A recent newspaper report has revealed that almost half of the pregnant teens in Shanghai met their partners on the internet. According to Dr. Zhang Zhengrong of Shanghai's No. 411 Hospital, 46 percent of the more than 20,000 girls who called the city's pregnancy hotline in the past two years had sex with boys they met online.
After learning of the pregnancies, most of the fathers disappeared. Some of the girls didn't even know their partners' real names.
High school students between the ages of 16 and 18 have accounted for a growing percentage of people in Shanghai seeking abortions. According to Zhang, most of the callers to the hot line knew little about birth control or the physiological aspects of sex. Many also considered abortions to be harmless.
Although underage sex is still considered to be taboo in China, abortions are easy to get without parental notification. China promotes abortions as part of its attempts to limit families to one child.
Zhang said that 79 percent of high school and university students cited the internet as their main source of information about sex. The survey gathered results from 2,043 parents, 2,680 teachers, and 1,577 teenagers.
