As Internet use worldwide continues to grow, so does the opportunity for exploitation. This amazing tool used in making information all around the world more accessible for everyone also has a dark side. This same tool has also been used for other illegal means of exploitation. This is exhibited more so in the rapid increase of online child pornography worldwide.

A number of current statistics has shown that child pornography online has continued on its upward climb in terms of popularity and demand. The Internet Watch Foundation or IWF, whose mission is to minimize the availability of illegal content on the Internet such as child pornography, has reported a significant rise in the presence of online images showing some of the most severe forms of child sexual abuse. The IWF Annual Report for 2006 stated that there has been a growing demand for child pornography over the Net with about 60 percent of commercial websites dealing with such illegal content even go to severe extremes as offering disturbing and perverted images of child rape to their members.

The IWF report also stated that of the increasing number of illegal child pornography content online, some 80 percent portrayed in the images are females, with about 91 percent of the images showing children that appear to be under 12 years old. Other statistics about child pornography seem to be getting worse and worse.

According to statistics compiled by Top Ten Reviews website on pornography (http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html), the numbers show that the industry came out with about $4.9 billion in sales worldwide in the past year and growing. And not all of them offer legal (and acceptable) adult content. As of late, statistics also show that there are about 116,000 child pornography requests in the file sharing Gnutella Network daily. About 100,000 websites have been known to commercially deal with child pornography as the main source of income for such sites. A great majority (about 82.5 percent) of these child pornography websites are being hosted either from the United States or from Russia, an increase of about 68 percent from the figures taken sometime in 2005.

What makes such websites a danger is that children can easily be exposed to them when surfing on the Internet. The average age of children when they first encounter pornography online is 11 years old. The impact of these statistics show that the increasing demand for child pornography and how easy it has become for online users to access them has given way to a very disturbing notion that policing the Internet for illegal content such as child pornography still has a long way to go. The fact that there is a significant increase in the number of commercial websites dealing with illegal child pornography now operating online is enough to substantiate the claim that a lot still needs to be done.

Child pornography is a serious matter that may have long term consequences not only to the millions of online users but also to the children themselves. Child pornography has made victims to many abused children all over the world. It is the innocent children that may need protection from this growing scourge brought about by an advanced yet perverted society. Child pornography is a serious problem that may warrant an effective and immediate solution for fear that it may someday become one of society's accepted evils. That would surely be the case if the society does nothing to combat such evils.

Sources:
http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2187930/internet-child-porn-rise http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html