News for the Week of May 20, 2007
The most important technology news involving youth this week is the clearer picture we now have of teen online victimization, thanks to research from the Crimes Against Children Research Center (CACRC)...
Profile of a teen online victim
David Finkelhor, director of the CACRC at the University of New Hampshire, called her "Jenna" at the briefing on Capitol Hill where he was presenting his research. In what he described as a fairly typical predation case...
Jenna was 13 and "from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chatrooms, had the screenname 'Evilgirl.' There she met a guy who, after a number of conversations admitted he was 45. He flattered her, sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And eventually he drove across several states to meet her for sex on several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested, in her company, she was reluctant to cooperate with law enforcement authorities."
The picture Dr. Finkelhor was painting as he related this actual case was very different from the impression most of us have somehow arrived at about sex crimes against kids on the Internet. It concerns him, he said, that somehow the American public has gotten the idea that criminals are tricking kids into disclosing personal information by pretending to be peers and lying about their sexual motives, then stalking, abducting, and raping them. Parents deserve to know that that is not what's going on.
The data
Finkelhor's research shows that, "in a representative sample of law-enforcement cases, only 5% of these [online child victimization] cases actually involved violence. Only 3% involved an abduction." Almost no deception was involved. "Only 5% of the offenders concealed the fact that they were adults from their victims; 80% were quite explicit about their sexual intentions."
Here's his conclusion: "These are not violent sex crimes. They are criminal seductions that take advantage of common teenage vulnerabilities..." Let me interrupt him just to say that here is where parents' and other caregivers' focus needs to be — teenage vulnerabilities. Finkelhor continues: "The offenders play on teens' desires for romance, adventure, sexual information, understanding." Note that last word: "understanding." This is a question that long predates the Internet: how to make sure teens with a lot of stresses and variables in their lives don't turn to strangers, online or offline, for understanding, sympathy, or escape? For a parent's takeaway and links to other key research presented at the Capitol Hill even, please click to NetFamilyNews.
In other news...
- MySpace, AGs reach détente. As I reported last week, eight state attorneys general called for the social site to turn over sex-offender information. MySpace countered saying that federal privacy law required a subpoena or some other legal instrument before such data could be turned over. This week MySpace announced the two parties had arrived at "a process to expedite the delivery of useful information to enable the attorneys general to use it in their pursuit of any of these individuals who are breaking the law". The Associated Press reports that MySpace general counsel Mike Angus "said the company, owned by media conglomerate News Corp., had always planned to share information on sex offenders it identified and has already removed about 7,000 profiles, out of a total of about 180 million."
- Kids' summer screentime. Because of all that free time summer gives youth, the season calls for a little extra thought and family communication about the mental and physical health effects of more screentime. In fact, Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer recommends a "media diet" for summer vacationers, reports SafeKids.com's Larry Magid in CBSNEWS.com - because kids in general spend 45-50 hours a week consuming media, let alone when school's out. When screentime starts eclipsing physical activity, of course, obesity becomes an issue. "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that that since 1980 the proportion of overweight children ages 6 to 11 has more than doubled, and the rate for adolescents has tripled," Larry reports. Here are Common Sense Media's "Tips for a Healthy Media Diet".
- Study on file-sharing's risks. After Jon Dudas, director of the US Patent & Trademark Office, read this study, he decided to send out an official USPTO report because so many file-sharers (or parents of file-sharers) who think they're just downloading free music are actually jeopardizing the security of very personal info on their computers. He was also motivated to because, he says in the Foreward, he's a dad who "manages a home computer." Two key takeaways from this 80-page report (press release here): 1) research has found that 45% of popular downloaded files contained malicious software code, and 2) "At least four of the [five popular P2P file-sharing programs the study analyzed] have deployed partial-uninstall features: If users uninstall one of these programs from their computers, the process will leave behind a file that will cause any subsequent installation of any version of the same program to share all folders shared by the 'uninstalled' copy of the program. Whenever a computer is used by more than one person, this feature ensures that users cannot know which files and folders these programs will share by default."
- Texting's costs for teens. What a bummer — having to work over summer vacation not to make money but to pay off one's text-messaging debt. That's what 17-year-old Sofia in the Washington, D.C., area faces because of a $1,100 monthly cellphone bill for 6,807 text messages last month, and her parents' plan included only 100 free text messages, the Washington Post reports. "Forget minutes. It's all about the text allowance. It needs to be supersized, now that instant messaging has leapt from the desktop to the mobile... Think it, text it, keep it short, have to have it," the Post adds.
