Pennsylvania case study: Social-networking risk in context

This is interesting in light of criticism by state attorneys general of the peer-reviewed research in the Internet Safety Technical Task Force report this month: a just-released study from the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use (CSRIU). The attorneys general have said the research is outdated (it's actually not, but see the Wall Street Journal) and not enough about predators in social-network sites, so study author Nancy Willard analyzed some data that couldn't be more current: all online predator arrests in Pennsylvania from 2005 through the middle of this month, cited in press releases in Attorney General Tom Corbett's Web site.

In a recent statement, General Corbett said, "I believe this [Task Force] report is incredibly misleading.... The threat is real.... In the last four years, my office has arrested 183 predators, all of whom have used the Internet for the purpose of contacting minors to engage in sexual activity."

No one - in the Task Force report, the research community, or certainly the online-safety field - disagrees that online predation is a risk, and all agree that the attorneys general are performing an important public service in reducing Internet-initiated predation. The risk does need to be put into context, though. A whole lot of parents (those of the 65% of US teens with social-network profiles, according to Pew/Internet) would really like to know how dangerous social networking actually is, since it's so much a part of their kids' lives now.

Willard's analysis looks at 1) Internet-related child sexual exploitation in context (what proportion of overall exploitation involves even the Internet, much less a single social technology on it) and 2) social networking in the context of all online social technologies teens use - chat, IM, etc.

Internet-related child sexual abuse in Pa.

During one year (FY '06-'07) Pennsylvania rape crisis centers and sexual assault programs served 9,934 child victims of sexual abuse, Willard reports.

Over four years (2005 through ’08), the Pennsylvania attorney general's office made 183 arrests concerning Internet-related child sexual abuse through its Child Predator Unit.

Only 8 of the 183 cases involved actual minors (the rest were sting operations involving police posing as minors) - though certainly these arrests may've prevented cases involving minors.

Only 5 of the 183 involved sexual contact.

The only national figure we have is from 2000, when the Crimes Against Children Research Center found that 508 out of 65,000 child sexual exploitation cases were Internet-initiated (where offender and victim "met" for the first time online). [An update from the CACRC is expected to be released soon.]

Social networking compared to other Net technologies

Willard writes that, "because the attorneys general have been focusing their attention on the social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook, this analysis gave special attention to any case that mentioned any activity occurring on either of these two sites." She found that:

144 of the sting operations involved chat, 11 instant messaging, and 9 unspecified in the press releases; the rest were cases of child porn possession.

Only one case involved both a teenager and MySpace, "a re-arrest of a person who had already been arrested through a sting," Willard reports.

One case involved a police officer committing child sex crimes: He "was arrested for sexual abuse of many teens with whom he had interacted in the line of duty. [He] also had a MySpace account with links to teen girls, but there was no assertion that these communications had led to sexual activity."

"One predator in a sting provided the agent with a link to his Facebook page," Willard writes.

"In 5 of the stings that took place in a chat room [no minor involved], reference was made to the fact that the predator had either looked at the 'teen’s' MySpace profile or suggested the 'teen' look at his account."

And the Child Predator Unit itself has, since November 2006, "maintained one or more public sting profiles [depicting teens] on MySpace," but in four years not one arrest has occurred as a result of communications through its fake teen MySpace profiles.

What Willard concluded was that, though a single state's arrests are not a representative sample, "the arrest reports on the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s site fully support the insight and conclusions of the Berkman Task Force Research Advisory Board. The incidents of online sexual predation are rare. Far more children and teens are being sexually abused by family members and acquaintances.... It appears that chat rooms are far less safe than social networking sites and that there is limited inclination and ability of predators to use social networking sites to contact potential teen victims.

"However," she notes, "some predators are apparently looking at non-protected social networking profiles to obtain more information about victims," and more research on the secondary role social and media-sharing sites might be playing is needed. The attorneys general are right - we need more granular understanding of how predators operate - and we can only get that when they make their case records available to the research community. By law, the Electronic Privacy Communications Act, Internet service providers (including social sites) can't share data on users' communications without a subpoena or other court instrument. Once that subpoena has been served, for example by an attorney general's office, that information can be made public. Let's hope the attorneys general, who didn't provide predator data to the Task Force researchers whose report they're criticizing, can soon make it available to the research community.

