No specific warnings accompanied the site addresses in the Usenet environment, though the names of the addresses themselves suggested the
content (e.g., alt.binaries.bondage). Some of the material accessed in the
Usenet environment had to be decompressed before it could be viewed
(requiring reasonable experience with a variety of decompression software tools);
"The OFLC informal search indicated that the likelihood of on-line users
being involuntarily exposed to material at the refused classification level,
category 1 publication level or category 2 publication level, to be low"
M o r e recently, the A B A (ABA, 2000) c o m m i s s i o n e d a study to
e x a m i n e the views o f children (age 10-15) about m e d i a h a r m (tele-

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37

vision, movies, videos, and the Internet). It is important to note that

the researchers were interested in how children themselves view
and assess the concept of harm in relation to media, rather than
imposing "adult" or researcher notions of harm. The authors noted
that the 50 Australian children who participated in the focus groups
were "remarkably blase" (ABA, 2000: 44) about the sexual materials they encounter on the Internet. Finding sexually explicit material on the Internet was viewed by these children as a rite of passage,
helping to mark transitions from childhood to early adulthood. "Although some of the children were clearly appalled by the materials
they encountered, they did not characterise these reactions as indicative of harm" (ABA, 2000: 45). In fact, the "moral dilemma"
posed by "unwanted Internet experiences" was most often related
to the reactions attributed to parents and other adults should they
discover the exposure to pornography (ABA, 2000: 42). These
children felt that they were capable of making decisions about what
sorts of information were harmful to them, and how to deal with
such material. The children interviewed for the research did not
believe filters were necessary for them, though the ABA continued
to recommend parents make the decisions with regard to filtering
software. In the end, access to the Internet offered these children an
opportunity to engage with the much larger world. It was the violation of the "child's 'normal social role" in relation to adult authority
that seemed to bother the adults with regard to these children and
the Internet.
In the United States, careful empirical research on children and
the dangers of the Internet has been rare. Responding to national
interest, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
(NCMEH) contracted with the Crimes Against Children Research
Center at the University of New Hampshire to conduct a national
survey of adolescent Internet users. Finkelhor, Mitchell, and Wolak
(2000) reported the results of the first U.S. national study of on-line
victimization of minors (n = 1501; ages 10-17) using the Internet
on a regular basis. The range of victimizations included sexual solicitations and approaches, unsolicited receipt of sexually explicit
images or messages, and other forms of threat or harassment
(Finkelhor et al., 2000: x). They found that 19 percent of the re-

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spondents received a sexual solicitation or approach via the Intemet

in the previous year. These included situations where someone tried
to get the teens to talk about sex when the teen did not want to, or
asked unwanted questions about the teen's intimate life, solicitations to do sexual things the teen did not want to do, invitations to
run away (for vulnerable youths), and close friendships formed
with adults on-line when these had included "sexual overtures."
Two-thirds (65%) of the sexual overture incidents occurred in
"chat rooms" with just under one-quarter (24%) coming through
"instant message" facilities. In 10 percent of the cases, the perpetrator asked for a physical meeting, and a handful attempted other
forms of communication. "In most instances, the youth ended the
solicitations, using a variety of strategies like logging off, leaving
the site, or blocking the person" (Finkelhor et al., 2000: 4). Just
under half (49%) of the youths stated that they had told no one
about the incident, and only 10 percent of these incidents were
reported to any authority figure or organization. Three-quarters
(75%) of the youth said they had no or minor reactions ("not very
upset or afraid") as a result of the incident. Among those solicited
five or more times, 17 percent demonstrated five or more symptoms of depression at the time of the interview.
A key ingredient in the template of Internet predator stories is
the adult soliciting a child for sexual purposes. In the Finkelhor et
al. (2000: 6-7) study, 3 percent of the youths reported forming
"close online friendships" with adults, mostly in the young adult
age range (18-25). Only two of the friendships formed "may
have had sexual aspects." The authors point out that, while minors may be forming friendships online, the proportion that become sexual appears to be very small. Seven youths (0.4% of
the sample) reported being encouraged to run away from home
by someone they met via the Internet. Adults comprised onequarter of the sexual solicitations reported by the teen respondents, with most of those reported to be in the young adult age
group. Only a handful of the sexual solicitors were over the age
of 25. Juveniles accounted for 48 percent of the identified perpetrators (27% of unknown age), with around two-thirds being male.
Overall, it would appear that the levels of sexual solicitation and

