In Part I, I laid out a brief (and not necessarily completely accurate) view of the universe of student-focused on-line personal sites. In Part II, I reviewed the issue of schools limiting and/or banning student access to such sites.
Here in Part III, I'll address one of the reasons many districts have given for blocking or banning access:
Students' on-line safety--the "Internet Predator/Stranger Danger" fear, that a bad person could find and harm the student from content the student posted to sites such as Xanga, LiveJournal, and MySpace.
It is a fear that has been widely repeated. But is it justified?
Some people are alarmist about teens and internet use. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has a brochure (download available on this page) that is generally good and non-alarmist. They also have an interactive training tool for kids and teens, called NetSmartz.
NCMEC underook a study:
Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth (the link takes you to a page where you may download a PDF) Produced in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, this groundbreaking national survey of 1,501 youth aged 10 to 17 documented their use of the Internet and experiences while online including unwanted exposure to sexual solicitation, sexual material, and harassment
The highlights of the study:
Report Statistical Highlights Based on interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,501 youth ages 10 to 17 who use the Internet regularly
• Approximately one in five received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet in the last year.
• One in thirty-three received an aggressive sexual solicitation--a solicitor who asked to meet them somewhere; called them on the telephone; sent them regular mail, money, or gifts.
• One in four had an unwanted exposure to pictures of naked people or people having sex in the last year.
• One in seventeen was threatened or harassed.
• Approximately one quarter of young people who reported these incidents were distressed by them.
• Less than 10% of sexual solicitations and only 3% of unwanted exposure episodes were reported to authorities such as a law-enforcement agency, an Internet service provider, or a hotline.
• About one quarter of the youth who encountered a sexual solicitation or approach told a parent. Almost 40% of those reporting an unwanted exposure to sexual material told a parent.
• Only 17% of youth and approximately 10% of parents could name a specific authority (such as the FBI, CyberTipline, or an Internet service provider) to which they could make a report, although more said they had “heard of” such places.
Those are pretty alarming figures...until you realize that of the millions of children under 18 who are online, very very few are actually at risk:
In light of the effusion of unwanted sexual solicitations directed toward young people and documented in this report, one of the most important things we still need to track is the growth in the number of young people whose Internet contacts turn into real-life sex crimes. Through our CyberTipline and close working relationships with federal, state, and local law enforcement, we are able to provide an unsystematic estimate on the number of “traveler cases” in 1999. These are cases in which a child or adult traveled to physically meet with someone he or she had first encountered on the Internet.
We were able to identify 785 cases including 302 from the FBI, 272 from local law enforcement, 186 from our own NCMEC reports, and 25 from news articles. Some of these may be duplicate cases, but there are certainly many others that we did not find out about and were not reported to law enforcement. It is our hope that this first report about online victimization will be followed by a scientifically based, national incidence study of these “traveler” cases so that we can truly understand this most serious part of the spectrum of the problem.
Don't get me wrong. One is too many, but the risk to an individual teen is vanishingly small. The risk is overstated. It's not real. MySpace was not invented at the time of the 1999 study. At the current time, MySpace has about 4 million members. At the level of 0.01% risk --1 in 10,000 users -- you would expect about 400 "traveller cases" from MySpace alone. That hasn't happened.
On November 2, 2005, Danah Boyd wrote
I'm tired of mass media perpetuating a culture of fear under the scapegoat of informing the public. Nowhere is this more apparent than how they discuss youth culture and use scare tactics to warn parents of the safety risks about the Internet. The choice to perpetually report on the possibility or rare occurrence of kidnapping / stalking / violence because of Internet sociability is not a neutral position - it is a position of power that the media chooses to take because it's a story that sells. There's something innately human about rubbernecking, about looking for fears, about reveling in the possibilities of demise. Mainstream media capitalizes on this, manipulating the public and magnifying the culture of fear. It sells horror films and it sells newspapers.
But the fear-mongering goes on. A site selling internet-monitoring software to parents misrepresents MySpace (it's not a "chat room"), and raises the specter of the Internet Predator:
Al Lynch, the principal at Northwest Christian High School warned parents about myspace.com, saying naive young people are ill-equipped to recognize the threat that cyberspace predators employ to trap their teens.