Let's broaden the discussion

But online crime needs to be seen in context too. Crime must be addressed, but so much of what is happening online - including among teens, of course - is good. Or neutral. Or bad but not necessarily criminal. Increasingly, the Web mirrors all of "real life." Our kids deserve more from parents than fear about it and from the rest of us than overemphasis on crime.

I like the metaphor used by Barry Joseph of Global Kids, a nonprofit organization in New York that does a lot of educational work with youth in virtual worlds. Referring to Teen Second Life, an all-teen virtual world that may merge with the main SL world, he writes, "Why is it important for youth to have their own community? How is this different from a focus on keeping youth safe? The difference is that keeping youth safe, while a desired goal, sells everyone short. Youth deserve support to access their inherent abilities to fully participate in society.

"Let's take the example of a playground," Joseph continues. "What makes a playground safe? Recreational equipment that isn't broken, for example. Barriers to keep out drug dealers or predatory adults. Authority figures to police the space. How would this playground change if it were redesigned to not just keep youth safe but also support their development? The recreational equipment would be selected with an eye toward their developmental impact, such as supporting collaboration or creative play.... The authority figure would do more than just watch and observe but get actively involved, building supporting relationships with the youth, and offer activities designed to engage and develop their abilities."

How might our kids' experience of the social Web change if we were to redesign our collective thinking about it and them - if we saw them less as potential victims and more as participants in and producers of a digital place they can help make safe?

Related links

"How risky are social networking sites?", by Michele Ybarra and Kimberly Mitchell in the journal Pedatrics: "Our findings suggest that 15% of all youth report being targeted by unwanted sexual solicitation, 4% in a social networking site specifically. Similarly, 32.5% of youth report being harassed, either by threats or aggressive comments, or having rumors spread about them," 9% while on a social networking site specifically. "Youth are less likely to be targeted for unwanted sexual solicitation in social networking sites than they are through IM and in chat rooms, however, and are less likely to be a target of harassment on social networking sites than they are through IM."

For even more context (and a view from Washington), head over to Adam Thierer's blog, TechLiberationFront.com.

"New study challenges attorneys general on predator danger," by Larry Magid of CBS/CNET and ConnectSafely.org

"Social networking benefits validated" in the Washington Times

"Serious informal learning: Key online youth study" in NetFamilyNews

"Greatest Internet threat to teens may be teens themselves" - best coverage of Task Force report in the mainstream media I've seen, appropriately in the Los Angeles Times's Health section

"Key crossroads for Net safety: ISTTF report released," my thoughts on the Task Force report

ISTTF report

AG says ISTTF 'creates false sense of security'

Attorney General Henry McMaster "has withdrawn from a group studying the problem of Internet predators on social-networking sites after a report downplayed threats that children face online," CarolinaLive.com reports. It says McMaster withdrew, presumably from the group of attorneys general that formed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, because the ISTTF report's findings "create a 'false sense of security on the issue of child Internet safety'." The report, "Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies," can be downloaded from Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society's site. One of the criticisms voiced by the attorneys general in this interview in the Wall Street Journal is that the research cited by the ISTTF report is dated. In fact, the Research Advisory Board pulled together all online-safety research published through this past year, when the ISTTF report was being written. If data is not in there, especially the information on criminal activity the attorneys general are calling for, it's data that the research community is waiting for law enforcement people to make available. Let's hope the attorneys general will help fill in whatever gaps in the research they're referring to.

Key crossroads for Net safety: ISTTF report released

Online safety has reached a major crossroads, here in the US. The Internet Safety Technical Task Force's report is being released tonight, and to me (a Task Force member), it represents a stark choice all stakeholders have going forward: continue down the road of fear-based online-safety education or together match all messaging to what the research says - be fear-based or fact-based.

