Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown

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New York Times
Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown

By BRAD STONE

Published: January 13, 2009

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all.

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series. One attorney general was quick to criticize the group’s report.

The panel, the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

I believe this. I'm reminded of the woman and her teen daughter who used a MySpace(?) account to lead another teen to believe that some guy was interested in her, but later changed his mind which led the girl to suicide. And a lot of kids use these accounts to harass students at their school - like one member here who was having some conflict with a fellow student on Devian Art.

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New York Times
“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database and was part of the task force. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

The 278-page report, released Tuesday, was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, experts in childhood safety and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.

The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online sexual predators and found that children and teenagers were unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do exist, the report said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.

Not everyone was happy with the conclusions.

Of course not! The truth hurts! Putting the blame where it belongs - WITH THE PARENTS - is going to be very unpopular. Better to deputize society and force us, willing or not, to do the jobs that most people with children can't or won't do.

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New York Times
Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, who has forcefully pursued the issue and helped to create the task force, said he disagreed with the report. Mr. Blumenthal said it “downplayed the predator threat,” relied on outdated research and failed to provide a specific plan for improving the safety of social networking.

The only way to improve this problem is to force people with children to actually (gasp!) parent them!

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New York Times
“Children are solicited every day online,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Some fall prey, and the results are tragic. That harsh reality defies the statistical academic research underlying the report.”

In what social networks may view as something of an exoneration after years of pressure from law enforcement, the report said sites like MySpace and Facebook “do not appear to have increased the overall risk of solicitation.”

Attorneys general like Mr. Blumenthal and Roy Cooper of North Carolina publicly accused the social networks of facilitating the activities of pedophiles and pushed them to adopt measures to protect their youngest users. Citing studies that showed tens of thousands of convicted sex offenders were using MySpace, they pressured the networks to purge those people from their membership databases.

The attorneys general also charged the task force with evaluating technologies that might play a role in enhancing safety for children online. An advisory board composed of academic computer scientists and forensics experts was created within the task force to look at technologies and ask companies in the industry to submit their child-protection systems.

Among the systems the technology board looked at included age verification technologies that try to authenticate the identities and ages of children and prevent adults from contacting them. But the board concluded that such systems “do not appear to offer substantial help in protecting minors from sexual solicitation.”

One problem is that it is difficult to verify the ages and identities of children because they do not have driver’s licenses or insurance.

One of my favorite teevee people is Bill Maher, partially because he is vocally CF. He hit the nail on the head with his comment along the line of 'us other villagers are busy, raise your own kids'. I'm tired of having my TV screwed with (V-chip) because breeders can't be bothered to look after their kids. I love my friggin novelty lighters, and I love my social networking sites. WATCH YOUR EFFING KIDS BREEDERS so we can finally get rid of some of this foam padding that is fast engulfing our society.

That sounds like a pretty authoritative and exhaustive study. Yes, there is scum out there that tries to solicit young kids online...but I like the point in the study that says that the kids most likely to be targeted are in households where there is poor parenting or substance abuse going on. If the family ties are weakened, or if mom is blown out on meth and MIA so the kid has nothing to do but type on the computer, it makes sense a kid might be more vulnerable to trying to find some kind of what he or she imagines is a human relationship elsewhere, but is a kid without the life experience to recognize predators.

Perhaps that is some of the reason for the hysteria about online predators...maybe parents are projecting their own half-realized knowledge that they, not online predators, are more of the problem.

I'd like to see a comparison of kiddies' exposure to porn online versus kiddie's exposure to porn 'the traditional method' -- found under Mom and Dad's bed, in the top of their closets, or in the basement. And what proportion of online exposure is due to Mom and Dad's stupidity (ie putting links under weak code names in 'Favourites' or in their own folders called 'work pictures PRIVATE', etc).

Thing is, everyone who participated in these studies did so with the foregone conclusion that they'd find lots of danger online. Lots of nasty things. Lots of porn, lots of predators. Because the studies themselves were hardly going to be balanced, were they? They were going to be tipped massively in favour of finding bad things because it would justify the time and expense of the study, lead to lots of media attention, and lead to lots more studies, maybe legislation. When they then concluded they had little or nothing going on out there which could be found totally inadvertently and in all innocence, they realised that nasty things are only really found by those who pursue them to begin with -- at any age. Ipso facto.

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"The death of creativity is a pram in the hallway"
- Cyril Connolly

Whenever I hear of some kyd getting abducted by an online predator (or abducted in general), a 13 y/o picked up at an arcade, skating rink, or other type place and being given a ride home by an older male acquaintence and then raped, or any other number of awful things that happen to kids, I am reminded of some near mishaps in my own youth which were THWARTED due to parental presense and/or supervision..First of all, at young ages I wasn't just allowed to "go hang out", whenever and where ever I wanted, for an infinite length of time, without explanation and specific details. At age 13 it wasn't ever just, "Hey mom, I'm prolly gonna go hang out at the mall for a while and maybe meet up with some kids from school later on and go wherever", as some unknown potential assailant honked on the horn for me as they waited in a painted van with obscured out of state plates and tinted windows at the curb. I DON'T THINK SO. It was who, what, when, where, and the time, WHICH parents were picking up or dropping off, WHEN would I be home, etc......Many parents today just non chalantly say, "Ok Snookums, have a good time...", as their kyd slips out the side door, possibly for the last time, and they don't even notice what they are wearing in order to describe them to police when they fail to come home.


