If the purpose of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is for this sign to make the viewer asks questions, they succeeded wildly.
My first question was "Is 1 in 5 children even online?" followed by "What ages are they talking about?" then "Males and females both?" then "Where did they get those numbers from?" and, finally, "What ARE they talking about?"
On their FAQs and Statistics page, the sixth question is "How many children are sexually approached and/or solicited online?" Clicking on that answers two of my questions, the ages are 10 to 17 and the statistic comes from the DOJ Highlights of the Youth Internet Safety Survey, a pdf brochure to which they provide a link. (For more information about the survey, see here.)
More info from the brochure:
77% of those solicited were 14 to 17 years old.
1/3 of those solicited were male.
none of the solicitations led to an actual sexual contact or assault.
48% of the solicitations were made by juveniles, 24% by adults, the remainder, age unknown.
2/3 of the solicitations came from males, 1/4 from females. (Although it doesn't say, I presume the remainder are unknown. It does point out that the identified genders may have been part of a disguise.)
75% of the incidents were described as not distressing.
1/3 of the aggressive incidents (attempts at personal contact) were unreported (now that's distressing.)
I suppose there's no harm done in the vague and slightly misleading language of the sign, but I doubt there's anything gained by it either. I have less respect for the organization, than if they'd phrased it 1 in 5 teens is sexually solicited online. That would have been an underestimation and I suppose not nearly as scary as using the word "children" (a person between birth and puberty) but I'd be more likely to believe the rest of the their message.
UPDATE: Web-Proofing Your Kids
