Danger? Lock 'em up, don't play on MySpace pages
Thanks to shows like NBC's "To Catch a Predator" -- that sick bit of voyeurism they cast as a "news show," parents all over the U.S. have been freaking out about MySpace and networking sites like it.
Adding fuel to the fire were Wednesday's headlines letting already paranoid parents know that, "MySpace: 29,000 Sex Offenders Were Registered on Site" (AdvertisingAge.com) and "MySpace: 29,000 sex offenders have profiles" (MSNBC.com). Unfortunately for MySpace, that's more than four times the 7,000 registered sex offenders it claimed to have on its site in May. And those are just the ones who used a real name for their accounts.
Stranger Danger! Lock up your kids! Oh, wait, you already have? Maybe that's why they're online 24/7. But I digress. Those 29,000 profiles were deleted. You might've heard that over this past year, investigators found 100 incidents of adults preying on underage kids on the site. Sounds like a lot, but given that there are 180 million profiles on the site, it's really not. Regardless, law enforcement officials are seeking new rules for use of community/social networking sites.
In theory, enforcing age-authentication on these sites seems like a good idea -- it'll keep too-young kids off the site. But subjecting all adult users to a potential public records search (that's where this is going) is far too invasive. It's misguided to go after the Web sites like this, and it's far more reasonable to expect parents to keep tabs on their children's online activities.
Everyone -- kids especially -- needs to know that predators aren't just digital bogeymen. They're on the streets more than they are online, and we've all seen the gut-wrenching stories reported in the news of children snatched from their homes or on their way to school. Of course, it's understandable why parents worry about their kids being preyed upon, especially after hearing that, according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, when compared with non-sex offenders released from state prisons, sex offenders were four times more likely to re-offend (and get arrested for it).
But here's the thing: There are about 600,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., and fewer than 5 percent were on MySpace. Besides, not all sex offenders are the same, meaning that not all of them touch children, or anyone, for that matter. In some cases, streakers, flashers and public urinators must register as sex offenders, as do teenage boys who've had any sort of sexual contact with teen girls, as is the case for Genarlow Wilson, the Georgia teen who, at the age of 17, received consensual oral sex from a 15 year-old girl. He's now three years into his 10-year prison sentence. The state Supreme Court is now considering his case.
It's important to realize that being online is a trippy version of being outside. In the age of information technology, it doesn't really matter if you are out there. It's your info that counts, and -- once freakin' more, with feeling -- parents have to drill that into the heads of their little cyberactive darlings before letting them touch a keyboard. It's not easy, I know. I don't have children, but I'll never forget the sick feeling I got when I did a search on my kid sister's name online and found that she'd posted her full name, age (11), home address and phone number on a Spice Girls fan site. All that was missing was, "I'm home alone between 2 and 5 p.m." Had I talked to her about it before? Hell yeah, and I did again and again.
The expectation that cyberspace is meant to be this sanitized, supersafe place where nothing bad can ever happen is the candy-coated delusion of the simpleminded. In a sense, you're just as vulnerable to most threats online just as you are, well, offline, and demanding that they weed out child molesters, murderers, scam artists or fans of Clay Aiken -- I know, not a criminal element, but a personal point of revulsion nonetheless -- is flat out unreasonable. It's like holding a nightclub or a coffee shop responsible for allowing a creep with a criminal record in.
Yup, that's life, and it can be terrifying, be it online or in the "real" world. Just learn to deal with it.
Don't watch teeeveee anymore, but this sounds more like TV "investigative journalism" than "news," and educating parents that the Internet is not safe is bad... how?
There was a case recently in the greater Seattle area of a military official caught in exactly such a sting. Was that "voyeurism" or protection? (Okay, I don't think there was a video posted on teeeveee.)