online predators vs. cyberbullies

We hear a lot about online predators and how they're a growing menace. While there have been a few sensational (and very sad) cyberbullying cases in the news lately, the topic just doesn't get as much press.

According to what I found out in my research for LIS406, publicized statistics show that 1 in 5 children are approached online by a sexual predator. This is the number that gets thrown around constantly by those who want to scare parents about social networking sites. Where does this number come from, and what does it mean?

Thanks to Benjamin Radford, I found that this stat originated in 2001 (red flag--6 years ago), when the Department of Justice conducted a report surveying teens about sexual solicitation online. The results were as follows:

• Almost one in five (19 percent) of the young Internet users surveyed received an unwanted sexual solicitation in the past year. Okay, that's bad, but break down that number a little further and you discover that...
  
• Five percent of the surveyed youth received a distressing sexual solicitation (i.e., the solicitation made them feel very or extremely upset or afraid).
• Three percent of the youth received an aggressive solicitation involving offline contact or attempts or requests for offline contact.
• None of the solicitations led to an actual sexual contact or assault.
• Adults (age 18 and older) made 24 percent of all solicitations and 34 percent of aggressive solicitations.
• Juveniles made 48 percent of all solicitations and 48 percent of aggressive solicitations.

While these numbers are still troubling, the fact is that a very small percentage of online youh received distressing or aggressive sexual solicitation, and nearly half of any kind of sexual interaction was initiated by another teen (this doesn't make it okay, but it does make it a different story than a child being solicited by an adult, in my book).

In other positive news, I found the following news item via Scott McLeod's blog:

Children less likely to encounter online predators

In contrast, 32% of teenagers who use the internet say that they have been the target of cyberbullying—"a range of annoying and potentially menacing online activities, such as receiving threatening messages; having their private emails or text messages forwarded without consent; having an embarrassing picture posted without permission; or having rumors about them spread online" (Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2007).

To me, this is the scarier issue. The web makes it easier to bully because it's easier to be anonymous. Bullying is an issue IRL, for sure, but parents and educators most likely have no idea when cyberbullying is happening. Are we teaching kids how to handle this? Are we talking to parents about it in the same way that we scare the crap out of them with all this sexual predator talk? Ultimately, the topic is brought up as a reason to block kids' internet access or take away their ability to use social networking sites. Which does nothing--they just use a proxy and hop right back on there, unarmed with any knowledge of what to do if they DO get solicited or bullied.

filtering

Why do I always find myself embroiled in yucky debates on LM_NET? I find that listserv to be particularly conservative, but where else are the school librarians supposed to go for quick feedback to questions?

Recently, another school librarian posted about how her students are accessing MySpace through bypass proxies. So, inevitably, librarians are spending a lot of time figuring out what these proxy sites are and passing that along to IT so that they, too, can be blocked.

And when I responded, asking if it wouldn't just be easier to let the students use MySpace, I got lots of responses:

If there wasn't porn on it I wouldn't care.

...trying to keep kids on educational tasks when they want to be continuously checking MySpace is a waste of my time. They can check MySpace somewhere else.

Of course there were some posts from people who agreed with me, too...but I know this is a fight I won't win; by which i mean I won't be able to ever convince the dissenters that social networks AREN'T porn and that they DO belong in the library.

I'm doing a project on filtering for my class; I'm presenting on it this Saturday, so I'll post my findings next week. I think that filtering is one of the biggest obstacles facing librarians today--especially those who serve youth.