South Carolina Candidate For Governor Claims There Are Millions Of Internet Child Predators

from the hyperbole-much? dept

Over the past few years, we've see quite the moral panic about the supposed threat of internet predators preying on children online. This isn't to say that it doesn't happen or that parents and children shouldn't be quite careful, but the press and politicians have clearly blown the threat way out of proportion. Study after study after study has shown that the threat is relatively small, and most kids are smart enough to be safe online and avoid anyone who seems sketchy. And, the reality is that preying on kids has actually decreased as the internet has grown more popular.

But, of course, that doesn't make for the type of headlines that politicians want. South Carolina's Attorney General has now announced his plans to run for governor of the state, in part on the claim that he's going to crack down on child predators online. Now, we're all for cracking down on online predators, but it's tough to take him seriously, when he claims that "there are millions out there." Millions? That seems a bit on the high side. On top of that, he claims that "Any child can become a victim" because "the predators are so skilled at what they do." Except, of course, that's not what the studies have shown at all. They've shown that most kids aren't interested in strangers online at all, and if you reasonably educate them (which you should) they're likely to be safe. But why bother with the actual evidence when you can grandstand as part of your bid to be governor?

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Press Not Buying Google Street View As A Threat To Children

from the good-for-them dept

A few months back, we pointed out how ridiculous it was that a child advocacy group had put out a scary press release claiming that child predators could use Google Street View to prey on children. They could also, you know, walk up and down the street. It's nice to see that the mainstream press is at least calling the group, Stop Internet Predators, out on how ridiculous this is. Nationally syndicated columnist Larry Magid sarcastically slams the group for such pointless fearmongering, not only pointing out that it's easier for predators to just walk up and down the street, but also making the following point:

Instead of banning Google Street View, maybe we should put up walls between streets and sidewalks so that predators can't see children walking home from school. And while we're at it, let's ban public outdoor parks and recreation areas or at least find ways to hide the children playing there. Or just keep children away from churches, schools and other places where pedophiles have been known to operate.

Considering how often we end up seeing the mainstream press simply parrot these sorts of press releases, it's good to see them hitting back against these more questionable attempts at creating moral panics.

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Technology Moral Panics: But Think Of The Children!

from the everyone-panic dept

Recently I wrote about a dreadful article in USA Today hyping up the "oh-no-think-of-the-children problem" of predators using console games to seek out kids. This followed similarly bogus news articles hyping up the threats of predators on social networks. Yet, all the "panic" raised by those articles has politicians practically shoving each other aside to introduce legislation against those social networks, or just various Attorneys General threatening those social networks without any evidence that there's a significant problem, other than a few totally hyped up news articles.

It turns out that a PhD Candidate at NYU, Alice Marwick has recently published a paper discussing exactly this type of "moral panic," focusing on the situation in 1996 in which Time Magazine famously published a scare mongering article about porn online, now known as the Rimm Report. Sean Garret, who pointed me to Marwick's paper has a good analysis of the Rimm Report's ripple effects as well (as does Adam Thierer). Basically, the report, which claimed that 83.5% of images online were porn was based on ridiculously faulty premises and research. It was almost entirely wrong.

And while Time Magazine came out of it looking bad, it didn't stop politicians from using the "moral panic" created by the article to push through the Communications Decency Act -- which after many years of wasted taxpayer money was eventually declared unconstitutional. What's scary though, is how this process works: newspaper basically overhypes a non-story into a "big scary trend" and almost immediately politicians start pushing for questionable "save the children!" legislation:

This paper is about moral panics over contemporary technology, which I call "technopanics." I use two examples, the cyberporn panic of 1996 and the contemporary panic over online predators and MySpace, to demonstrate the links between media coverage and content legislation. In both cases, Internet content legislation is directly linked to media–fueled moral panics that concern uses of technology deemed harmful to children. This is of particular interest right now as a new Internet content bill, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), is being debated in Congress. The technopanic over "online predators" is remarkably similar to the cyberporn panic; both are fueled by media coverage, both rely on the idea of harm to children as the justification for Internet content restriction, and both have resulted in carefully crafted legislation to circumvent First Amendment concerns. While both panics have their roots in legitimate concerns, I am not primarily concerned with the extent of the purported harms. However, my research demonstrates that the legislation proposed (or passed) to curb these problems is an extraordinary response; it is misguided and in many cases masks the underlying problem.

