Diary – 25 January 2003

I spent Tuesday evening watching Ashley, a 15-year-old blonde girl from Oklahoma, flirt with a British boy called PJ. ‘Wanna see some photos of me?’ asked Ashley. PJ grinned. ‘I think you’ll like them, they’re hot,’ said Ashley, and winked. A boy called Ghetto, whom neither of them had met before, interrupted the conversation. ‘Hello, sir,’ he began. ‘Does anybody want to buy a dildo?’ Kitty69 responded immediately: ‘Check out the action on my live teen webcam!’ The Yahoo chat room for teenagers is one of the oddest places I’ve ever been. Boys pick up girls within seconds of meeting, and retire to ‘private rooms’ to talk dirty. PJ and Ashley soon disappeared to check out her webcam, a small video camera that transmits live footage of its owner, usually naked, over the Internet. A short profile of Ashley was available. The photo that she had submitted had been barred by the chat-room hosts for being too obscene, and she lists as her hobby ‘fuckin’.