Business Week had an article called Protecting Your Kids from Cyber Predators:
It's a parent's nightmare: A 16-year-old Port Washington (N.Y.) girl was molested by a 37-year-old man in September, after they met on MySpace.com. Local police say the man misrepresented himself when he exchanged messages online with the teen. Then he showed up at the girl's after-school job, followed her to the parking lot, forced her into his car, and attacked her. The assailant, who was arrested and released on bail, knew where she worked because she had posted it on her MySpace profile, says Port Washington Police Detective Sergeant Paul Gros.
This is the dark side of teen blogging and social networking. Along with favorite bands and best friends, kids are blogging phone numbers, class schedules, and other personal information that makes them vulnerable to anyone who wants to track them down. Across the country, law enforcement officials get some 6,000 cases a year involving teens victimized as a result of online activity, estimates Parry Aftab, a Fort Lee (N.J.) privacy lawyer who founded WiredSafety.org to help keep kids safe from cyber-criminals.
Looking more closely at that 6,000 at the WiredSafety.org site, I could find absolutely zero confirmation. Aftab seems to be blending the risks of the Cyber Predator (small) and the risk of harassment or stalking by a fellow student (much larger, see the following post).
On February 23, 2005, in Little Rock, Arkansas, KTHV reported:
And just this week, a 23-year-old Louisiana man was arrested for kidnapping a girl he met through the Xanga website and blogging.
The FBI has a group called the Innocent Images Taskforce. It's made up of several agents that focus on catching pedophiles and those into child pornography. They target chat rooms, but are aware of Internet blogging and its dangers.
Bill Temple, special agent in charge of the Little Rock FBI says, "We have made numerous arrests, convicted people that have gotten on the Internet pretending to be teenagers and meeting for sexual purposes."
Temple says one in five kids every year is contacted by a predator. He is surprised at the amount of personal information kids are posting.
Temple says, "The Internet is a wonderful thing for educational purposes and a lot of other things, but it's open to everyone and we live in a dangerous world where not everyone has good intentions."
The FBI has many tips for parents when it comes to Internet safety. Never let your kids post pictures of themselves. Never let them give out personal information. Tell them to never download pictures from an unknown source. And let your kids know whatever they are told online may or may not be true.
So the "1 in 5" figure that "sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet in the last year." that NCMEC reported -- which could be a kid from your school inquiring if you want to become "friends with benefits" -- has mophed into " one in five kids every year is contacted by a predator." Not exactly the same thing.
On March 23, 2005, WNDU-TV in South Bend, Indiana, warned: (emphasis added)
Investigator Mitch Kajzer at the St. Joseph County Prosecutor's office says parents don’t realize the threat of computers. “I don't think parents realize the dangers out there that children come in contact with on Internet,” said Kajzer. Danger is just a click away. A sexual predator can go anywhere in cyberspace to find your children.
[snip]
The fact remains that something can happen to a child, anywhere, anytime, even at home. “We make a number of arrests for people traveling, thinking they are coming to area, thinking they are meeting a child for sexual purposes,” said Kajzer.
On April 29, 2005, MSNBC ran a story on the dangers of MySpace.com: At one school, i about one-third of the 250 middle school students have Internet blogs -- and only about 5 percent of the parents know about it.
"The girls are all made up to look seductive....Parents have no clue this is going on," [the technology co-ordinator said. "You think your kid is safe because they are in your house in their own bedroom. Who can hurt them when you are guarding the front door? But (the Internet) is a bigger opening than the front door."
Experts interviewed for this article could not cite a single case of a child predator hunting for and finding a child through a blog. But there are cases of children being lured through other Internet services, such as chat rooms.
"I don't see why pedophiles wouldn't use this tool, if this is where kids are," said Ann Coulier of Net Family News.
On April 17, 2005, the Hudson River Valley Record Online ran a rather balanced story on the uses and attractions of MySpace, but did not neglect the scare theme: the headline was, "Are Your Kids Chatting With A Predator?
"From my interaction with teens, they don't really understand that there are adults who are predators," says New Hampton's Nancy Quarantotto, a mother of five, including two this year at the high school. "They think of it as: 'Oh, that happens to somebody else, somewhere far away.'"
