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.
Don't Question It! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Look at some of the "truths" about marijuana. It causes cancer [jcrows.com] (no, that is of course not a mainstream link), it isn't addictive (unlike coffee or alcohol it has no physical withdrawal symptoms, although it is habituating, like orange juice), and rather than leading to harder drugs the laws against it lead to harder drugs ("Got any weed, man?" "No it's dry. Want some coke?").
Good luck with that "truth" thing. Ask "Swift Boat" John Kerry how much good "debunking bullshit" is.
I want a detailed breakdown (Score:3, Interesting)
For young children in child-safe areas of the net:
* 1 out of x gets sent porn
* 1 out of x gets an explicit proposal: "wanna f***"
* 1 out of x gets something that is clearly out of line
Ditto for young teens in young-teen-safe areas, older teens in teen-safe-areas, and most importantly, kids and teens who are in "unsafe" areas where they can be expected to be propositioned.
Of all of those, I'd want to know how many improper messages and pictures were sent by adults, how many by youth, and how many by children. I would also like the breakdown of whether the person sending the message or image believed he was sending them to a youth or child.
If some 8 year old girl is hanging out in #quickie-hookup-now on IRC and she gets sent pr0n, who is to blame? I say the parents, not the person who sent it to her. The person who sent it probably thought "she" was a horny 60 year old man pretending to be an 8 year old girl and was going along with it.
If the 8 year old is 13 I'd blame the parents and maybe the youth, depending on whether the youth knew what she was doing.
If the "kid" was 15, I'd almost always blame the youth if she were hanging out in adult chat rooms.
Kids are far more at risk for actual harm from their own family members, neighbors, and family friends than from strangers. If you aren't harming your kids and you minimize the time your kids are alone with other adults, the odds of your kid being sexually abused by an adult go way down.
Of course, there is still the very real problem of abuse by peers or slightly older children or youth.
Re:erring on the side of caution (Score:3, Interesting)
But we're not "erring on the side of caution." We're doing things that have no impact, except make it acceptable to brand people and track them. So we're not doing anything to solve the problem, and we're introducing new problems. Why is that a good idea?
That being said, most sexual assaults happen from people children know, be it a family member or a neighbor.
Indeed. And given that, maybe we should take children away from their parents and raise them in a state run dorm. After all, we MUST protect the children, right?
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Rudd-Labor in bold to emphasise that this wasn't a problem under the Liberals, who had a realistic approach based on educating children, which was very successful, rather than trying to make the internet pre-school safe.. To any Aussies reading let's bring the Liberals back next election.)
Thanks for the well written informative article.
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually they're in far, far more danger from pederasts and other dangers on the streets than they are on the internet. Want to fuck some youngsters? You can get on the internet, or just go to the mall. Preferably dressed in a police uniform, clergy collar, clown suit... or just get a job at a day care center.
I wrote a journal [slashdot.org] about that last year. It concerns a local man who had been a policeman, clergyman, clown, and day care center worker who was arrested for child pornography and "sex tourism" (travelling to the Phillipines to have sex with litte boys).
Since this is Springfield, it got wierd when he was put in jail. Apparently he died when a fat man sat on his back until his toes turned purple. Yes, the journal has links to the local newspapar to corroborate it. This Springfield is more cartoonish that the 2D Springfiled, and a lot wierder. In the real Springfield, Simpson is alderman!
Re:erring on the side of caution (Score:2, Interesting)
Everyone knows that good sanitation improves health. Nobody knew just how much sanitation was required, so everyone erred on the side of caution. Now we have antibacterial soap everywhere, children don't play in the dirt anymore, everyone washes their hands all the time, etc. Everyone should be as healthy as a horse, right?
But no. Suddenly we're discovering that if you don't give the immune system something to fight, it will find something, and start attacking innocent targets. Allergies and related conditions such as asthma are becoming far more common. Being clean often means staying indoors, so children are getting less exercise and becoming fatter.
Certainly good sanitation is important, but you can take it too far. To err on the side of caution when you don't even know what's going on isn't the safe thing to do, it's merely the easy thing to do, and you can end up making things much worse.
