Spreading "1 in 5" Number Does More Harm Than Good 382
First, what the 1-in-5 number actually means. It originated with a study done in 2000 by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, which surveyed 1,501 Internet-using youth age 10 through 17. The actual relevant findings of the study were as follows:
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The 1 in 5 figure was the number that had received at least one instance of unwanted sex talk (including from other teenagers), or sex talk from an adult (whether wanted or not), in the past year.
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The proportion of respondents who received a sexual flirtation from an adult, followed by a request to talk on the phone or meet in person, was about 1%.
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The number of survey respondents who actually befriended an adult online and then met the adult in person for sexual purposes, was zero.
The actual proportion of respondents who reported that someone made sexual overtures and asked to talk on the phone or meet in person -- what the study called an "aggressive sexual solicitation" -- was 3%, and 34% of those requests were known to have been made by adults. And even this overestimates the proportion of minors who were truly "sexually solicited", because all it means is that an adult started out by talking to them sexually, and then made some request for offline contact, which could have merely been asking for a phone number. So the scenario that comes to mind when hearing that "1 in 5 children is sexually solicited online" -- of being approached sexually by an adult and asked for an in-person meeting -- had actually happened to no more than 1% of respondents, and probably much fewer than that.
And this is just considering the percentage of youth who received solicitations, not taking into account how they responded. Out of 1,501 youth surveyed, none of them reported actually meeting an adult in person for anything that they described as sexual contact. Two teens in the study had "close friendships" with adults that the authors wrote "may have had sexual aspects". One 17-year-old boy had a relationship with a woman in her late twenties that he described as "romantic" but not sexual, and they never met in person. Another 16-year-old girl became close to a man in his thirties, and they met in a public place, but she described the relationship as non-sexual, and she declined to spend the night with him. (While these could still be considered "close calls", it's worth noting that even if the 16- and 17-year-olds had actually had a sexual relationship with their adult friends, that would have in fact been legal in many U.S. states, and in any case it's not what most people think of when they hear about "children" being "sexually solicited online".)
Of course all of this depends on the accuracy of the answers that the youth gave to the surveyors. But the "1 in 5" figure was based on the youths' stated responses as well. People who cite the study can't have their cake and eat it too, taking the "1 in 5" number as accurate but discounting the fact that none of the teens surveyed reported a sexual relationship with an adult they met online.
These were the data that were available in 2000, when the "1 in 5" number started being spread. The authors of the original study followed up with a 2005 report, "Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later", in which the corresponding statistics were:
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1 in 7 respondents received unwanted sex talk or sex talk from an adult, at some point in the past year.
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The proportion of respondents who received a sexual flirtation from an adult, followed by a request to communicate offline, was again about 1-2%. (4% of respondents reported a sexual flirtation plus a request to correspond offline. The new study reported that 39% of all sexual solicitations were made by adults, but did not say what proportion of "aggressive sexual solicitations" -- which included requests for offline contact -- were made by adults.)
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Out of 1,501 respondents surveyed in 2005, two did report an in-person meeting that led to a sexual crime -- one was a 15-year-old girl who met a 30-year-old man in person and had consensual sex with him, and another was a 16-year-old girl who went to a party with an older male she met online who later tried to rape her. But even these incidents (which were both reported to law enforcement) do not mean that the Internet is a more dangerous environment for youth with regard to interaction with adults. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's own Web site links to a study -- also by one of the authors of the "Online Victimization" report -- which found that when all types of abuse are counted, 20% of females experience some type of sexual victimization before adulthood, compared to 2 out of 750 female survey respondents in the "Online Victimization" study who reported sexual abuse by someone they met online.
The NCMEC has
updated
their Web site
to say that "one in seven youths (10 to 17 years) experience
a sexual solicitation or approach while online", although the banner ads
still say 1 in 5. But I
think the 1-in-7 versus 1-in-5 is hardly worth nit-picking, when the real
problem is that
the statement "1 in 5 children is sexually solicited online" is written in
a way that virtually
guarantees it will be mis-heard and
passed along as a statement involving "online predators" or "pedophiles".
"Authorities Say 1 in 5 Children Has Been Approached By Online Predators"
reads the sub-heading
of a
story on ABC
news.
"20% of children who use computer chat rooms have been approached over the
Internet by a pedophile" says an
online safety
site
sponsored by the Albemarle County government in Virginia.
"One in five kids in America are approached by online predators" says a
Congressman's
press
release.
The NCMEC itself never says that 1 in 5 or 1 in 7 children is
"approached by a pedophile",
merely that they are "sexually solicited online". I still think this is
false because that is
not the proportion of minors who are literally solicited for sex, but
suppose that you expanded
"sexual solicitation" to include all sex talk, so that the statement was
"technically true".
That still misses the point, because the issue shouldn't be seen as a game
where sides try to make
their statements as alarmist as possible while still being "technically
true", like the kid with
his
petition to ban
"dihydrogen monoxide".
If you say something that is virtually guaranteed to get
passed along as a wrong and alarmist statement about "pedophiles", aren't
you at least partly responsible?
