Study has mostly good news about predator risk

Correction: This posting originally misstated the Internet youth growth rate and population. Internet usage among youth grew from 73 percent in 2000 to 93 percent in 2006.

The news from a new online predator study is mostly good. Researchers from the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center (CCRC) found only a modest increase in the number of adults arrested for solicitation of actual minors, which could be accounted for by the growth in the number of youth Internet users.

In 2006 there were 615 arrests for soliciting a real child, compared with 508 in 2000 and during that interval the percentage of young people using the Internet grew from 73 percent to 93 percent. The study defined young people as ages 17 and below. (To put that into some kind of perspective, there were more than 25 million 12- to 17-year-olds in the U.S. in 2006 based on U.S. Census Bureau data as reported on ChildStats.gov.)

The time span covered by this new study coincides with the advent of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, which weren't around in 2000. And considering the numbers, it should help dispel the hysteria about the so-called predator dangers on social-networking sites.

The study did reveal a very significant number of sting operation arrests in which the offender approached an undercover police officer posing as a minor. That's a crime and, says CCRC Director David Finkelhor, these sting operations may have played a major role in helping to reduce the number of actual victims by taking predators off the street and deterring others from even trying.

The study found that during 2006, 87 percent of the arrests involved solicitation of undercover cops, and 13 percent of the cases involved actual minors. To put this into perspective, online predator arrests that year accounted for only 1 percent of all arrests for sex crimes against children.

Most victims were adolescents (not young children) and only 5 percent of the crimes involved violence. "They don't involve offenders who troll the net and harvest children's information from blogs or social networking sites and then lure them into meetings where they abduct them," Finkelhor said in a podcast interview. "These are offenders who start up conversations, often times acknowledge being an adult and often times acknowledge that they're interested in sex and looking for sexual partners."

These predators, said Finkelhor, "prey on kids who are vulnerable to the flattery and the excitement they offer and these kids go to meet these adults knowing they are interested in sex. More often than not they meet them on more than one occasion."

What this and previous studies suggest is that there are some kids who take extraordinary risk but that most kids are savvy enough to avoid getting into conversations with adult predators.

Policy Implications
This study should have broad implications for policy makers and Internet safety educators. For example, some state attorneys general have called for age verification to control teenage access to social-networking sites, yet the data suggest that social networking has not put kids at any increased risk.

And Internet educators, said Finkelhor, need to warn young people about "very risky things they can do in their adolescent naivety and interest in exploring the world" such as "talking to people online about sexual matters, going to sexually oriented kinds of sites, going to meet someone who is much older for an encounter that they know involves sex." You'll find more tips at ConnectSafely.org.

Disclosure: I am co-director of ConnectSafely.org, a non-profit Internet safety organization that receives financial support from several Internet and social networking companies including MySpace and Facebook. I also served as a member of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force and am the founder of SafeKids.com.

Listen to Larry's interview with CRCC director David Finkelhor

Listen now: Download today's podcast

[crosstecdoug]

The results of this research almost seem self-serving. The major sponsors included MySpace and Facebook, sites that have may have little interest in adding age or identity verification technologies which may cost them money and limit their user base. Another sponsor was the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) which works to promote ?constitutional liberties, free expression and privacy? in the digital age. Of no surprise the CDT endorsed the key findings of the task force. Yet several of the Attorneys Generals who requested the study took issue with the findings including AG McMaster of South Carolina and Cooper of North Carolina. AG Blumenthal of Connecticut said, ?To deny the seriousness of this problem presents an even more horrible risk to children.?

As noted, the study based their conclusions on research which was conducted from 2000 ? 2006. MySpace wasn?t even launched until 2004 and has grown to over 250 million members since. They continue to grow at a rate of 250,000 a day. In 2006 45% of kids had a MySpace profile. In 2009 that number has jumped to 78%. The 2000 law enforcement survey was also conducted long before social networking caught the imagination of kids and the interest of predators.

The ISTTF noted that bullying and harassment, most often by peers, are the most frequent threats that minors face. They suggest this is a more important issue than online predators. With headlines of student violence and suicides related to cyber-bullying ? shouldn?t parents, law enforcement, administrators and academics look for a solution to both?

The ISTTF Technology Advisory Board said technology is not the answer. They also noted that many of the ?promising technologies?, such as Internet filtering and monitoring, are point solutions rather than broad attempts to address the safety of minors online as a whole. The study dismisses technology as a solution pointing out that these solutions are only effective for involved parents. Shouldn?t we then be spending more time, money and effort involving parents (and schools)? According to much more recent data (Dec 2007) from The Pew Internet Project, teens who create social networking profiles or post photos online are more likely to feel threatened. The report notes that Internet monitoring software such as Spector Pro and eBlaster are more effective than filtering in limiting contact with strangers online. The Department of Justice recently developed a campaign entitled ?Know Where they Go? and suggested Parents monitor what their children do and where they go on the Internet.

[Lerianis3]

Yet another one of these hysteria articles? Pedosexuals are not dangerous to children in the slightest, and neither are adults having sex with them.
What is? Making pedosexuality illegal so that these relationships are forced 'into the shadows' where anything can happen to the children and the ADULT in the relationship.
It's simply past time to legalize pedosexuality, tell parents to start watching who their children are hanging out with, and make it illegal for parents to interfere in their children's sexual lives unless they have some other reason to think that their children are in danger BESIDES the person in question being a pedosexual.

Let's face facts here: 90% or more of the forcible rapes of children are not done by pedosexuals. They are done by heterosexual males who get sexually frustrated because their wife or girlfriend cuts them off from sex, they see a pretty young girl or teenage girl go by, and they snap and rape her.
That has to be blamed on the wife or girlfriend as much as the man, seeing as how most men are NOT paragons of restraint when it comes to sex. For that matter, neither are women!