Actually, according to the data, the kids are correct. The risk to an individual teen from a predator is very, very small -- much less than the risk of getting behind the wheel.
On May 25, 2005, the Christian Science Monitor ran a story: Teens: It's a Diary Adults: It's Unsafe, repeating the scare theme.
"They're not aware how easily something [predatory] can happen over the Internet," [said one mother of a 13-year-old MySpace user] "They really shouldn't have these sites. Maybe when they're older, in college or something, but it's just not safe before that."
The 13-year-old admits that she lied about her age. MySpace says:
You have been denied access to MySpace.com. All users must be at least 14 years of age. If MySpace determines that a user is under 14, his or her profile will be terminated without warning.
The rest of the article is actually fairly balanced.
In June, 2005, the Murrieta Valley School District (20,500 students) sent home a warning to parents (full warning:Download ParentAdvisory_myspacecom.pdf)
It is suggested that parents take a proactive approach to their children having personal web sites and learn of the dangers of posting personal information on the Internet. MySpace.com is a place where adults preying on children have been known to frequent. Unsuspecting children have posted enough personal information to become easy targets for predators.
On September 3, 2005, the Seattle Times joined the scare brigade:
Prowling Internet pedophiles are just one concern experts raise about online social-networking sites such as MySpace.com, which attract hundreds of local teens.
[snip]
The sheer amount of information in profiles is unprecedented, said Kim Komando, who hosts a syndicated radio show on technology that airs locally on KTTH-AM (770). When she warned against the "most dangerous" sites for kids, MySpace.com topped the list.
On October 8, 2005, the Orange County Register reported on MySpace and a letter sent to parents from the Murrieta Valley School District, again warning of the dangers of the internet predator on MySpace.
On October 9, 2005, in North Carolina, school district officials sounded the warning about MySpace
Murrieta school officials are warning parents about a seemingly innocent Web site popular with teenagers that could subject their children to Internet "bullying" or even put them in danger.
On November 4, 2005, Orange County, California parents were warned:
Officials with the Orange County Sheriff's Office computer crime squad issued a warning Friday about a popular teen Web site, Local 6 News reported....Authorities said many teens are posting racy photos and exchanging information with other Web users.
The danger is that predators can find the teen in their ZIP code and begin communication, according to Local 6 News reporter Vanessa Medina.
"A lot of information they post on MySpace will give these people clues if not outright directions to where they are, Orange County computer crimes Sgt. Kevin Stenger said.
On November 11, 2005, the West Linn Tidings s ran an article that stated
Along with chat rooms and instant messaging, many parents have red flagged the Web site MySpace.com as a potentially dangerous place on the Internet. Millions of teens use this site to build their own Web page, chat with friends, listen to music and make new connections. But that doesn’t mean that the site is always safe.
Sexual predators have been known to use MySpace.com to try and meet young teens
The rest of the article is reasonably well-balanced, and has some good suggestions for parents.
On November 15, 2005, CBS News claimed
Now, dozens of schools are threatening to suspend any student who logs on to the popular website.
Well, that was a bit overstated. What the interview actually revealed was that students enrolled at Notre Dame schools (and many other religious schools) ) sign a code of Christian conduct. If the students' MySpace entries reveal that the student has violated that code of conduct, the student will be disciplined--expelled or suspended. This seems to me to be eminently fair.
On November 22, 2005, the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota warned:
Millions of teens who grew up with a mouse in one hand and a remote control in the other now pour out their hearts, minds and angst into personal online diaries.
And anyone with a connection - including would-be predators - can have a front-row view of this once-secretive teenage passion play.
On December 2, 2005, The Orange County Register took the prize for fearmongering on an article about MySpace:
In October, Aliso Viejo teenager William Freund wrote of violence and suicide on an online chat for people suffering from Asperger's syndrome. He later shot to death two neighbors and himself.
While he wasn't using MySpace, or any other major networking sites, his postings speak to concerns that educators have noted about online chat spurring dangerous talk.
On December 3, 2005, news report on a safety-conscious Springfield, Tennessee businessman reported:
Springfield parent William White has been researching Web sites on the Internet for about two and a half months now.
