There are no bogeymen in your cybercloset.

I’ve just been taking a glance over the literature review released by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (thanks to Clarence for his post on this, which sparked my interest). To be honest, I would encourage you to go read the lit review itself. The only advantage my few thoughts might have is brevity.

A few items attracted my attention which I’ll be sure to mention the next time I am in a conversation with someone who is concerned about the safety of their children who are online instant messaging and facebooking (ack – another noun, and a proper one at that, has become verbized):

95% of sexual assault cases reported to authorities are committed by family members or known acquaintances.

Generally speaking, children don’t need to fear strangers and most children don’t need to fear family or acquaintances. Sadly, and this might say something sad and horrible about human nature, a small minority of children are harmed by adult caretakers in their lives. I am concerned that wasting time and attention on bogeymen in our cyber-closets diverts the help, attention and care that these children do need.

… cases [of internet initiated sex crime] involving strangers are so rare as to be statistically non-existent.

Interesting, but one might also ask about consensual sexual contact. Are children being groomed for consensual sex?

In the YISS-2 survey, 0.03% (4 in 1500) of youth reported physical sexual contact with an adult they met online, and all were 17- year-olds who were in relationships with adults in their early 20s

The defense rests, your honour. We have had many 17 year old girls at the school who had 20+ year old boyfriends. This seems to be more prolific offline than online. Maybe we should ban kids from having offline social contact?

But physical sexual contact, consensual or as an assault, is not the only threat to children online. How prevalent is that?

13 – 19% of youth have experienced some form of online sexual solicitation in the past year. Given the anonymity of communication, it is often difficult for youth to assess the age of solicitors, but youth reported that they believed that 43% of solicitors were under 18, 30% were between 18 and 25, 9% were over 25, and 18% were completely unknown.

Regarding those experiencing sexual solicitation, the majority of the solicitations are annoyances and not perceived as aggressive or distressing:

Online solicitations are not generally disturbing to the recipients; most youth (66-75%) who were solicited were not psychologically harmed by this type of contact

Doing the math, that means that 33% of 19% of those experiencing harmful sexual solicitations, or about 6%, of youth are having to endure that sort of ordeal. That is a distressing amount, but I wonder how much that differs from offline sexual solicitation? I would hope that the occurrence offline is less, but unfortunately I think it might be just as common.

Cyberbullying is another threat that has received a great deal of media attention. It would seem that the prevalence of cyberbullying is no more common, and perhaps less common, than its offline counterpart -

cyberbullying is not reported to occur at higher overall rates than offline bullying. For instance, 67% of teenagers said that bullying happens more offline than online (Lenhart, 2007), 54% of grade 7 students were victims of traditional bullying while less than half that number (25%) were victims of cyberbullying.

I don’t want to diminish the damage done by bullies. I was a victim of bullying myself when I was in elementary school. It would seem, however, that there are no greater number of mean kids in the schoolyard than online.

So, that’s a bit of a debunking of the myth of the dangers lurking on the internet. To be sure, there are some real problems like cyberbullying or unwanted sexual solicitation faced by youth (and others) online. But the opportunity to make friends and connect with like minded individuals online can be invaluable.

Qualitative studies have shown that Internet-initiated connections are tremendously important for youth who are socially isolated at school and turn to the Internet to find peers who share their interests.

I live in a relatively small community, and many of my students come from small towns. Kids in that sort of social isolation from a sympathetic peer group can feel horribly isolated if they are different from other kids in the community. We have had gay and lesbian students in my school (some openly, at least to friends). I can’t imagine what sort of social isolation they must feel having no peer group to connect with as they develop their sexual identities (not to mention the social sanctions of actually dating someone of the same sex).

I am not blind to the potential for harm that exists for someone having an online social presence. I worry about what The Girl™ and The Boy™ will have to deal with from other kids online. But I also know that it is wrong for me to prevent social contact with good kids just because there are mean kids out there as well. (I wouldn’t let The Girl™ go to school if that were the case). I also know that by the time they don’t need me to look after them (in about another 40 years) they need to be able to look after themselves. I’d better make sure as they grow up that I teach them well how to deal with real threats, and how to tell those real threats from the bogeymen in their closets.

OK – that’s my diatribe. Go read the original report. They are far more eloquent than I am.