Why, then, does the NCMEC do it? Their site does have a "Donate" link, but
it's very low-key,
and the site generally seems to steer first-time visitors towards actions
that they can take with
regard to their own children. So I'm not cynical enough to think the "1 in
5" statistic is a
campaign to scare up donations; I think they really do believe they are
doing good by getting
people to believe that number and to take action based on it. The problem
is that there is
such a thing as too much worrying and too much overprotection. Sites like
Facebook are often
used to organize parties and events and send out venue changes, just
because that's the most
efficient way to do it, and if your parents ban you from getting on
Facebook, you'll miss out
on simple things like that. What good does that do for anybody? Critics
of overprotection
often say that overly sheltered kids may rebel later on and get themselves
in worse trouble,
and that's often true, but so what even if they don't? Your quality of
life is still worse
off if you're the only one in your peer group who can't get updates about
your friends' parties.
And your parents'
quality of life will be worse if they're constantly wringing their hands
thinking that there is a
1 in 5 chance their kid will be propositioned online by a pedophile.
So I would urge the NCMEC to reconsider what they're telling
people. Regarding the "1 in 5"
meme that's already out there, it's spread so far that it's probably too
late for the NCMEC
to put the genie back into the bottle. But any anti-censorship group
participating in a
debate about online safety should put the real statistics forward, and
since many in the audience
will have heard the "1 in 5" figure somewhere, take a minute to knock it
down as well. You don't
have to commit political suicide by calling out the NCMEC specifically for
spreading the "1 in 5"
number, but put the right numbers out there.
Unfortunately the subject of child safety is such that wrong information,
from any source, is
unlikely to be criticized if it's erring on the side of caution, but some
memes die faster
than others. Microsoft's
resource
page about "online predators"
says that "if you find
pornography on the family computer" -- not child porn, but regular
pornography -- that could be
a warning sign that "your child is the target of an online predator". I
think that's a wildly
irresponsible thing to be telling parents, but fortunately the meme does
not seem to have spread
beyond that one page, which probably not one parent in a thousand will ever
actually read.
The zero isn't really zero (Score:1, Informative)
I am personally dating a person who did exactly that and was with said adult (she was a minor at the time, he was 13 years older) for a year. First it was casual sex, then it was a relationship.
If she were in the survey, would she spoil that zero number or not?
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:5, Informative)
We've seen forest fires and other major fires caused by lit cigarettes as recently as six months ago. From a quick Google search:
In fact, in Oregon alone, Cigarette-induced fires have killed 29 people and injured 129 since 2001, and have been responsible for 1500 residential fires, 70 forest fires, and $28 million in damage in that same time period. (Source: http://www.blueoregon.com/2007/01/firesafe_cigare.html [blueoregon.com]) Of course, that's a year old, so the numbers today would be higher, but that should give you a good picture of the problem, anyway.
Various states are passing laws to require fire-safe cigarettes (though don't kid yourself, these are not truly safe, just safer), but AFAIK, they haven't taken effect anywhere.
Re:Numbers (Score:2, Informative)
Since when!!!!
Statistics are a tool. They may not be 100% accurate, but they are a tool which can be used to emphasize a valid point, or to make invalid arguments seem plausible.
A figure that is this grossly wrong results in irrational fear, not learning and teaching. It results in the stripping of freedom in the name of safety and the removal of socially beneficial avenues all whilst sticking your head in the sand screaming THINKOFTHECHILDREN.
The real statistic from those original studies is.... ZERO children in the study were enticed into sexual contact against their will, out of... what... 1500 in 01 and 1500 in 06? Here's a statistic for you. zero percent of children are enticed into sexual contact against their will through the internet. (statistically accurate to around 0.05%).
So the number is greater than zero, yes... but likely less than 0.05%
And the kids who are engaging in risky behaviors like meeting adults from the internet with purposes of having sex..... you may deny them that opportunity to act out, but don't you seriously think the 14 year old who is doing that will just turn to other methods (say, the back room at an arcade, or a friend's basement while smashed drunk) to engage in their silly risky behaviors?
Perhaps the whole issue is...
do we really believe that sex predators are SUCH good manipulators that they can con young teens into doing things they obviously aren't interested in? Well, our study of 3000 young teens says "nope, they can't, in general".
Maybe that's what we should focus on!
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Informative)
Most people stop sticking gum everywhere when they get above about the age of six.
It's not a red herring at all. If you've ever walked on the beaches in L.A. even for a few minutes, you'd understand why they passed anti-smoking laws. If you comb a ten foot by ten foot area, you'd probably find 50-100 butts within the top foot or so of sand. It's really disgusting. Basically, people used the beach as a giant ashtray---not down near the water so much as up near the entrances that everyone has to use to get there. Either way, the beaches are a mess.
Each year, California does a costal cleanup day. Last year alone, they collected more than 347,000 cigarette butts on the beaches (Source; www.coastal.ca.gov [ca.gov]). For 22 consecutive years, cigarette waste was the largest single source of litter on the beaches, and at last count, made up a whopping 40% of the total debris picked up on the beaches. That's nearly half, which means it is almost as much as all the litter, driftwood, rotting fish, seaweed, etc. combined.
Give a hoot. Don't pollute.
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:2, Informative)