What he found alarmed him.
“I got involved because of what I saw when I did the research ... I saw kids with their full names posted, where they go to school, and if I got your picture and where you go to school, I know where you are going to be at 3:30 (p.m.) and I know what you look like and if I’m a sexual predator, all I have to do is follow you,” said White, who owns CT&T Computer Service Center in Springfield.
“There is not a child, off a blog, that I could not find and I’m not a detective. I’m not a superhero. I don’t have X-ray vision, but I could find them in less than a day,” White said.
“This is a very important issue,” Assistant Director of Robertson County Schools Danny Weeks said. “We sent a letter home to all students to show to their parents, and we are doing up front education in the schools. So many times the student is not aware of who that person is they are talking to or what the intentions of that person are when they are online.
Law enforcement officers say educating parents and students is critical.
“It’s public awareness. Parents need to monitor what their children are doing on computers and Web sites. It is very dangerous nowadays and the main thing we can do is get the word out and educate people,’’ said. Robertson County Sheriff’s Lt. Don Bennett.
On December 8, 2005, the Boston Globe ran a story on the dangers of MySpace:
Parents and educators already worry about strangers preying on teenagers in online chat rooms and unearthing personal information through online questions. But now, teens are making it easier for predators by posting photos and feelings on easily-accessed sites.
Mike the Actuary responded with a cool retort:
It would seem to me that LJ and MySpace are a natural evolution of some of the banter and (occasionally risque or tasteless) play that teens have engaged in since time immemorial. However, if the hype doesn’t get too carried away…well, maybe it could be a good stepping stone to teaching the masses about privacy issues in the day of online communications, easy-access relational databases, and data-mining.
We need to break this culture of fear in order to have a healthy society. Please, please... whenever you interact with youth culture (whether you're a parent, a schoolteacher or a cafe owner), learn from them. Hear them from their perspectives and stop trying to project your own fears onto them. Allow them to flourish by giving them the freedom to make sense of their identity and culture. It doesn't mean that there aren't risks - there are. But they are not as grandiose as the press makes them out to be. And besides, youth need to do stupid things in order to learn from their own mistakes. Never get caught up in the "i told you so" commentary that comes after that "when i was your age" bullshit. People don't learn this way - they learn by putting their hand in the fire and realizing it really is hot and then stepping back.
Enough. There are more stories from newspapers around the country. Most of the stories I've found stress the (much over rated) danger of The Internet Predator, and also the risk of kids clicking onto a porn site. I don't think you are any more likely to get into a porn site from MySpace than you are from any other search, from my research.
Stressing a false risk to kids devalues what we say. Here's why: Virtually all kids online, with a MySpace or Xanga or LiveJournal account, have not been themselves approached by a scary stranger. None of their friends have been approached. Having parents or authority figures say, "But the bad guys will get you!" doesn't square with what they, the kids, figure to be true. You, the parent or authority figure, must be taking hysterical trash about something that is important to the child--his or her online community.
Listen to what John Suler has to say, (from his site on The Psychology of Cyberspace) about teen use of the internet called "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly". I recommend it to all parents and school officials.
The newest street corners, arcades, and malls that serve as teen hangouts can be found right within the walls of the homestead. They are electronic mockups of the real thing - accessed easily by the family's online computer. For many adolescents these cyberspace hangouts are no less treasured or real than the "real" thing.
What draws adolescents to the world of the Internet? What are the benefits and dangers of their exploring this new realm that may very well become a cornerstone of the new millennium into which they will grow as adults?
Listen to what Danah Boyd wrote,
We need to break this culture of fear in order to have a healthy society. Please, please... whenever you interact with youth culture (whether you're a parent, a schoolteacher or a cafe owner), learn from them. Hear them from their perspectives and stop trying to project your own fears onto them. Allow them to flourish by giving them the freedom to make sense of their identity and culture. It doesn't mean that there aren't risks - there are. But they are not as grandiose as the press makes them out to be. And besides, youth need to do stupid things in order to learn from their own mistakes. Never get caught up in the "I told you so" commentary that comes after that "when I was your age" bull.... People don't learn this way - -they learn by putting their hand in the fire and realizing it really is hot and then stepping back.
