Youngsters turning to online sex

More youngsters are surfing the Internet for pornographic material, chatting with strangers mainly about sex and often ending up having casual sex with them, a new survey has found.
The latest survey by the Abac Poll Research Centre found that six in ten of the 1,300 respondents to the poll conceded they clicked on websites providing pornographic material such as sex video clips, pictures and Web cams. The percentage of respondents visiting pornographic websites rose to 62.6 per cent from 61.6 per cent over the previous survey last year, said Noppadon Kannika, director of the Abac Centre. The rise must be regarded as "significant and worrying", said Sunit Shrestha, manager of the Thai Health Promotion Foundation's ICT Plan for Health Promotion Programme. The new poll also found that about one in ten of the young net surfers conceded they had engaged in sex with strangers. The online chatting had led to a date - and then sex. Respondents to the survey were aged between 15 and 24 years and lived in Bangkok. In last year's survey, the percentage of respondents who had sex with strangers picked up randomly in cyberspace was only 8.9 per cent - compared to 11.5 per cent in this latest survey.
Arthit Khwankhom The Nation
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