What parents and the public have long feared about the Internet apparently is true: Internet porn to today's teenagers is what "Playboy" was to their parents - their first glimpse at human sexuality. And anyone who has been the recipient of Internet spammed porn (and who hasn't?) knows that the clinical, graphic, often violent and certainly loveless images of human sexuality depicted on the Internet are not the way any responsible adult would want a child to get his or her first glimpse of human sexuality.

Yet, according to one study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, up to 70 percent of the nation's 15- to 17-year-olds have viewed Internet porn. It's no big deal, according to one 16-year-old, who said, "It's just part of the culture now. It's not even like it's … porn."

In fact, his casual attitude contradicts the statement by a professor of health and public medicine at Atlanta's Emory University, who theorized, "For (teens), the media is reality."

We doubt it. Teens represent those born between 1986 and 1992. They never knew a time without video games and virtual reality. Besides, real-world statistics don't back up the assertion that teens see porn and want to emulate it.

The Centers for Disease Control reported that the nation's teen pregnancy rate fell 19 percent from its high in 1991 to a record low of 94.3 pregnancies per 1,000 women ages 15-19 in 1997 and has not rebounded. Considering that 1991 also was the year that the Internet was launched to the public, this implies that teen pregnancy was dropping at the very time that more teens were logging on and downloading porn.

The number of teen groups advocating for abstinence also is at an all-time high. Most adolescents remain virgins at 15, and the CDC said that statistics has increased steadily since 1995.

By all indications, the teens who view porn realize it isn't the same as a loving, sustaining intimate relationship. For how to attract and maintain such a bond, teens still look to their parents, trusted guardians, and older siblings and friends, not Internet porn.