Having observed and participated in this field for more than 11 years, I think it's understandable how we got here. The US's public discussion, fueled by mostly negative media coverage, has been dominated by law enforcement. Starting in the mid-'90s, police departments representing the only really accessible, on-location expertise in online safety, filled an information vacuum. They and members of the growing number of state Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces were the people who spoke to schoolkids and parents about how to stay safe online, and their talks, naturally, were largely informed by criminal cases. When online-safety education is carried out by experts in crime - those who see the worst uses of the Internet on a daily basis - fear is often the audience's take-away. That's not to say there aren't amazing youth-division officers who really understand children and technology giving online-safety talks - there are, we have one, Det. Frank Dannahey in Connecticut, on our Advisory Board - but their voices have so far been drowned out by the predator panic the American public has been saddled with.

Meanwhile, over the past decade, a broad spectrum of research has been published about both online youth risk and young people's general everyday use of all kinds of Internet technologies, fixed and mobile. And now it's all reviewed and summarized in this report (downloadable here), one of three major accomplishments of the Task Force, the other two being the national-level discussion it represented, involving key stakeholders, and that it acknowledges the international nature of the Internet, essential to any policy discussion about it.

One of the researchers' most important findings - information really helpful to parents, finally - is that a child's psychosocial makeup and the conditions surrounding him are more important predictors of online risk than the technology he uses. Not every child is equally at risk of anything online, including predation. The research shows 1) only a tiny minority of online youth are at risk of sexual exploitation resulting from Net activity, and these are at-risk kids in "real life," and 2) online risk of all forms - inappropriate behavior, content or contact, by peers or adults - has been present through all phases of the Web and all interactive technologies kids use; it doesn't show up only in social-network sites. It's rooted in user behavior, not in crime.

As an online-safety advocate who talks to parents all the time, I kept wanting to say to the attorneys general - since they announced their online-safety prescription, age verification, 2.5 years ago at a DC conference on social-networking I attended - that focusing solely on predation, or crime, doesn't help parents. Parents need the full picture - all the risk factors and danger signs, the positives and neutrals, too, not just the negatives - in order to guide their kids.

I think any parent gets why the full picture is needed. Most parents know they can't afford to be like deer in the headlights, paralyzed by the scary evidence coming from those focused on crime (and those covering them in the media). Kids sensing irrational fear want to get as far away as possible. They know it can cause parents to overreact and, based on misinformation, shut down the perceived source of danger. That sends them underground, where much-needed parental involvement and back-up isn't around. How, I kept wanting to ask the AGs, who are parents themselves, does that reduce online kids' risk? To young people, taking away the Internet is like taking away their social lives, and there are too many ways kids can sneak away - to overseas sites beyond the reach of any US regulation, to irresponsible US sites that don't work with law enforcement, to and with other technologies, devices, and hot spots parents don't know about it - including friends' houses, where their rules don't apply.

Certainly the attorneys general have played an important watchdog role, here in a country where a discussion about industry best practices hasn't even begun. Now, with the release of a full research summary maybe that discussion can start. That's possible because, with a national report that says the most common risk kids face is online bullying and harassment - bad behavior, not crime (and their own aggressive behavior more than doubles their risk of victimization) - and with the Task Force's technical advisers concluding that no single technology can solve the whole problem "or even one aspect of it 100% of the time," we're moving closer to a calm, rational societal understanding of the problem - the Task Force ended up working toward a diagnosis rather than filling a prescription for one of the (certainly scariest) symptoms.

With the release of the Task Force report, online safety as we know it is obsolete. The report lays out more than enough reasons to take a fact-based approach to protecting online kids - to stop seeing and portraying them almost exclusively as potential victims and work with them, as citizens and drivers of the social Web, toward making it a safer, more civil and constructive place to learn, play, produce and socialize.

Related links

The ISTTF report download page - with links to PDFs of the full report, executive summary, research summary, and all other appendices

"Net threat to minors less than feared" from my ConnectSafely.org co-director Larry Magid at CNET

"Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown" in the New York Times

"Internet Child Safety Report Finds No Easy Technology Fix" in the Wall Street Journal

Over in the UK, "Bullying biggest online threat to children" at the Financial Times

"Teen frustrated that parents restrict access to social-networking sites" in the Lawrence (Ks.) Journal-World

Past blog posts on age verification in NetFamilyNews