San Francisco, CA- July 7, 2010 The Internet is clearly a part of everyday life in the United States. According to Pingdom, some estimates of how pervasive the Internet has become a part of the 21st century reality include:
– 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
– 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
– 1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
– 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
– 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
– 350 million – People on Facebook.
– 1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day
While the numbers are simply numbers, what does the increasing prevalence of the web, social media, and even
smart phones mean for the anti-trafficking movement in 2010 and onward? The End Internet Trafficking Coalition
(EITC) seeks to address these questions and educate the public about the relationship between victim exploitation
and the Internet.
We can no longer ignore that the Internet,social media and smart phones are normalized in everyday life, just as we
cannot ignore the use of such sites and services for exploitation: from pornography, prostitution, human trafficking,
stalking, and bullying, to websites that encourage language and postings that are degrading to people where their
only value is illustrated through their sexual commoditization.
