LEVEL OF AWARENESS ON CYBERSEX AMONG THE YOUTHS IN LUCENA CITY: BASIS FOR INFORMATION DISSEMINATION CAMPAIGN

The use of the internet needs investigation as people nowadays make use of this as a medium to commit cyber sex. Through a descriptive research design approach, demographic information, internet-related activities, and the level of awareness about cybersex among youths in Lucena City are determined. This study utilized various literature and a custom-developed self-administered questionnaire structured in Likert style to gather the necessary information needed for the study. Most of the youth respondent in this study is around 16-18 years old and is mostly female. Among these youth, most of them spend around 3-4 hours surfing the internet day by day. The result found in this study is that most of the youth make use of the internet only for the sole purpose of communication. A lot of the students disagreed that they take advantage of the internet for sexual pleasures, including cybersex and watching pornographic content. Despite this, they are aware of what cybersex is and the alternative forms of cybersex, such as sexting. With this level of awareness, they know what consequences they may face from a legal perspective if they try to conduct such activities. Although the result shows that most of the youth are not engaged in cybersex but are aware of it, it is still recommended to strengthen this foundational awareness against cybersex among the youth to persistently rule out possibilities of cybersex among them, especially since most of them make use of the internet for communication purposes.