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39

the profile of the solicitors are similar to those encounteredin physical

space by teens.
One quarter (25%) of the youths reported receiving unwanted
exposure to sexual material while online. This exposure consisted
primarily of images of naked people (94%), while just over onethird (38%) received images of people having sex (it was possible
to have more than one experience). Exposure occurred in two primary manners. First, 281 (19%) of the youths had been exposed to
unwanted materials while surfing the net. Just under half (47%) of
these were discovered while engaged in a search for other materials, and 17 percent each as either a misspelled address or as a result
of clicking on an address within a site. Just over one-third (36%) of
those who stumbled upon the images found the experience distressing, while about one-quarter (24%) of those in the latter category were distressed. Among those who received unsolicited
materials via their private email address (n = 112; 7%), over half
(58%), found the experience distressing (Finkelhor et al., 2000:
13-19).
"Cyberstalking" as harassment or using the Internet to spread
rumors about someone (Ogilvie, 2000), was experienced by 95 of
the respondents (6%). One-third of these (n = 37) reported the incident to be very distressing (Finkelhor et al., 2000:21-26). Among
the perpetrators of the cyberstalking, 63 percent were reported to
be other minors, and 14 percent aged 18 or over. While most of the
harassed teens had little or no reaction to the event, nearly onethird (31%) were very/extremely upset, and one-fifth (19%) were
very/extremely afraid by the incident. Finkelhor et al. suggest that
this area of harassment, which we have i n c l u d e d under
cyberstalking, is an area that deserves further attention with regard
to children.
Additionally, the NCMEH identified 785 "traveler cases" in 1999;
"cases in which a child or adult traveled to physically meet with
someone he or she had first encountered on the Internet" (Allen, in
Finkelhor et al., 2000: vi). These reports consisted of 302 from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 272 from local police agencies, 186 reported directly to the NCMEH, and an additional 25
from news organizations (Allen, in Finkelhor et al., 2000: vii). Allen

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did allow that some of these were duplicate cases. Unfortunately,

he did not report how many of these physical contact situations
eventuated in actual sexual contact, consensual or non-consensual,
between the "travelers" His information also failed to identify the
age relationship between the travelers, which is a deficit given the
results of the study to which his comments are an introduction.
These findings are consistent with what has been reported in
non-sensationalizedjoumalisticaccounts of cyberpom and the efforts of one of the current authors to access such sites. With this
seeming lack of supporting evidence for claims of pemicious pornography leaping out at uninterested Internet users, one is left to
wonder why there has been such an emphasis on this topic in the
media and the resultant regulatory efforts such as the Communications Decency Act.
C y b e r p o r n as a M e d i a - I n d u c e d M o r a l Panic

Fear of cyberpom or pornography on the Intemet is a form of

"moral panic." The term "moral panic" is taken from the work of
Stanley Cohen (1980). Cohen described a condition, situation or
group of persons who become defined as a threat to social values
and interests as providing the grounds for a moral panic. Their activities, real or imagined, are then presented in the mass media in a
stereotypic and stylized manner. "Moral entrepreneurs," such as
religious leaders, politicians, "other fight-thinking people" and "expeas" are then called upon to provide appropriate answers to the
problem. Some form of solution to the problem is developed and
the problem then disappears from sight for some period of time.
Cohen pointed out that the source of the threat may be quite
novel, such as the Internet. Or the problem may be something that
has been there for quite a while but now, for whatever reason, becomes publicly a problem. Some moral panics pass just as quickly
as they appear on the scene. Others may have serious impacts with
long-lasting effects. These effects may be found in the formulation
of social and legal policy which have far-reaching implications.
The attention paid to the issues of cyberporn over the past several
years by the North American and Australasian media suggests that

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41

it is a full-blown moral panic. Almost all television news programs

and current affairs magazines on these two continents have carried
some item warning of the possibility that school students or children will find and download "pornographic" materials from the
Internet. Or, in a more sinister vein, that pornography will impose
itself on child users of the Internet, or that children will be lured
away by pedophiles.
In the United States, StaUings (1990) and Best (1991) have outlined the ways in which media organizations construct patterns and
degrees of risk by focusing on similarities among a wide range of
individual incidents to construct a risk pattern, while simultaneously
ignoring evidence which would render a pattern problematic. Both
of these writers demonstrate the activities of news organizations in
an attempt to define the situation for their consumers. In this way
media organizations become "secondary claims-makers" choosing which "primary" claims they will "legitimize" and which reforms they will push. Best (1991) again develops the idea of a
cultural "tool kit" of "templates," which media organizations can
fit onto a putative social problem in order to render it understandable to the general public. We will return to the application of this
template and why it might occur later.

