The internet and sexual abuse

REPORTS of child sexual abuse is becoming almost an everyday news.
Police are blaming the internet, saying it has given young people easier access to pornographic materials through their mobile devices
The changes introduced by the mobile phone are both good and bad.
The internet is now available to all who own a smart phone.
News, gossip, knowledge and porn are transmitted and received at the press of a button.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networking sites offer old and young instant contact with each other and the world.
The internet is bursting at the seams with sex sites. There are many types of sex games, including cartoon sex games, 3D sex games, and virtual reality sex games where the viewer can indulge in sex with three or four imaginary characters. Some online games offer virtual simulation sex.
And this is happening across the world.
Research on the effects of pornography in developed countries is still rare, but available studies have found that pornography is global and can create unrealistic ideas about sex.
The Government in 2015 planned to put in place an internet filter to block access to pornographic websites.
This plan followed a report by Google Trend that Papua New Guinea was the “most pornography-obsessed country in the world”.  The report said despite the country having a population of fewer than eight million people at the time and a low rate of internet use, it had the greatest percentage of searches for the words “porn” and “pornography” compared with the nation’s total searches online.
It will be a tedious task to have the filter system in place, as it was to cost K2 million. The Censorship office wants to filter “the rubbish supplied free online which spoiled the mind-set of the young children of Papua New Guinea”.
Today what one person sees through the lenses of his or her mobile phone or digital camera is shared instantly with the rest of us who access the net.
Out will go concerns about decency, morality and innocence. And that is how it is going to be for the future.
Legislation in PNG, for instance, is way behind some of these developments.
It has been observed that the Government, swept by IT globalisation, never really had the chance to weigh out the advantages or disadvantages – and
even educate and provide guidance.
More and more of what we today consider science fiction might be lived within the lifetime of today’s teenagers.
At this point, though, technology threatens to penetrate some of our lives to the brink of being too much.
Worldwide, concerns are already rising because the lack of sex education in schools and colleges – coupled with a society where talking about sex is taboo, children’s only avenue to satisfying sexual curiosities becomes porn.
And this problem in PNG is not only for the police and judiciary to address but communities and concerned non-governmental organisations and churches to support and raise awareness and public moral education.
There is nothing secretive about the problem of sexual abuse, it is vast and is not isolated to developing countries.
The proposers of internet filtering will need to be more s practical and look more towards global developments before drawing up plans for the nation.