Putri Prameshwari – A child protection group is shocked by the results of a survey in which 94 percent of the teenagers polled said they have engaged in oral sex.

The Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI), which carried out the survey, blames unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of urban teenagers engaging in casual sex.

KPAI chairwoman Masnah Sari said affordable Internet access and unrestricted use were to blame. The survey showed 93.7 percent of 4,500 urban teenagers reportedly having had oral sex, while 32 percent have had intercourse.

"It's because of what they can access on the Internet," Masnah said. "It's devastating that there's no way to control this."

In its poll, the KPAI surveyed 4,500 teenagers aged between 14 and 18 in Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya. Masnah said the survey also found 21.2 percent of the girls surveyed have had an abortion. However, there was no data linking Internet use with sex.

The Internet held endless appeal for teenagers because of its wealth and variety of content. "They like what they see, and they want to try it out themselves," Masnah said. "This leads them to get addicted to sex."

Casual sex had become a trend among urban teens, she added. "Those who don't engage in it are viewed by their peers as not being with it," Masnah said.

She urged the government to limit access to the Internet and implement a monitoring system that could be applied at home and in Internet cafes. "The Communication and Information Ministry must take charge of this," Masnah said.

Ministry spokesman Gatot Dewa Broto said that while the authorities were concerned by the statistics, the prevailing laws made it "not that easy" to implement Internet controls.

"The 1999 law on telecommunications prohibits service providers from allowing access to indecent content," he said. Anyone who found the law being broken could report it to authorities.

Gatot also said the ministry had written software that filtered out porn sites and it was installed at most Internet cafes. "However, such content is now available everywhere, not just from porn sites," he said, adding that Facebook also hosted explicit content.

Gatot said parents and teachers should monitor children's browsing habits. "We can do more to educate parents about using content-blocking software on home computers," he said.

Indonesia has more than 20 million Facebook users.