Cyberporn and Children

Borrowing the terminology from Mary Douglas (1966), children truly represent symbols of "purity and dangerousness" Children simultaneously represent the promise of the future and the
dangers associated with the uncertainty of the future. On the one
hand, we hope for only the best and purest from children. In the
delinquency literature there is a tradition of studying the impact of
middle-class values and culture upon the control of lower- and
working-class children (e.g., Cohen, 1955). Platt (1977) documented
the development of the public school system as a tool for the expansion of discipline and control of working-class children for capitalist production needs. Through the inculcation of middle-class
knowledge and values on working-class children, capitalist societies have sought to maximize the "purity" of children and adoles-

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cents (though certainly societies with different class structures attempt the same process in the socialization process).
On the other hand, we know that children become the danger of
the future, especially if not protected from corrupting influences.
The two primary institutions of socialization, family and school,
seek to minimize this corruption, if only for the ease of maintaining
order in the home or class room (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990).
These two institutional settings are also viewed by various perspectives as the most effective settings for the reproduction of dominant societal values. Depending upon one's philosophical
orientation, these dominant societal values are either necessary or
repressive. Much of this task of "effective" socialization falls to
parents. Parenting becomes a major educational industry aimed at
preventing "improper" behavior. There is no underestimating the
volume of material available to guide parents in this task, from the
technical to the moral/philosophical. Thus, controlling the types of
information to which children are exposed becomes an important
task for parents and moral entrepreneurs. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in the media attention devoted to the subject of
"cyberporn" and "on-line sex." What is interesting here is that, for
once, the target of the admonitions over protecting children from a
particular evil are aimed primarily at middle-class parents, rather
than being imposed on the working-class parents.
Leong (1991) provides an analysis of one parental rights' or "empowerment" movement which began in the 1980s, but which maintains a presence in the current debate over sexual content on the
Internet. She examines the role played by the Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC) in the initial attempts to have the lyrics
of pop music, especially rap and heavy metal genres, rated or
classified. The PMRC also lobbied to have the lyrics on the
album or C.D. published in a place where they could be read by
parents prior to the purchase of the product. Similar attempts
with regard to music occurred in Australia in the mid-1990s, especially following the impact of U.S. rap music on the Australian
teen subculture. In all of these instances, the advocates of such
measures talk in terms of parental empowerment, not censorship
nor control of the media.

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43

Much of the support for the CDA throughout its short-lived existence was framed by parents' rights groups in terms of parental
empowerment. However, even faced with a proliferation of software products to "block" access to sexual content on the Intemet
(and the ability of children to by-pass such [ABA, 2000]), classification schemes for Internet sites developed by industry (sexual content providers and others), and increasing evidence that if you don't
go looking for it you won't find it, the parental groups continue to
complain of a lack of empowerment in this area. One commentator
in Kentucky lamented the inability to "zone" the Internet like communities in order to place sexual content sites off-limits for children. Yet, America On-Line and others are doing exactly that. The
"responsible" providers of "adult materials" are also engaged in
self-policing efforts in order to maintain their position in the virtual
marketplace. So, why does the concern continue? We would argue
that it is partly due to the confluence of two of the most powerful
symbols in late Twentieth Century U.S. (in particular) society:
Children and Pornography.

The Beginnings of the Moral Panics

"Pornography" has been linked to every technological innovation affecting visual communication from cave paintings to
cyberspace. Steven Marcus (1964) recounts the legend that the second set of books off the Guttenberg press was a collection of pornography. As printing became more economical, not only
pornography became of concern. Duncan Chappell (1993) has
analyzed the Australian concern over video game content as a continuation of the concern with "penny dreadful" novels ("pulp fiction") which became economically feasible in the early part of the
20th century thanks to advances in printing and paper processing.
The content of many of these novels was considered obscene and
distasteful to middle-class society in NorthAmerica and the United
Kingdom. It would seem that every technological innovation leads
to a concern with sex (especially "pornography") and children.
Durkin and Bryant (1995) have employed Ogburn's concept of
"culture lag" to discuss the impact of technological change on sexual

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activity and attitudes toward sexual behavior. They argue that each
technological innovation produces new ways of experiencing sexuality. Among the examples they cite are the opportunities for sexual
liaisons presented by the mobility of the automobile, the proliferation of sexually explicit videos following the mass marketing of
video cassette players, and the development of "phone sex" following developments in telephone services. They go on to speculate about the future of "cybersex" as virtual reality technology
improves with computer design changes. Throughout their discussion they note the anxiety each innovation produces in segments of
the population regarding the danger posed by the new developments. However, they do not address how these perceived dangers
are expressed by the public generally and moral entrepreneurs specifically. For a move from the more concrete to the symbolic, we
turn to the work of Gary Alan Fine.

