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One million children fall prey to cyber-bullying a year.

 In Greece alone, 4% of children aged 9 to 16 using the Net have been sexually harassed and 11% have received sexting.

 

It starts as online and SMS innocent flirting aimed mostly at teenage girls in the confusing stage of sexual awareness. It ends with tears, at best, sexual abuse at worst. Millions of girls all over the world fall victims of adult sexual predators. Figures in Greece are alarming.

As any parent can attest, there's nothing more fragile and confusing than a teenager's emotions. It makes them vulnerable, victims of their own emotions and open to manipulation. Sexual predators are aware of all this, along with the fact that young people have developed their own language code through written messages.

It usually starts with social networking. A friend request on Facebook through a dummy account, a couple of smart IMs, an innocent chat or two. Then it moves on to flirting and once the girl is thoroughly intrigued, it turns into sex chats, sexy photographs, even more deviant practices. That is the point of no return.

Trouble starts when it moves from sexting to an actual (blind) date. Without a friend to back her (or him) up, it's an open invitation for abuse, bullying, even rape. Given that a teenager's digital life is usually a secret to their parents, it's like flirting with disaster.

One million underage children fall prey to Facebook cyber-bullying in a year. In Europe, 6% of kids aged 9 to 16 using the Internet, have experienced some sort of online bullying. Half of them confess to having harassed other kids, while 15% of all teenage users have received sexual private messages online, or on their phones. The disturbing figures come from EU Kids Online, a European network which studies internet practices of children in 25 European countries.

In Greece alone, where internet development is much lower than in the rest of Europe, 4% of kids aged 9 to 16 using the Net have been sexually harassed and 11% say they have received sex messages online and through SMS texting.

Study after study concludes that adult online education is key to fighting sexting among teenagers, but let's face it: your kid is more likely to hide his or her online activity, not just because they're too embarrassed to share, but because they probably know more about online communication than you do. Perhaps the best way to fight this plague, is through targeted awareness initiatives for teenagers.