The American House of Representatives passed Resolution 5319, the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), by a 410 to 15 vote yesterday. This will require schools and libraries to block access to social networking sites and chat rooms by children. Organisations that do not block access will lose their government subsidies. The subject has excited intense interest among people who don’t use such sites: Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican told CNN that social networks “have become a haven for online sexual predators who have made these corners of the Web their own virtual hunting ground.”
Well, actually, the evidence for this moral panic just isn’t there. Danah Boyd provides an excellent commentary on the shortsightedness and ineffectuality of these ‘reforms’:
This legislation will not protect minors, but it will continue to erode their (and our) freedoms. There are so many amazing things that teens do with social technologies. To lose all of this because of the culture of fear is terrifying to me. I found out about my alma mater talking to strangers online in the 90s. I learned about what it means to be queer, how to have confidence in myself and had so many engaging conversations. Sure, i found some sketchy people too, but i learned to ignore them just as i learned to ignore the guys who whistled and honked from their cars when i walked to the movie theater with my best friend. We need to give youth the knowledge to know the risks of their actions, the structures to be able to come to us when something goes wrong and the opportunity to grow up and connect to their peers. Eliminating cultural artifacts because we don’t understand them does not make our lives any safer, but it does obliterate so many positive interactions.
Share this post:
These are my thoughts on it. I respect your views, however I was surprised and disappointed that the vote was 410–15. Many of those who oppose DOPA do so because they believe that children should be educated and not restricted. I agree that they should be educated, but let us face it, not all parents do their job and the parents who are doing their job are left with schools and libraries that are not doing their job.
I can not speak on behalf of the US, but I know that surprisingly some Canadian public libraries and schools do not monitor children’s internet access nor do they have filters in place. We were all teens once. I keep hearing the same comments. “Parents do your job.†Well I ask you this, “How many of you rebelled against your parents?â€
No matter how much we take care of our children and educate them, it only takes them making one unhealthy choice to put them at risk. You can educate your child untill you are all blue in the face. The truth is that children don’t often think of the consequences of unhealthy choices. If DOPA will save just one child, don’t you think the bill is worth it?
I do want to add that while I support the bill, I do think that the legislation should be rewritten so it does not block sites such as Yahoo and Google. I think they need to better determine what sites will be blocked before passing the law.
These are just my thoughts!
Thank you very much for the comment, Rose.
As you know, I oppose the idea. I think that children (like the rest of us) have a real necessity for communication and self-expression and our cotton wool society is making that harder and harder. They can’t do the things I did as a child and go off wandering round town with their friends because of the perceived risk. Socialising online provides something of a replacement and an outlet. I am delighted that children are expressing such a desire to write, communicate and be creative. Let’s embrace that rather than demonise it.
As the study I cited shows, there’s only a slim chance of children being approached by adults online. And they know to ignore such advances. At the same time, all the leading social networks are investing substantially in child safety. Filters will quite possibly send children to less salubrious, responsible sites in order to beat these. As you point out, the act could also cut off access to perfectly legitimate, educational resources. It’s a bit like saying children can’t go into the library because there are books in there that are potentially disturbing.
I also don’t agree that ‘one unhealthy choice’ leads to risk. I think putting yourself at risk involves a whole series of very deliberate choices. Every stage involves deliberation and children know what they’re doing. If a child is making those choices, then we really have to think about what is driving that rather than pointing fingers at the particular medium through which they’re doing it.
“If DOPA will save just one child, don’t you think the bill is worth it?“
(a) There are many better ways to save children — reducing traffic speeds by 10mph would save thousands a year. (b) No, I dont. It’s like banning children from from sailing holidays because one kid drowned somewhere. And not if it kills an enormous opportunity for communication, social interaction, self-expression, creativity and play for all the rest.
You certainly have a right to your opinion as I have a right to my opinion. I’m not here to debate that issue or change your opinion. I’ve shared my views on a bill that I wish was passed in Canada.
I disagree with your opinion strongly. Where are you getting your facts? You state, “As the study I cited shows, there’s only a slim chance of children being approached by adults online.” According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly one in five children ages 10 to 17 have been sexually solicited online.
You say “And they know to ignore such advances.” Obviously you do not listen to the news. If they knew to ignore such advantages there would not be so many cases of Internet luring. Research suggests that 50 per cent of youth have received unwanted sexual comments online, and that 25 per cent have been asked by someone they knew only online, to meet in person. Let me direct you to “http://news.google.ca/news?q=internet luring&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=wn”
I can not speek for the US, but Canada educators are not handling the issue. As parents we put trust in a school system that fails our children, but I can’t say I’m surprised. For many years the government has failed to protect our children.