Stressing a false risk to kids damages your child's trust in your judgment. Yes, there are bad people out there. And yes, children do behave inappropriately on MySpace and other sites -- and real life. Meatspace. (More on that on the next installment).
Internet "Predator" Urban Legend Links:
1998: Did a policeman "stalk" a young girl on the Internet, to show her how easily even the most innocuous information can be used to find someone in real life?
status: False
2000: Will This Technique Prevent A Cyber Stalker? status: mixed
From Snopes: Really Good Advice For Anyone, but especially those under 18:
- Never tell anyone your full name, address, phone number, city or any other personal information about yourself or your family.
- Watch what you put on your profile. Don't put your date of birth, especially the year. Remember you are not required to put any information on the profile you don't want to.
- If anyone IM's you or e-mails you and asks where you go to school, where you live or any other personal questions you don't feel comfortable with, do not hesitate to say, "I'm sorry, I don't give out personal information" or "My parents have asked me not to tell that."
- If someone sends you a e-mail form with personal information about themselves on it and suggests you fill one out just like it, be alerted and don't do it. Who knows to where and to whom it will be forwarded!
- If you go into chat rooms and anyone pressures you to talk to them, won't leave you alone or asks for personal information, leave the room immediately!
- If you ever get suggestive, angry or abusive messages tell your parents at once and contact the Internet provider you use and seek assistance.
- Don't respond to e-mail from people you don't know. If you believe you've received something strange, tell your parents.
Clarifying the Issues
As I wrote this article, it became clear to me that the issue of students' presence on the internet, and schools' response to student internet use, have a number of issues, not always clearly thought out by commenters. Here are the discrete issues I see:
- School-based computing: inappropriate use of scarce resources (the primary reason many of the districts gave for blocking school-based access to Xanga, LiveJournal, and MySpace)
- Students' on-line safety--the "Internet Predator/Stranger Danger" fear, that a bad person could find and harm the student from content the student posted to sites such as Xanga, LiveJournal, and MySpace.
- Students' on-line safety-- students' being exposed to pornography and other inappropriate content.
- The content of students' blogs (Xanga, LiveJournal) and social networking accounts (MySpace): using such spaces to voice harsh, even foul-mouthed criticisms of school administration
- The content of students' blogs (Xanga, LiveJournal) and social networking accounts (MySpace): Students' inapppropriate interactions online with fellow students (the cyberbullying fear, or actual instances of students abusing or harrassing each each other).
- Repercussions to students from on-line content they have posted: School administration finding out that students have engaged in illegal or banned activites (drinking, cheating, harassment) and using that content to discipline students
- Repercussions to students from on-line content they have posted: What's posted on the internet may live forever, coming back to injure a person in the future (Example: one's teen excesses showing up when a future employer undertakes a web search on a prospective employee).
Part I--Blogging, social networking sites, schools, and risk for teen users
Part II -- Schools Banning Access and Banning Students' Online Presence
Part III--An Overblown Fear: The Internet Predator
Part IV--The Real Risk: Other Students' Cruel, Rude, or Illegal Behavior (or the Poster's Own Cruel, Rude, or Illegal Behavior)
Part V--The Benefits of Blogging, Personal and Educational
Part VI--What Should Parents and Schools Do?
I have 5 kids and our school went through a bad time with some students myspace accounts. The FBI informed the staff that known pedophiles were targeting several of our students accounts. We all dealt with and handled the situation. In our research we discovered so many completely inappropriate sites and just plain filth. So, I created a web site http://www.theparentsedge.com to help parents deal with this. Kids are going to hate it but it will help parents that are not that tech savvy to block,monitor and learn about this phenomenon. Also, their is a lot of info available on the subject.
Hope the sites helps a little.
-Rich
Posted by: Rich | Friday, April 28, 2006 at 10:05 AM
Is the chance of a child being targeted by an online sexual predator larger than the chance of that child being in a traffic accident? If so, then one should teach children the web equivalent of fastening their seatbelts or of not riding with certain high-risk individuals. This is good parenting, not alarmism.
-CPM
Posted by: Clinton Mah | Monday, May 29, 2006 at 08:04 PM