Re:It's about control (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Scary sounding words and volume truth (Score:4, Interesting)
Though I am sure some are responsive to soundbites, sometimes I think they exist to stifle and intimidate opposition. A thought terminating cliche [wikipedia.org] could be a good description. For example calling pedophiles, "baby rapers", even if they are two years older than their almost adult victims, and insisting that such people be branded in this way, really puts reasonable people on the backfoot.
No one really wants or has the motivation to get into a protracted and emotive argument with such people, and so remain silent. I think the silent majority really doesn't care about pedophiles as much as the media exposure would suggest, and I think most of the media exposure is fueled by a minority who actually enjoy hearing about, and overreacting to, such macabre and lurid reports.
Re:While I do not approve of internet censorship.. (Score:2, Interesting)
If children were taught to ignore, block, and/or report such behavior and they did so, the threat to that particular child would be approximately zero for come-ons. There would still be some risk for emotional harm if the person sent porn with his first message, but that's not common.
Let's look at a slightly different threat: The threat of repeat sex offenders.
Some repeat sex offenders are at high risk to re-offend, and should be locked up or monitored very closely.
Others are at no more risk of re-offending than your average person is of offending in the first place. To waste resources tracking them and to waste their human capital by denying them housing and jobs is inefficient and harms society and when those resources are diverted from child-welfare-promoting activities, it harms the very children the sex-offender laws are designed to protect.
There are many others that are between the two extremes.
While psychology and statistics are not exact sciences, when used properly they can be pretty good at guessing a person's likely recidivism rate.
Re:it's also basic human psychology (Score:2, Interesting)
My father used to talk occassionally (no, not all the time, just now and then) about this exact topic when i was 8 or 9 years old.
As a result, cholesterol scares me more than terrorism. Because it's a genuine risk to your life and health, where terrorism really frankly isn't.
TV irritates me and marketing is mostly transparent and I see the value in education and parental involvement.
These are all things that can be taught and SHOULD be taught.
If you spend a few months sitting down with 10 year old kids about what the real risks are. How insanely rare it is to be abducted or smashed by an airplane falling from the sky.... and to really think about how common things are before worrying about them... it doesn't take much before you actually have a sane and rational view.
Driving with my niece in my car makes me a little nervous. However, walking through the mall with her does not.
Watching her play in front of the pool made me a little nervous when she was very young, but going to the top of the tallest building in the city during an "orange" terror alert does not.
Am I crazy to think we can educate people to think like this? That obscene ignorance is not a default state that many people cannot climb beyond?
Just a thought....
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
That is not always an option, for every situation. Personally, I'd rather have smoking banned completely; I'm uncomfortable giving the government with that much power, and Smoking Needs to Go Away. There's no easy solution of how to do it. And don't give me any of that "personal/property rights" junk. Smoking damages the health of others, therefore it is a public health issue.
In our apartment, we recently discovered that our son's room is filling with secondhand smoke from our neighbor's apartment (our neighbor is a heavy smoker). Here are our options:
Obviously, #6 is out of the question, being Not a Nice Thing (and illegal).
#5 is not an option, as my son's health is paramount.
We've already been through #2 three years ago, when we had to leave another apartment, thanks to a cross-connected ventilation system. This is no guarantee of a (mostly) permanent solution. We also would have to move further out from town, or to a junkier apartment in order to keep the rents about the same (we got a really good rate on our current place).
#3 is really sucky, as the housing market is tanking. While we are saving up to buy a house, we were figuring on pulling the trigger in 2 years. From past experience, buying a house when our back isn't against the wall allows us to negotiate a much better deal.
So, that leaves #4 as it is the easiest, cheapest method. If that doesn't work, then we'll do #1 and see what happens. Starting to look for a house now is probably what we're going to have to do as well.
Net-net, this guy, smoking in the privacy and comfort of his own home, is affecting the health of others. Too bad, so sad, but smoking needs to go away everywhere, for everyone.
Re:The truth hit me decades ago (Score:2, Interesting)
I see where you're coming from, but I have to disagree here. I would wager that in most of these cases, the child was snatched, raped, etc. by someone known to them. Looking to shield children from strangers who mean them harm is very tough to do. Recognizing warning signs exhibited by relatives, friends and neighbors and overcoming denial about it is what would actually have the chance of saving a kid.
Re:This is a good thing. (Score:3, Interesting)
As for the smoking: as a smoker you can not understand just how disgusting the smoke is to other people, add in the health affects on top of that, and you'll understand why people hate it so much.