If DOPA isn’t the answer, then it is going to take all concerned individuals pulling together to make the internet safe for our children.
I speak from personal experience. It’s not just important to know what they are doing at home, but at school too.
As a parent it was shocking to learn that my sixteen year old daughter was able to use the computer at school unsupervised and like Suzanne Stanford,(internet safety coach who is helping to protect children and organizations from the dangers of the internet) I too learned that my daughter had an online identity.
While she may not have been on networking sites such as MySpace, she was using the internet at school to communicate with friends.
I can guarantee that it doesn’t matter how much you talk to them about the dangers and risk of internet safety, they’ll ignore the warnings. “It won’t happen to me,†is a myth. When a child posts personal information and a photo about themselves on a network site it has now made them a target for predators who are searching for the next child victim.
Should children really be using these websites in Class unsupervised. Should my daughter of been allowed to set up a hotmail account, and add her friends etc without my knowledge when as a parent I supervise her at home? I’m all for education and I believe that computers play an important role in their education. We need technology in every classroom and in every student and teacher’s hand, but what we don’t need is children accessing the net with no supervision. How many children under 14 have already violated the MySpace terms of service? Children should not have unsupervised access to the internet. There are just too many opportunities for inappropriate interactions. MySpace does not belong in the classroom. Again that is just my opinion.
Hi there Rose,
On facts, in the original post I linked to a PDF about a new study conducted at CSU about MySpace. Here’s the first sentence:
“MySpace is not the evil hotbed of sexual predators preying on internet-addicted teens that many in the media have suggested, according to Dr. Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Rosen has just completed the first major study of adolescents who use MySpace, the virtual community of 86 million members.”
He suggests considerably lower figures than the shock headlines you point to seem to indicate. However, he does agree that children need to be properly educated to not give out their personal details so easily.
I also note that on the page of headlines you point to, there are no convictions mentioned. Why is that, do you think? I’m not saying “internet luring” never happens. Just not nearly so often as our panic-loving media would lead us to believe.
You obviously are not looking at the same page that I am as there have been several convictions. I agree that children need to be propertly educated, but again no matter how much we educate them they ignore the warnings. They believe in a myth that it won’t happen to me!
I see lots of stories about people being charged, some about those charges being dropped again, but no convictions…
Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that *some* of these people will be convicted on the basis of having lured young people through the internet. There are too many users for it never to happen. But at the moment, it looks a lot like a convenient thing to blame. The same way they used to talk about video games, alcopops, A Clockwork Orange, comics, yellow-backed novels, etc..
Here’s another news link for you to illustrate this:
internet luring convictions
The issue here is DOPA Ian. Are you really that blind to think that children are not being lured online?
Research shows that predators are using the Internet. Did you know that the US alone is home for 78% of Internet-related crimes. 1 in 5 children are sexually solicited or approached over the internet in a one-year period of time. 20% of violent offenders serving time in state prisons reported having victimized a child.
Ian, predators and child pornographers around the world have been prosecuted.
The availability of child pornography is increasing at an alarming rate. In this day and age a child’s photo can be easily edited. Are you aware that real children’s facial images have been attached to the pornographic poses of others. These children are victimized when those images are distributed.
Child pornography is traded 24 hours a day
The following is nothing like the “To Catch a Predator†aired on NBC Dateline. The W5 report, titled “Save the Children†is an extremely disturbing look at the pedophiles that that are underground, exchanging child pornography, and trading full-length movies of babies being raped.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060310/wfive_savethechildren_060311/20060311?hub=WFive
The law enforcement that are in this episode, are the ones that have to deal with this sad reality on a daily basis. In the episode, a 3 time sexual offender calmly talks about what he has done, insisting it’s the children who want to have sex with him. I couldn’t believe it.
You’ll also see Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie disappointment with the justice system. It’s not enough to just read the article; you have to watch the four part episode.
Again, the episode, which can be viewed at ctv.ca is very disturbing. Maybe it will open your CLOSED eyes!
There also has been a growing number of cases of sexual predators using sites like MySpace to lure children.
Though MySpace added new restrictions to combat the problem of users 18 and older not being able to send messages or join friend lists of users 15 and under, unless they know the youth’s e-mail address or full name. The new restrictions does not prevent predatory, as Predators can lie about their age when they sign up. MySpace has no way of verifying that users submit their true age when registering.
You or I can log on right now and talk to anybody we want and we can tell them that we are 25 or 14, how would they know? They wouldn’t.
If you just do a Google for internet safety you’ll see so much material out there for parents, but it all says the same thing.
We all must take measures to keep our children safe.
