The Children's Internet Safety Presidential Pledge asks Presidential Nominees to uphold the rule of law by aggressively enforce existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the obscenity, child pornography, sexual predation & sex trafficking laws.

EIE is a non-partisan not-for-profit educational organization and does not promote, endorse or oppose any particular political candidate.

 2020 Presidential Election: The Children's Internet Safety Presidential Pledge

Donald J. Trump signed the Children's Internet Safety Presidential Pledge on July 16, 2016 (Hillary Clinton sent a letter of support.)   EIE is actively pursuing Joseph Biden who was sent the Pledge for signature, but is awaiting a response.

See Pledge Sent to Joe Biden

THE CHILDREN’S INTERNET SAFETY PRESIDENTIAL PLEDGE


- PREAMBLE -

The Internet has become a powerful educational and communications tool, placing vast new worlds of knowledge in the palm of our hands. Today’s youth have fully integrated the Internet into their daily lives, using technology as a pervasive platform for education, communication, interaction, exploration, and self–expression. The Internet opens its users to a world that is reflective of contemporary human life, providing access to what is good, beneficial, and enriching, but when unrestricted, it also opens doors to what is dangerous, obscene, violent and criminal.

Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the impact of this broad spectrum of dangerous content and activity. Preventing the sexual exploitation of youth online requires a shared responsibility between the public, industry and government. A growing number of government commissions , task forces , scholars, and institutions have recognized the significant risks associated with unfettered Internet access by youth, and they have called upon governments, policy makers, caregivers, industry and educators to take action.

- RECITALS -

Whereas, The First Amendment is a foundational cornerstone of the Constitution. Not all written or visual material, however, is protected under the First Amendment. The United States Supreme Court has ruled there are four categories of pornography that are not entitled to full First Amendment protection, and which can be restricted or proscribed altogether. With respect to the Internet, those categories include the obscenity and child pornography laws.

Whereas, There are existing laws in place to criminalize the online sexual predation and sex trafficking of children, as well as obscene pornography and child pornography.

Whereas, in past Administrations, The Internet obscenity laws have not been aggressively or adequately enforced. The invasion of graphic online worldwide is “the largest unregulated social experiment in human history” .

Whereas, Internet Safety is now the 4th top ranked issue in the list of health concerns for U.S. children. and is a growing public health issue. Internet pornography is “deforming the sexual development of younger viewers”

Whereas, Despite 20 years of efforts, the sexual exploitation of children in travel and tourism (SECTT) has expanded across the globe and out-paced every attempt to respond at the international and national level, the increasing use of the Internet has enabled offenders to groom children online, and to exchange information and advice on how to abuse children and avoid detection…”

Now, therefore, Enough Is Enough® and our NGO partners representing millions of Americans, call upon the presidential candidates in 2016 to make a pledge to defend the innocence and dignity of America’s children by enforcing the existing federal laws and advancing public policies designed to 1) prevent the sexual exploitation of children online and 2) to make the Internet safer for all.


- PLEDGE -

If elected President of the United State of America, I promise to:

  1. Uphold the rule of law by aggressively enforce existing federal laws to prevent the sexual exploitation of children online, including the federal obscenity laws, child pornography laws, sexual predation laws and the sex trafficking laws by:
    1. appointing an Attorney General who will make the prosecution of such laws a top priority in my administration and,
    2. Providing the intelligence community and law enforcement with the resources and tools needed to investigate and prosecute Internet crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children.
  2. Aggressively enforce the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requiring schools and public libraries using government eRate monies to filter child pornography and pornography by requiring effective oversight by the Federal Communications Commission;
  3. Protect and defend the innocence of America’s children by advancing public policies that prevent the sexual exploitation of children in a manner that is consistent with the government’s compelling interest in protecting its most vulnerable citizens, within the limits set forth by the First Amendment.
  4. Give serious consideration to appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the harmful public health impact of Internet pornography on youth, families and the American culture and the prevention of the sexual exploitation of children in the digital age.
  5. Establish public-private partnerships with Corporate America to step up voluntary efforts to reduce the threat of the Internet-enabled sexual exploitation of children by the implementation of updated corporate policies and viable technology tools and solutions.

Signed--

The Research Behind the Pledge

Peer-reviewed research and medical science confirms Internet pornography is a fueling factor in the sexual exploitation and abuse of children, violence against women, addiction, decreased mental and physical well-being, compromised development of youth, the breakdown of marriage, sexual predation and sex trafficking.

