I listened to you speak about the huge numbers of kids at risk today, on Here and Now, and I agree with you that trusted adults need to be available for advising, listening and just plain caring about these troubled young people. If the kids are volunteering to have sex with much older men, as you show in your data, it indicates a breakdown in American communities and families of grave proportions.

Over the top, in your face, psychologically manipulative depictions of sex are big business in all media now, not just on the net. At the same time, backlash puritanism also thrives. Cops get paid to do their cop jobs, researchers get paid to reach conclusions similar to those, pre-set, within the institutions they are funded by. Nobody is really focusing on what makes these kids feel so invalidated and undeserving of healthy, non-sexualized adult attention.

Kids need to be offered tools to assist them in thinking critically about the graphic images and outside pressures thrust upon them by commercially predatious adults. I agree with you, too, that the internet can offer solutions to the problem and not just exist as resource for “hooking up”.

I’d like to help in anyway I can. Please keep us posted and up to date on your ground-breaking work in this field so that concerned adults- without a dog in the fight- can act accordingly and appropriately.

I read the report, and the bias you admit to having going into the Task Force comes through quite well in the Task Force report. It would have been academically honest to have pointed out that bias in the report itself so that readers of the report, not this blog, could be privy to such information.

Feigning ignorance of the logic of politics while having a political agenda in drafting an “academic study” that supports your beliefs is the height of disingenuousness.

If your goal was to help kids, the Task Force report appears to lend itself to the opposite result. By stating, without academic support, that the risk to kids using the internet is overstated (where is the data for such a claim?), you reduce the incentive for 1)parental participation and instruction; 2) commercial technology companies to provide resources designed to help kids; and 3) kids themselves to seek out help when confronted with risk. It does incent law enforcement to focus energy on reminding people of the risk kids face using communication tools that are unfamiliar to parents rather than spending time cooperatively with technology companies on the goal you claim to embrace – - child support.

Having read the Executive Summary and the Report I truly wonder how it was supposed to help kids. It really reads as a diatribe against shows like to Catch a Predator. What good was that for kids?

Good luck on your next project.

I have a teacherish bone to pick with both danah’s post above and the report itself–the use of “different than” where “different from” should be….

From the report’s Exec Summary…

“The Literature
Review shows that the risks minors face online are complex and multifaceted and are in most
cases not significantly different than those they face offline, and that as they get older, minors
themselves contribute to some of the problems.”

From danah…

“…and the realities of “predation” look very different than most people imagine and, thus, require vastly different solutions than most people propose.”

Picky, picky, I know…

I see it in exactly the same light that Max Planck did.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grow up that is familiar with it.

I think that trying to go through the traditional authority figures, (politicians, teachers, parents, police, religious authorities, and social agencies) will not be successful because many of them (as authority figures) are more concerned with “what can I do in solving this problem that upholds my authority” rather than “what can I do to solve this problem”. If the solution requires giving up authority, that solution is unacceptable and cannot even be conceived of. This was the problem the Catholic Church had with pedophile priests. They couldn’t control them because to do so would have reduced the authority of the Catholic Church.

I think the way to approach it is with the next generation(s). You have the ear of the social network sites; you have the ear of Google and the major IT players. Use that platform to SHOUT that bullying is unacceptable behavior. Let children know that bullying is unacceptable; unacceptable to be the victim and unacceptable to be the perpetrator. Google could place ads as a public service in places where the authority figures will see them; perhaps where perpetrators would have higher exposure too.

If Google can target ads to potential consumers, then Google can target public service announcements to those it may do some good with. The “problem” isn’t “internet safety”, it is how do we keep children safe until they are capable of keeping themselves safe; on the internet, the playground, the street, at home, everywhere.

– John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Thanks for your work.

> I can think of many reasons for why people refuse to
> listen to data that conflicts with their perception.

You’re crediting your detractors with far too much integrity.

It’s not that your data conflicts with their own actual
perceptions of risks on the internet. It’s that your
data conflicts with the conclusions and fails to support
the policies that your detractors have adopted a priori,
and whose adoption was prompted neither by personal perception
nor by data, but by the necessity of taking a “strong”,
condemnatory “moral” stance.

It’s that “moral” condemnation of “predators”,
the whiff of sexual danger, and
the delicious taste of self-righeousness that your
detractors find impossible to give up.

> I can think of many reasons for why people refuse to
> listen to data that conflicts with their perception.

You’re crediting your detractors with far too much integrity.

It’s not that your data conflicts with their own actual
perceptions of risks on the internet. It’s that your
data conflicts with the conclusions and fails to support
the policies that your detractors have adopted a priori,
and whose adoption was prompted neither by personal perception
nor by data, but by the necessity of taking a “strong”,
condemnatory “moral” stance.

It’s that “moral” condemnation of “predators” and
the delicious sense of self-righeousness that your
detractors find impossible to give up.

I just stumbled across your site today amidst reading a previous researcher’s masters thesis (whose work i will continue). I plan to slowly but surely digest your Dissertation, as the genuine, scholarly, witty goodness that has been your writing thus far has perked me up in what sometimes seems like a stale world of academia.

congratulations on the Ph.D!

-Patrick

The world has been the way it is for so long, things are changing but not as fast as I would like, so I understand and share your frustration.

Your are doing an admirable work, please accept my encouragements.

Internet is something incredibly disruptive. Most people are risk averse. That misconceptions about Internet dangers would dominate is rather normal.

That’s how things work!

“I’m not good at politics.”
I don’t believe this to be true, you are just not playing at the same level.

So, keep fighting, but preserve yourself too. We need people like you, I feel better knowing that you can voice your point of view.