The paper goes on to rip apart the media in blowing up these technopanics, often using outright incorrect or made up data, such as the idea that "50,000 sexual predators are online at any given time," a favorite of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The problem is that this number was made up out of nowhere. In tracking down where the number came from, the sources basically admit they pulled it out of thin air, with one saying that the number 50,000 is a:

"Goldilocks" figure -- "Not small and not large." He added that it was the same figure that was used by the media to describe the number of people killed annually by Satanic cults in the 1980s, and before that was cited as the number of children abducted by strangers each year in the 1970s.

But that didn't stop Dateline NBC from using it repeatedly -- leading to politicians claiming it was fact. Marwick systematically goes through the various stats like this one used by politicians and destroys each one as being false or misleading. But, of course, neither the press, which popularized them, nor the politicians using them to push through legislation, are interested in the truth. They want sensationalism, because that helps both of them.

The paper concludes that this new law, DOPA, is targeting exactly the wrong thing (i.e., not the actual problem) and is merely a response to yet another moral panic that is likely to die out as people realize it's not as big a deal as the press and politicians are making it out to be. In the short term, though, passing the law could be quite harmful. Beyond wasting millions in taxpayer dollars (like the CDA and COPA did), it could make it more difficult for kids to use social networks and certain web services for beneficial purposes.

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Everyone Be Afraid! Predators Move To Game Consoles

from the fear-fear-fear! dept

There's a neat little rule in press coverage: three stories makes a "trend" even if there's not much more to it. This works particularly well on stories where you're trying to scare people into worrying about something "bad" happening out there. Of course, rather than explore how widespread the problem is, the report usually just quotes a few biased individuals and spreads the message of "fear, fear, fear!" Witness this story in USA Today claiming that sexual predators are using gaming consoles to target kids. It hits all the points: scary situation, lists out three cases, quotes a few police officers claiming it's a big deal -- but doesn't provide any evidence or stats on how widespread this really is.

You would think that the press would have learned to be careful about this, given that a whole bunch of studies came out in the last year showing that the press greatly exaggerated the "threat" of predators on social networks, as they're really not that widespread and the actual threat is minimal. But I guess reality and facts don't sell as many newspapers as blind fear mongering. So, while I'm sure that this is happening in a few isolated cases, it's hard to believe that this is particularly widespread. If it's not really happening much on social networks (where this sort of "grooming" would be easier), it seems unlikely that it's widespread on gaming consoles. And, of course, most kids know better than to engage with such strangers online, anyway.

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Turns Out Social Networks Aren't Breeding Grounds For Sexual Predators

from the won't-stop-politician-grandstanding dept

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.

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Press, Parents And 'Experts' Blew Online Safety Threat To Children Way Out Of Proportion

from the kids-are-pretty-safe dept

If you pay attention to most of the mainstream press these days, you could be forgiven for thinking that the internet is a den of sin, where children are constantly preyed upon by predators from every angle... especially on social networks. After all, we've been told about all the sex offenders on MySpace and Facebook. There are even a few so-called "experts" who you see quoted repeatedly on just how dangerous it is for kids online -- even though study after study has actually shown that fewer kids are being solicited -- and most kids seem smart enough to be able to deal with unwanted contacts just fine. However, you don't see those stories very often, because it's not as headline grabbing to say: Hey, Everyone's Overreacting! But sometimes it does happen... and USA Today has a nice article explaining that many parents and politicians are significantly overreacting to the "threats" online facing children. As the article notes, it's extremely rare for someone to "stalk" a person via their profile and abduct them. In fact, sexual abuse cases against children are way down (by 50%) from 1990 to 2005, as the internet became so much more popular. So, the idea that the internet and social networks have somehow put more children into harms way seems totally incorrect, and it's nice to see a news source like USA Today making that clear. This isn't to say children shouldn't be taught how to deal with strangers online -- but it's like learning how to deal with strangers you run into on the street. You don't keep your children from meeting strangers completely, you teach them how to be safe.

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