Cyberporn as Moral Mythology for Middle-Class Parents in

the Computer Age
Fine (1979, 1981), has pointed out how many urban myths focus on the impersonality of modem life and rapid technological
change. In his analysis, such myths often help us to face the contradictions of the modem world, thus reducing the strain we feel from
conflicting sets of values and demands. In two essays, one dealing
with "Kentucky Fried Rat" and one on "Cokelore" (about soft
drinks), Fine argues that we are dealing with a move from a more
personal and home-centered existence to the world of mass production and impersonal service. Best and Horiuchi (1985) have employed
these arguments to examine the rise of primarily suburban folk tales
regarding the dangers of Halloween "trick or treating" Similar myths
are not far from the surface in either the United States or Australia.
Australians often take the top off of a pie (meat or vegetable) to see
whether or not there are materials there that shouldn't be. There
have been mass-produced meat pie, canned tomato, pineapple and
other such scares in Australia within the past decade.
Fine argues that urban myths help us to expect such anomalies
in the world of impersonally produced food and other products

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formally associated with home life. Another substantial component

of his argument has to do with the notion that many of these products are being produced by technology that is beyond the control
of most of us. This is where the argument is especially germane to
the cyberporn moral panic. The recognition that parents are not as
acquainted with information technology as their children are is always highlighted. Almost all of the media items regarding
cyberporn end with admonitions to parents about monitoring
their children's activities with computers more closely. In short,
these moral panics are forming the base of a new urban mythology about the dangers of the increasing generation gap regarding information technology and computers between today's parents
and their children. This is essentially the same message parents
received about their knowledge of rock and roll and sex in the mid1950s (and again with PMRC), then drugs (the mid-1960s). Same
message, different topics. Both of these developments were tied to
proliferating and changing technology in the recording and broadcast sectors.
The clear message is that parents need to monitor their children's
activities and react to them when they see their children heading in
an objectionable direction. The equally clear signal is that children
are growing up faster than they did in "our" day and we need to
stay one step ahead of them in order to control them. In a sense, the
message remains the same, only the technology changes. New technology brings uncertainty and danger if parents do not police its
employment in the home.
The urban mythology surrounding cyberporn is also essentially
focused on a middle-class moral panic. Although North America
and Australia may have some of the highest proportional participation rates in Internet usage, it is still primarily a middle-class phenomenon. This is especially true when we speak of home-based
computer usage. Those of us who own our home computers know
that there is substantial investment involved in the hardware, software, and connection fees to access the Internet for most people.
The average working-class family with two or more children is not
likely to be investing thousands of dollars in such equipment--yet.
Nor are such households likely to turn a blind eye to increased

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telephone bills and credit card charges for downloaded information from a bulletin board in some other part of the world. It is
much more likely that middle-class parents would not question such
charges showing up on their bills. And that is the point of the urban
mythology--such parents should be taking a closer notice of their
children's activity,
Like much historically recent mythology, the urban mythology
that is emerging from the moral panic surrounding cyberporn is
aimed at reinforcing "good parenting" in the present time. Cyberpom
represents the newest danger in a long line of dangers to the innocence of childhood. It is also the latest in a long line of challenges to parental authority and notions of what it is to be a
"good" parent. In a time when many parents are finding it difficult to spend any time with their children, let alone "quality
time," cyberporn is a moral prick to the conscience of those who
would be good parents.

Implications for Social Problems Research and Theory

At one level, this article is simply an exploration of the application of "templates" regarding the framing of social problems (e.g.,
Best, 1991; Jenness & Broad, 1997). However, we believe that it
also raises some further questions to be investigated by those interested in the development of social problems and their attendant
solutions. For example, the framing question becomes interesting
when what are essentially solitary activities carded on in the privacy of one's home or office are alleged to be social problems. In a
sense, this is a similar component of the arguments surrounding the
production and distribution of sexually explicit videotape cassettes
(Potter, 1996).Yet, the focus to date has primarily been on children
as the "victims" of sexually explicit (in the United States) and violent (in Australia) content via on-line services.
Similar to the problem of sexually explicit videotapes, there is
also the issue of wide availability of the product. Unlike videotapes, however, the content does not have to be physically present
in the home of the consumer in order to be consumed. In fact, much
of the 1993 Conference on Technology and Censorship Issues held

The Internet, Cyberporn, and Sexual Exploitation of Children

47

in Brisbane focused on the cross-border nature of the Internet and

the issues surrounding control of such "borderless" environments.
It often appears that the U.S.-based debate around Internet content
ignores the interests of other countries (such as Australia and Canada),
whose laws and mores may not mirror exactly those of the U.S. Further, when those seeking to control Internet content decry the estimated 40 percent of "objectionable" material c o m i n g from outside
the U.S. borders, they often forget that the 60 percent produced in
the United States looks quite large to smaller countries.
The Internet does provide us with the first truly global m e d i u m
with relatively little state control at its inception. H o w regulation of
content evolves, either through g o v e r n m e n t a l action or corporate
control, will be of intense interest. This interest will focus not only
on the content itself, but on the sort of cultural imperialism which
results, a cultural imperialism that reaches to the very heart of the
socialization p r o c e s s - - h o w to parent properly.
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