Also, I was reading a story where a girl was raped because she changed her age on her myspace to make it like she was 19, when she was (I believe) 15, and met with some guy. The parents were all mad at Myspace! My point is, we all have the power of choice. We know what is wrong and we know what is right. End the end, it’s our choice on who we are and what we do.

Btw: I’m not trying to start any arguments or anything like that, everyone has different opinions and I completely respect that.

That is a suprisingly small number. I mean being teenager is about discovering sexuality right?

I think Mark has a point about abusive families but again this is something that it is very difficult to do something about whereas the online predators can be kept away with awareness and precaution.

Clearly there are some predators out there and education of parents and kids and police presence in network sites such as myspace is necessary.

“Do you understand that there are people on MySpace who might approach you for, uhm, uhm, uhm things you may not want to hear or do?” Son/Daughter: “Duh, mom, of course I know that. What do you think I am, 2 years old?” Mom: “Well, OK. I am glad we could have this talk.”

People talk about predators and they forget that kids are using MySpace to do things that they actually want to do, but are completely inappropriate for children to be doing! Perhaps I am being a fuddy-duddy here, compared to you Berkeley-denizens, and I know kids do this without myspace, but the simple fact is that myspace makes it easier for teenagers and pre-teens to “hook up”.

It’s not about sexual predation, it’s teenagers (and pre-teens) doing what teenagers do, using myspace to do it more easily and under the nose of their parents. Perhaps parents are overly concerned about predators because they don’t want to think about the fact that their 12 year old daughter is consensually giving blowjobs to the entire sixth grade class.

You can also just go to my website at http://www.csudh.edu/psych/lrosen.htm and click on the second link under NEW RESEARCH STUDY.

LR

By and large, if you read my work carefully, the point I want to make is not different from what Christopher and others like Mark and Bob have said, too. My work clearly shows that parents need to be more aware of what their kids are doing. And sadly, the talk between parents and kids often goes like this: Mom: “Do you understand that there are people on MySpace who might approach you for, uhm, uhm, uhm things you may not want to hear or do?” Son/Daughter: “Duh, mom, of course I know that. What do you think I am, 2 years old?” Mom: “Well, OK. I am glad we could have this talk.”

So, let’s get the media to stop focusing on predators and focus on what it is that is relevant. That is that parents need to take a more active role in what their kids are doing, mostly behind closed bedroom doors, on the Internet. It is not just MySpace, although that is a good venue to point out what they are doing. Kids are quite savvy these days although I just read an interesting study that shows definitively that while we thought that the brain was completely formed at adolescence and puberty, it is not. Until the late 20s “kids” have brains that still react impulsively without much conscious control. So parents need to be aware of what their kids are doing online and pay attention.

By the way, I have two additional points to make. First, MySpace is now the 12th largest country in the world. As such, don’t you think there would be people out there doing things that are against the law? Second, based on comments by some on this discussion and others in the media, I did some additional analyses of the qualitative data. I will be posting those in a few days on my website and will give the link here when they are ready. Basically, what they say, is that the 7% figure is made up of two pieces. A very small percentage (around 1%)actually claim to having been approached by a “stalker” although it is not clear from reading the qualitative responses that they are not getting the term stalker from the media and just regurgitating it. Other comments made by these kids may indicate that it is not a real “stalker” as such. Another percentage (around 5%) are “propositioned” for sex, most often by someone unknown. The vast majority of these kids, without provocation through the interview, tell us that they just block the person. Only a small handful, 3 or 4 people out of over 1,500, have indicated that in any way it disturbed them.

So, perhaps it is important that we not dwell on the mathematics of the issue and stop negative posts and start working on how we might help people recognize that MySpace is not going away and parents need to take responsibility, not the schools, not the law, not the libraries.

Thanks for the time to clarify. Again, if anyone wants to talk about any of this privately, I can be reached at LROSEN@CSUDH.EDU.

Up to 45 percent of girls experience sexual abuse within the family (nuclear and extended), and between 25 and 35 percent of young boys do � figures you can ratify in most journals dealing with child abuse, or by talking directly with abuse counselors and psychologists.

I lived with a psychologist, an expert on abuse, who came home most nights hugely angry and full of frustration, reminded each day how rife the family is with abuse — and how little is done about it in the name of “family values” and the sanctity of the family.

MySpace, however bad it is, is light-years safer than “FamilySpace.” The media’s fearmongering is completely diversionary. What’s the motivation? More post 9/11-like hysteria leading to the triumph of reactionary politics?

That the media is so misleading is more fearful than anything that needs to be said about the rather lame MySpace experience.

The fact that the “girl” was an undercover cop (and therefore could be easily “lured” into an apparent willingness to perform the acts) is unfortunately lost on many. Are there pedophilic creeps in the world who attempt to satisfy their cravings via the ‘net? That fact is well-established. What doesn’t seem to be as well established is the number of youth that succumb to the lure via MySpace, or similar networks.

I will admit that I don’t know the statistics. The tragic facts of child sexual abuse that I am aware of primarily pertain to those children who are already in physical proximity to abusers such as teachers, youth group leaders, clergy, relatives, neighbours, parents’ partners, and so forth. The majority of cases that come to mind pertaining to “Internet luring” (corresponding to the hysteria) are related to law enforcement agents posing as young people online, in order to catch the creeps.

The key question for me with regard to online, youth-oriented, social networks is not the presence of, or number of, creeps, but rather the degree of susceptibility of young people to Internet-mediated luring. My off-the-top-of-my-head guess is that places like MySpace – with peer social network support educating new users about becoming savvy – are a whole lot safer than your arbitrary community sports team, scout-like troop, or goodness-knows-what-goes-on-behind-the-confessional-after-choir-practice.

The interpretation that “Sexual Predator Reports in the Media Overblown/Unfounded” (as the press release says, and as zephoria reiterates in this post) is, as I’ve argued, wholly unsupported by the numbers. You press release and the original post on this blog are what I thought were “sloppy” interpretations, and although the word choice may be overly harsh, I think it’s apt. Perhaps the press release format requires stretching the limits of scientific responsibility, as does blogging.

Anyway, contrary to the headlines related to the press release, the numbers you provide seem to suggest that sexual predation is in fact quite common on MySpace. I can understand that it might be difficult for you to measure how many teens did *not* block or ignore predators online (i.e., how many of the teens who were approached became more serious victims), but just because you were unable to measure them doesn’t mean they are not there. The number suggest, to me, that they may in fact be there in large numbers.

I suppose, however, you could argue that even if sexual predation abounds on MySpace, the hyperventilating press makes it seem like a teen can’t spend 5 minutes on MySpace without a pedophile knocking on their door the next day. This may be true — I don’t know because I don’t read or watch that kind of sensationalist media. I’m not aware that the media is stating any particular degree of predation online, such as alleging that “3 out of 5 teens will be approached by sex criminals on MySpace” or some such thing. Your study claims to be the “first” study of this, suggesting that there are no other studies like this reported in the press… so when you say “overblown”, you are at best comparing your real-world numbers to your subjective assessment of the media’s subjective assessments. (Maybe it would be interesting to poll media pundits who have reported on MySpace, too, and compare their assessments to the parents and kids.)

Your numbers and methodology may in fact be airtight. I don’t question that, and I appreciate the insights the data provide. The discrepancy between parents’ and kids’ perceptions is quite salient, too, and is useful information. I simply question the *interpretation* that the data shows that MySpace is safe when it seems pretty likely to me that thousands of teens are being aggressively stalked.