If my parents (or one of my friends' parents) hadn't been waiting outside of teenie bopper get togethers to pick me up on time, there were numerous occasions where either my friends or I were asked if we needed a ride (and we WOULD have probably accepted) by older and often goodlooking-cool guys with sporty cars, who in retrospect were very likely 19 and 20 (or older) y/o MEN who were trolling Jr High hang outs for some jail bait. 12-15 y/o girls are silly, oblivious to many (especially of a sexual nature) potentially dangerous situations, and susceptible to flattery by seemingly "cute and sweet" charming guys who claim to be in high school. I can remember COUNTLESS times that I was asked if I wanted to leave a skating rink, movie theatre, mall, pizza hangout, etc........and "go party", with the promise to get me back before my parents arrived to retrieve me. Those guys would say, "Why didn't you just drive here, you are 16 or 17, right?", which is of course what every 13 y/o with braces and hormonal acne wants to hear. Just knowing that my parents would blow a gasket if they could smell their cigarettes or beer on me, or God forbid if they drove up just as I was dropped off by some stranger, was enough to deter me from going.


What deterrent to kyds of shitty parents have if they know that moomie doesn't only NOT know where the hell that they are, but will either be passed out when they waltz in at 3AM, in bed with the latest fuckbuddy, or still out partying herself. NO WONDER so many young teens get abducted, raped, murdered, or just stay "missing". The parents have NO IDEA when they left, where they were going, who they were with, or even what clothing that they had on when they left. . Often times, they don't even know that they are "missing" until sometime the next evening when they fail to come home from school, but they never had even made it to school. It's pitiful how many breeders don't even keep up with their own kyds, especially the whereabouts of young teens. They are always the first ones on national TV whining when precious little Slutina has "disappeared", and 99% of the times it's their faults because it could have been prevented. Teens need some form of adult supervision, especially the young ones, because they are simply not mature enough to have the ability to make wise decisions and choices, it's just that simple. I didn't on many occasions, and I am one of the smarter ones. If my parents hadn't always been handy to scold, punish, and make me learn from my mistakes, then I may have wound up on the "missing kyd" list from the 1970's.


While I will concede that there may be some isolated exceptions, I honesty believe that if a child is lured away from his home by an online predator, it's DIRECTLY caused by parental neglect and/or lack of age appropriate supervision. I ALSO believe that the kyds seek out the predators more often than the predators seek them out, simply because they are emotionally neglected (at best) and are vulnerable to inappropriate attention. Naturally, it's going to be an unpopular study because most parents are looking to blame anything and anyone for THEIR mistakes and neglect in the child rearing department.

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kidlesskim


What deterrent to kyds of shitty parents have if they know that moomie doesn't only NOT know where the hell that they are, but will either be passed out when they waltz in at 3AM, in bed with the latest fuckbuddy, or still out partying herself. NO WONDER so many young teens get abducted, raped, murdered, or just stay "missing". The parents have NO IDEA when they left, where they were going, who they were with, or even what clothing that they had on when they left. . Often times, they don't even know that they are "missing" until sometime the next evening when they fail to come home from school, but they never had even made it to school. It's pitiful how many breeders don't even keep up with their own kyds, especially the whereabouts of young teens. They are always the first ones on national TV whining when precious little Slutina has "disappeared", and 99% of the times it's their faults because it could have been prevented. Teens need some form of adult supervision, especially the young ones, because they are simply not mature enough to have the ability to make wise decisions and choices, it's just that simple.

You're not suggesting they are falling down on TMIJITW?

my brother remembers and is still scared now, we live near manchester and gorton, and my brother remembers a woman coming upto him in st helens about 20 miles from gorton and asking him for help. one of the things that a certain couple did.

ok this was in the 60's, when the moors murderers was arounds and they travelled.. so there has always been predators, always been pedophiles, i dont know if the ratio has increased but theres more press about it.

part of the problem is parents not knowing whats going on, as they dont care. they are computer illiterate themselves,

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

This kind of touches on one of the things that, as a CF guy, really irks me to no end.

My TV and my Internet are expected to be child-safe. I want to just grab these breeders by the ears and scream, "The TV/Computer is not your fucking babysitter!" I wasn't allowed to watch whatever I pleased growing up because I was parented. Hell, when we got a computer (which didn't have a modem because those things were only in the movies back then) I was very strictly limited to how much time I was allowed on it.

Most forums don't allow "bad" words because "won't somebody please think of the children?" Yeah, I thought about them. I thought that their parents would supervise them. I go to violent, foul language and nudity-filled R-rated films and there's dozens of the screaming poopzombies running around so if I drop a few f-bombs on the Internet the only thing I'm doing is demonstrating proper spelling for the brats. They sure as hell aren't hearing it from me first.

It takes a village...

Bullshit. Hop in your mini-van time machine and go back to a real village. As the blacksmith to watch your kids for you.

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clematis
Perhaps that is some of the reason for the hysteria about online predators...maybe parents are projecting their own half-realized knowledge that they, not online predators, are more of the problem.

Ding Ding Ding!!! You're completely correct.
They don't do a good job and they know full well because it's a shitty job that they didn't think ahead weather they wanted it or not. It just "happened". However, they totally refuse to admit this in public. They are the ones who willingly buy computers and whatnot for their children and they are the ones who allow them unfettered and completely private access to the internet.

Kind of like "stranger danger". As a parent, your biggest worry shouldn't be the stranger down the street molesting your kid. It should be the overly friendly pack leader, or the really helpful priest, or the eager relative/step parent who you should be worried about. But they don't worry about THOSE people because THOSE people take the kid off their hands for a few hours. Parents are more than happy for this "help" because then they don't have to deal with the (unwanted) kid for a while. Of course, they wring their hands and beat their chests when their kid ends up molested, but at the time they are more than willing to hand that kid off to the very helpful adult who REALLY REALLY LIKES children.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me