News for the Week of July 22, 2007
It was great to see the Associated Press's "Net threats result of kids' online behavior". It means newspapers and broadcast media worldwide just may run this story, and more parents will be getting facts instead of scary messages based on ignorance, politics, and/or well-intentioned guesswork. Here's are some of the facts we have now:
Fact No. 1: Posting personal info online isn't what makes kids most vulnerable to predators. "Rather, victimization is more likely to result from... talking about sex with people met online and intentionally embarrassing someone else on the Internet," the AP reports. The first behavior - talking about sex with strangers online - is about predation, the second about cyberbullying, which affects a great many more online teens (about one-third, according to the latest Pew/Internet study.
Fact No. 2: A lot of sexual-victimization cases happen at the hands of peers, not adults, the AP reports, citing the work of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. It also cites a 2004 study by the CACRC finding that, even when offenders are adults, they "generally aren't strangers, and pedophiles aren't luring unsuspecting children by pretending to be a peer."
Fact No. 3: "Online victims tend to be teens with troubles offline, such as poor relationships with parents, loneliness and depression" (see "Profile of a teen online victim"); the kids most at risk online are already risk-seekers and -takers in real life.
Nobody's saying kids should feel free to post personal info about themselves; common sense says that not doing so can only help protect them and their reputations into the future. What we are saying is that, now that research is emerging, it's time to look at the facts and adjust our child-protection strategies accordingly at home, in schools, and in policymaking.
Here's a summary of the study the AP leads with, the summary written by Larry Magid and published 2/10/07 at BlogSafety.com (soon to be relaunched as ConnectSafely.org - stay tuned!). The study itself - by Michele L. Ybarra, Kimberly J. Mitchell, David Finkelhor, and Janis Wolak - was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine last February. See also "Profile of a teen online victim"
In other news...
- Teens in Net prostitution ads. Two high school students and a 19-year-old "ringleader" advertised themselves as "party girls" available as a threesome in an online classifieds sites, the Pioneer Press reports, citing an FBI investigation. The 19-year-old "was arrested by the FBI last month and charged in US District Court with sex trafficking of minors, a federal offense." The Pioneer Press adds that the case is just the "latest in the Twin Cities involving sex rings" using free online classifieds to advertise; "but this time, the participants are minors." These teens fit the profile of online teens most at risk for sexual exploitation (see the profile). The Press adds that investigators are debating whether teen prostitution is on the rise because the Internet, but "the majority of juvenile prostitutes is still thought to be runaways, illegal immigrants and children from poor urban areas. But an August 2003 Newsweek exposé examined the increase of juvenile sex workers in suburbs. The story focused on a Twin Cities girl from an affluent home who relished the fast cash and picked up men at the Mall of America."
- MP3 Barbie! Is it the Barbiepod? She has just as many outfits as the Barbie your mom knew and loved, but she's probably more appealing to the little female digital natives running around your house. Because she's a music player, and when her feet are plugged into the docking station, "she unlocks pages and pages of games, virtual shops and online chatting functions on the BarbieGirls.com Web site," the New York Times reports. This is kind of the tao of Webkinz, the new way to both market and sell "Web-enabled products" to Web-enabled kids. Some of these sites (like the Barbie one) can be used in a limited way without purchasing merchandise - the better to whet young appetites - but others, like the popular Webkinz site, are of little or no use without a store-bought product or two (or three, or a dozen)." Then there's SpotzGirl.com, which allows users to design their own jewelry, picture frames, etc., with Spotz that are like charm-bracelet charms or buttons (the button maker can be purchased for $24.99 at a real-live store). Both sites are about personal expression - decorating oneself, site characters, and/or spaces.
- People-tracking phones. If you'd like to know more about global-positioning-enabled phones, SafeKids.com's Larry Magid surveyed the scene for the New York Times recently. He looks at the various child-tracking phones and services from Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Disney, and Wherify, as well as social-mapping services by Helio and Loopt that are very cool but not really for kids because they actually map users' physical location (with the users' permission). But on the flipside of this tech marvel is a story out of Australia illustrating the privacy concerns involved in countries where consumer privacy isn't a top priority. Australia's national security agency and "law enforcement agencies will be able to track the movement of people through their mobile phones secretly, without obtaining a court warrant, under new laws, legal and civil liberty groups are warning," Australian IT reports.
- Young music fans choosing vinyl. Go figure. Just when we thought that music downloads had pretty much killed off CDs, The Guardian reports that, "in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels" there's a "vinyl revival" afoot in the UK (and quite possibly in the US too). It says two-thirds of all UK singles in the UK now come out on in the 7-inch record format, "with sales topping 1 million. Though still a far cry from vinyl's heyday in 1979, when Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes alone sold that number and the total vinyl singles market was 89 million, the latest sales are still up more than five-fold in five years." The Guardian adds that it's not unusual to young people to buy records even with nothing to play them on. It quotes an industry analyst as saying they'll buy the digital version to listen to and the record as art, something tangible in their hands, maybe as a memory of a great concert.
