What does increase teen girls' risk online

A new study in the medical journal Pediatrics found that "a history of childhood abuse and use of a provocative online identity increase the risk that girls will be victimized by someone they meet on the Internet," CNN reports, and a key factor in reducing risk is "the presence and influence of caregivers." and a key factor in reducing risk is "the presence and influence of caregivers." Nothing unprecedented about these findings, but they confirm what the full body of online-safety research, gathered by last year's Internet Safety Technical Task Force, shows. This study, led by Jennie G. Noll of the Cincinnati, Ohio, Children's Hospital Medical Center, is one of the first I've seen to add avatar appearance to screennames as a way people can intentionally or inadvertently indicate sexual interest to people they "meet" online. As CNN put it, "girls are more likely to experience online sexual advances or have offline encounters if they have previously been abused or have a provocative avatar." The study "looked at 104 abused [those who had suffered neglect, physical abuse or sexual abuse] and 69 non-abused girls ages 14 to 17," 54% white and 46% minorities. Among these girls, 40% "reported experiencing sexual advances online" and 26% "reported meeting someone offline after getting to know the person on the Internet. Abused girls were much more likely to have experienced both, the authors found." Pew/Internet senior researcher Amanda Lenhart later commented that the study in Pediatrics confirmed previous research but left out some other risk trouble spots we need to be aware of - that kids with histories of mental illness and family conflict are equally at risk online. Thanks to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for pointing this study out.

Predators: Parents really can worry less

Be alert, certainly be engaged, but let's be realistic, is my takeaway from an interview Lenore Skenazy - syndicated columnist and author of Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry - gave Salon.com. I'm going to quote a chunk about predators in full because it's good to hear a prominent voice correctly citing the research for a change. Her comment could be mapped to the findings of last year's Internet Safety Technical Task Force.

Salon asked her, "What's your take on Internet sexual predators?" Skenazy: "The world online turns out to be not very different from the world offline. There are some really seedy neighborhoods where you wouldn't want your kids hanging out, especially if they were wearing high-heeled shoes and fishnets stockings at night. If your kids don't go there, then your kids are not going to be stalked by predators just looking up prom pictures on Facebook. David Finkelhor, the head of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, has discovered pedophiles don't want to waste their time just flipping through MySpace pages or Facebook pages. It's as futile as trying to call up random numbers from the phonebook and trying to get a date. It's just a waste of time. They would rather go for the low-hanging fruit: young people hanging out in sexually suggestive chat rooms presenting themselves in a sexual way.... If your kid is just texting his friends, or posting pictures on Facebook or AIM'ing, it's no more dangerous than them talking to each other as they walk down the sidewalk, or at the mall." But don't miss the whole interview about raising kids in an alarmist society. [For more on the latest research from Dr. Finkelhor and colleagues, see this.]

Predation in online gaming

Police have been saying that predators go where kids go, and they've been saying it since before there was an Internet. So the "place" that the news media and online-safety advocates are increasingly focusing on is online gaming. I first linked you to a story about this in January 2006 (see "Teen exploited while gaming"); in May, a report out of Cincinnati saying the FBI was investigating "a number of cases in southern Ohio" concerning Xbox Live; and last month we heard from a US attorney in Massachusetts that cases of man-to-minor predation involving World of Warcraft were under investigation. This week USATODAY reported on online-game predation cases in Utah and Michigan. Where the Xbox Live gaming community is concerned, "Microsoft trains police at national conferences," according to USATODAY. Parents need to know that "Xbox has password-protected 'family settings' that allow parents to turn off Internet access or track content and contacts. PlayStation and Wii also have such controls." I was delighted to learn last summer that there is some "neighborhood watch," or community policing, activity in Xbox Live (see this feature) and hope to see more evidence of this other form of protection that can be empowering for kids. For some context around all this, see this editorial too. The No. 1 message for parents in all this is the importance of teaching our kids to be alert and responsible wherever and whenever they're in places where lots of people interact, online or offline. Alert about what? See "How to recognize grooming" and "How social influencing works."

Transatlantic predator panic

It kind of surprised me seeing this coming out of Britain, that "the specter of the predatory pedophile is everywhere." I thought it was everywhere only here in the US, where we've had a predator panic going for some time and it has subsided somewhat (see "Predator panic," which I wrote back in May 2006). It doesn't surprise me, however, that this good question is coming out of the UK (in the same BBC blog post): "Have we got our response to child sex abuse in proportion? Or ... are we in danger of destroying the very thing we aim to protect - a trusting relationship between adults and children?" I wish blogger Mark Easton had answered or at least expanded on that theme. Instead, he makes a different but related valid point about the sheer numbers of child abusers ("The NSPCC [National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children] estimates that at any one time, 1 million children are suffering sexual abuse") and how most are people the children know (and still more are never found out). But I do think that question about society's response deserves serious consideration on both sides of the Atlantic. Heightened fears lead to strong reactions, often overreaction, which reduces trust and communication between parents and children. When parents act out of fear and get categorical, teens tend to seek even more distance from them than normal adolescent development would call for and go "underground," where - not necessarily but possibly - they could be at greater risk. I think working through the risks and adult fears together, openly and calmly, is a more effective approach at both the household and societal levels.

'Grooming' by phone too

Online safety news that appeals to fears is counter-productive, so I hope the US news media will approach cellphone safety more intelligently than they did predation on the Web. But, as with the Web, parents do need to be aware of the downsides to this other very useful communications tech too. CNN reports that, according to law enforcement, cellphones were used by a teacher and 14-year-old student in a case in which she allegedly developed the relationship with and had sex with the boy on school grounds. So many of us get our kids cellphones so we know where they are and they can call us when they need us. Certainly we will and should keep doing that, but we need to know there are other uses for those phones, from very rare uses such as the case above to teen pranks and bullying that can be very destructive in their own way. "A New York mom, who requested anonymity because her kids don't know about her surveillance, said she uses software to regularly check her children's e-mail and online activity on the home computer. But she also gave her kids cell phones that have texting and photographic capability. Asked why she doesn't scrutinize the phone the same way she snoops on the computer," she told CNN she hadn't really thought about it. Just something to think about and discuss with our kids. A discussion point might be "How to recognize grooming." The CNN article also goes into the subject of "grooming" - predators' insidious process of gaining a child's confidence overtime, citing the work of Betsy Ramsey, who "has spent 20 years working with child and female victims and chairs the DeKalb County Domestic Violence Task Force in Georgia."