Social Networking Will Make You Go Blind

PFF's indefatigable Adam Thierer is an island of reasoned thought in an ocean of sensationalism and fear-mongering about The Evils of Social Networking.

Yesterday, he released a 35-page report titled "Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions."

And, on Friday, Adam will host an event in DC that will discuss the same issue.  (I plan to be there)

Today, he writes about how social networking myths are out of control and need to be debunked.  Excerpts:

Not only is it a myth that there is a growing epidemic of Internet-facilitated child abductions, but it is also a myth that all children are equally susceptible to falling prey to online predators. In reality, the population of “at-risk” youngsters who are most likely to become the victim of online predators is very small. I highlight social science research revealing that this small population of at-risk youth are the ones that get in the most trouble online, just as they do offline. The enter into relationships with men that who they know are older than them and who have made their sexual intentions clear. Again, my report documents these findings....

Another myth I address is that all sexual "solicitations" online come from adults. In reality, research shows that a significant percentage of online sexual solicitations are simply kids talking to other kids. In other words, when 17-year old Johnny propositions 16-year-old Jenny, it counts as a "solicitation" for purposes of social science research, but the press and policy makers rarely point that out. Of course, teens were delivering salacious solicitations to each other long before the Internet came along, but parents had no way to track sexual solicitations unless they found a dirty note in a schoolbag or pants pocket....

...A final myth about social networking that I discuss in my paper is that teens are at a much greater risk in these online communities than they were in the offline social communities of the past. It's clear that part of what is driving the push to regulate social networking sites is that many adults simply don't understand this new technology and have created a sort of "moral panic" around it. But parents misunderstanding teens--or a new trend or technology that teens love--is really nothing new. For example, today's grandparents will recall that when they were teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s, their parents worried about their hanging out at burger joints and roller rinks. And today's parents will remember that in the 1970s and 1980s, their parents were concerned about their hanging around shopping malls and video arcades. Those places were the social networking sites of their eras. And so it continues with the networking sites that today’s youngsters enjoy: digital, interactive websites.

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