Your Children Are Safe Online
The Internet is not, in fact, a seething mass of sex criminals just waiting to attack unsuspecting children. Anyone who's spent any amount of time online knows that, but now we finally have proof. Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown - NYTimes.com
The task force, led by the Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. looked at scientific data on sexual predation on the Internet and found that children and teenagers are very unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do exist, the report said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are at risk in other ways (with poor home environments, depression or substance abuse, for example).
The report criticized previous findings that one in five or one in seven minors are sexually propositioned online, saying that in a strong majority of those situations, a child's peers are responsible for the proposition, which typically amounts to an act of harassment or teasing.
In what social networks may view as something of an exoneration after years of pressure from law enforcement, the report said that sites like MySpace and Facebook "do not appear to have increased the overall risk of solicitation" and that "posting personally identifying information does not appear to increase risk in and of itself."