aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Social Networks, predators, & neglecting the real problem

Techdirt reports on yet another study demonstrating that social networks aren’t breeding grounds for sexual predators:

Over the past few years there has been a huge number of grandstanding politicians claiming that social networks like Facebook and MySpace were breeding grounds for online predators, who were trying to entice children.  They’ve been pushing for new laws, basically so they can get into the papers along with some quip about how they are out there protecting “the children.” Of course, it turns out that the entire premise is faulty.  A few years back we pointed to a study that showed the problem was entirely exaggerated.  Very few kids were approached by predators and most who were could easily brush it off, so long as they had been educated about the risks.  Now there’s a new study out going even deeper in noting that sexual predators are unlikely to pretend to be teenagers using social networks, but rather are very upfront about who they are and what they want.  In most cases, the victims knew that they were chatting with an older person, and believed that they were in a legitimate relationship, rather than being tricked.  Once again, this suggests that all the hype and new laws being proposed to deal with the “problem” of predators on social networks are misplaced.  The focus should be on basic education.  Teach kids to have some “internet smarts” and they’re probably going to be just fine.

While I agree with the education conclusion, what I find tragic is the truth that most of the victims knew that they were chatting with an older person.

The real crisis is these kids need adults to engage, appropriately, with them on the topic of sex. Now that I have a young person living in my household (regular readers will recall that my nephew lives with us) I know just exactly how overwhelming the challenge of that can be.

So if you care at all about the facts… if you have kids—or just honestly care about them—and want to make a difference and help address these issues, here are some important resources:

A danah boyd post from a May 2007 panel of social scientists, Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization.

Stephanie Booth reacts to MySpace removing the profiles of 29,000 convicted sex offenders: Online Predator Paranoia.