Child abusers no longer have to wander around schoolyards Ian. They can log on to the computer and surf on over to MySpace– A haven for pediophiles to use to their advantage. My space currently has 87m accounts, with 270,000 new users being added a day. One forth of those users are minors. Children leave the home and go to school and have access to these social-networking sites. It’s inappropriate for students to be participating in these social networking sites while at school. However, they do access them. My daughter attends a high school where there is no school involvement. Children can log on to networking sites, check their email and surf the web freely.
Internet safety and responsible use is everyone’s concern, however some schools do not appear to be too concerned with the growing concerns over these network sites. Educating your children is not effective enough in preventing youth involvement in these online networking communities. In many cases in which children have been solicited for sex over the Internet, the child was unsupervised. When a web service has become that of a haven to exploit children– like MySpace has then measures need to be taken to protect the children.
Parents cannot asume that children are out of harms way just because they are safe at home. They are not safe if they are on the internet unsupervised.
While some parents may be doing there job to keep their children safe; children are ignoring the warnings. The problem isn’t just unresponsible parents here, it’s the networking sites, schools and peer pressure. If you tell a child not to touch something because it’s hot, they are going to touch it.
Our children are our most valuable asset, but how do we keep them safe when we are not there? Telling little Johny and Susan not to talk to strangers isn’t enough. They don’t want to hear the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Woof.
Supervision is one of the biggest issues here!
The Internet is a valuable tool, but both adults and children must learn to use it wisely and responsibily.
I’m not sure how you can compare internet luring and Sexual exploitation of children to video games, alcopops, A Clockwork Orange, comics, and yellow-backed novels.
“1 in 5 children are sexually solicited or approached over the internet in a one-year period of time. 20% of violent offenders serving time in state prisons reported having victimized a child.”
Where did you read this? Is it based on an academically reliable source, like the statistics I posted?
Why have you not addressed the lack of convictions I illustrated to you in my last post?
1 in 5 children between the ages of 10 and 17 (those surveyed) are sexually solicited or approached over the internet, in a one year period, according to a 2000 report from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I believe the Center for Missing and Exploited Children is a reliable resource unless you wish to argue that too?
“A 37-year-old man solicited a 16-year-old girl by visiting MySpace.com. The man misrepresented himself as being younger, then tracked her down. Lafayette Sheriff Lt. Craig Stansbury said the man showed up at the victim’s after-school job and followed her to the parking lot, where he forced her into his car and attacked her. ‘The assailant knew where she worked because she posted it on her MySpace profile.”
2006– A Hughson firefighter was sentenced to a year in jail for engaging in sexual activity with a 16-year-old Lodi-area boy he met online. Camagna was arrested, and investigators soon learned that the two had met on MySpace.com.
7 Jul 2006 — A former Seminole High School teacher William Warren Greico, 43, of Madeira Beach was sentenced to five years in prison on a guilty plea to using a computer to entice a child for sex.
Earlier this year a 45-year-old Montana man, Jimmy Dean Carpenter, was sentenced to life in prison for abusing three girls, aged 7, 13 and 14.
A court in southern Sweden sentenced a man to an 11-year jail term for luring — and in some cases also raping — teenage girls he contacted via popular chat sites on the internet.
In late May, Johnny Daniel Duran, a 28-year-old Frederick man, was sentenced to 18 months at the Frederick County Adult Detention Center for uploading hundreds of images involving child pornography onto one of his family’s computers.
A 41-year-old Jaffrey (New Hampshire) man has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for possessing child pornography. …
A Tucson man from a prominent family has been sentenced to prison for luring a minor for sexual exploitation.
Ariz. The son of a former Tucson mayor has been sentenced to more than three years in prison on his conviction of luring a minor for sexual exploitation.
Police say 52-year-old William Corbett engaged in several sexually explicit Internet conversations with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl.
A Sherman man was sentenced to seven years in federal prison June 27th for coercing a Danbury High School freshman he met on the Internet into giving him oral sex
Dale Eric Beckham, 33, was originally arrested in March of 2005, in Ottawa, Canada. He was charged with luring a 14-year-old boy he met over the Internet to a hotel room where they had sex. Beckham could get from five to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in October
There are many more cases!
Former teacher gets 5 years
Bay News 9: Florida
July 7, 2006
U.S. District Judge Richard A. Lazzara sentenced 43-year-old William Warren Greico to 5 years in prison Friday.
On April 5, Greico pled guilty to use of a computer to entice a child for sex.
On December 21, 2005, Greico, a Pinellas County school teacher, traveled from his residence in Madeira Beach to Brandon to meet a child for sex. The child was actually an undercover law enforcement agent.