Ars Reports: Fears over kids' online safety overblown
We discuss this subject often at Weekly Geek HQ: the media and parent's portrayal that the Internet exists solely for pedophiles to have easy access to children is vastly overstated. This mentality leads to school districts banning the use of social networking sites, parent activists wasting energy, and a mess of uneducated news reports sensationalizing the issue. Ars Technica reports on a new survey that confirms that this panicked mentality is unwarranted. Of course, it is just a survey so take it with a grain of salt. From the article:
Three percent of the kids surveyed said that unwelcome strangers attempted to communicate with them online. Two percent said that such a person attempted to arrange an in-person meeting. A miniscule .08 percent of the kids responding to the survey said that they went through with such a meeting without their parents' permission.In contrast, school administrators believe that social networking sites are a significant cause of problems for students. 52 percent of the districts surveyed said that students being free and easy with personal information online has been "a significant problem" despite the fact that only 3 percent of the students in the same study ever reported doing so. The NSBA notes that there is a similar disparity on the subject of cyberbullying.
This is the same issue that Nintendo uses to justify their horribly convoluted friend code system. I'd love to see a similar survey done with online gaming services, instead of just being focused on social networking sites.