  • Any child with open Internet access can view, either intentionally or accidentally, sexually exploitive material, ranging from adult pornography, prosecutable obscenity including graphic sex acts, live sex shows, orgies, excretory functions, bestiality, and violence and child pornography.
  • Sexting is now the 6th top ranked issue in the list of health concerns for U.S. children. Sexting behaviors are significantly associated with consuming pornography.
  • A third of 11 to 14 year olds have watched porn on a mobile device.
  • 42% of sextortion victims met their abuser online.
  • Porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined. Searches for “teen porn” tripled 2005 – 2013.
  • The average age of first exposure to pornography is 12.2 years. By age 10, 3.2% of children in the sample had been exposed to pornography. The impact of exposure to children 9 and younger: more sexually questionable acts, more sexual arousal to violence, and more time using pornography later in life.
  • 53% of boys and 28% of girls (ages 12-15) use sexually explicit pornography, most via Internet ; 98.9% of boys and 73.5% of girls have viewed pornographic sites.
  • 83% of boys and 57% of girls have seen group sex online; 32% of boys and 18% of girls have viewed bestiality online.
  • 88.2% of top-rated porn scenes contain physical aggression (spanking, gagging, slapping, etc.); 48.7% contain verbal aggression (name calling). Perpetrators were usually male, 94% of the targets were women.
  • For some adults and youth, pornography increases the risk of sexually aggressive behavior , and is one factor contributing to sexual dysfunction, including sexually deviant tendencies, sexual offenses, and difficulty with intimacy and acceptance of rape myths.
  • Juvenile sex offenders are more likely to have been sexually abused, have atypical sexual fantasies, or had early exposure to pornography.
  • Children as young as 5 are imitating sex acts at school because they are allowed to stay up late and watch pornography.
  • Just 28% of parents have installed software on computers to prohibit certain website violation, only 17% have such software on mobile devices, and just 15% on gaming consoles.
  • The bi-partisan Congressionally appointed Child Online Protection Commission made recommendations to Congress including:
    (that) “Government at all levels should fund aggressive programs to investigate, prosecute, and report violations of federal and state obscenity laws, including efforts that emphasize the protection of children from accessing materials illegal under current state and federal obscenity law... The investigation and prosecution program should supplement the Government’s existing effort to investigate and prosecute child sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and child pornography ... and be of sufficient magnitude to deter effectively illegal activity on the Internet...
  • A Google Trends analysis indicates that searches for “Teen Porn” have more than tripled from 2005–2013. Total searches for teen–related porn reached an estimated 500,000 daily in March 2013 — one–third of total daily searches for pornographic web sites. Dr. Dines also analyzed the content of the three most popular “porntubes,” the portals that serve as gateways to online porn, and found that they contained 18 million teen–related pages–again, the largest single genre and about one–third of the total content.
  • PornHub, one of the industry’s biggest providers, claim their site streamed 75 GB of data a second last year—enough to fill 175 million 16 GB iPhones—a total of 87.8 billion views, up ten billion from 2014, another 15 billion over 2013. An estimated 87% of college-age men—and around 30% of women—double click for sex either weekly or every day.
  • “There has been a 774% increase in the number of child pornography images and videos reviewed through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Child Victim Identification Program from 2005 (1.98 million images/videos) to 2011 (17.3 million images/videos). Most victims of child pornography are prepubescent with a growing trend towards depicting younger children, including infants.”
  • As of December 2012, NCMEC's child victim identification program has reviewed and analyzed more than 80 million child pornography images since it was created in 2002.
  • Child pornographers, sex traffickers, and other criminal enterprises use sophisticated anonymizing tools to try to cover their tracks and often gravitate to “Deep Web” sites that cater to their perversion which accept payment in unregulated virtual currencies such as Bitcoin.
  • Federal officials warn that public Wi-Fi hotspots create criminal safe havens for sexual predators to operate with anonymity;
  • “Porn users demand a constant stream of new, increasingly violent and fetishized content. In order to keep up with this demand, more women and children become prostituted and trafficked.”
  • Researchers have found a correlation between brain activity and age – the younger the age, the greater level of activity in the ventral striatum of the brain in response to pornography.
  • Every day children in the United States are sold for sex, often over the Internet on sites like backpage.com. In a 2014 amicus brief, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) 331 stated that Backpage has “rejected most proposals to meaningfully reduce the selling and buying of children for unlawful sex through its website. A majority of the child sex trafficking cases being reported to NCMEC now involve ads posted on backpage.com.” In 2013 , The National Association of Attorneys General (49 Attorneys General) called on Congress to make a two word amendment to a federal law (CDA) which would enable state prosecutors to help fight prostitution and child sex trafficking. Congress has yet to take action.
  • The United States is the largest producer and exporter of hardcore pornographic DVDs and web material. [22] http://familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html#important_countries(accessed June 6, 2014). Pornographic web pages by country are U. S. 244,661,900(89%) and Germany 10,030,200 (4%).
  • 2016 meta-analysis of pornography research reveals adolescent pornography consumption is significantly associated with stronger gender-stereotypical sexual beliefs, earlier sexual debut, increased casual sex behavior, and increased sexual aggression both as perpetrators and victims.

See more research and statistics.

The Internet Pornography Pandemic: "The Largest Unregulated Social Experiement in Human History" By: Donna Rice Hughes

Click To Download the full Pledge
with Annotations and Footnotes