Review 2: "Dangers overblown for teens using social media"

Link to article
Goodstein, Anastasia. “Dangers overblown for teens using social media.” Mediashift. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/06/dangers-overblown-for-teens-using-social-media155.html (accessed October 19, 2009).

Anastasia Goodstein's article is part of the Public Broadcasting System's Mediashift site. Mediashift is a site dedicated to the ways media are changing.

Goodstein devotes the beginning of her article to an anecdote about NBC's show To Catch a Predator. This show is a reality program in which sexual predators are lured to meeting a teenager... but instead of a teen, they encounter the NBC host, who grills them mercilessly about their sexual proclivities. Goodstein writes, "I also remember thinking, 'If I was a parent, this would scare the crap out of me.'" She notes that the main source of parental panic in this day and age is the concept of "stranger danger." Essentially, children and teenagers are taught that strangers (especially on the Internet) are all very bad people, and therefore, parental vigilance is the only way that one's child will not be abducted.

As a woman, I was taught these lessons with the added message of rape avoidance: don't post pictures of yourself in a "sexy" pose; don't talk to males online (they could be ANYONE); et cetera, ad infinitum.

Goodstein, the author of the book Totally Wired, is concerned about the message that this attitude sends. "The dark stuff is in there [on the Internet]. But so is the reality: Most teens aren't talking to strangers online. They're just socializing with the same friends they see in peron at school or met at summer camp."

The Internet is also a place where teenagers can express themselves and find others who share their interests. Of course, Goodstein warns, these same expressive, curious teenagers can fall into predators' traps; it's just that these traps are not as numerous as the mainstream media would suggest.

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EXPERT PANEL

Goodstein had the chance to discuss this issue with a group of experts at the Congressional Internet Congress. (The entire presentation can be found here.) Much of the discussion revolved around misleading statistics. While most Americans probably think that the most vulnerable users of the Internet are young children, the statistics show that this is not true. Teenagers are more likely to be victimized by online predators than young children.

But why? Wouldn't young children be easier to seduce, easier to trick? Young children, unlike teenagers, do not really have any degree of independence. Teenagers sometimes have access to a car, or time after school to spend as they please. Also, teenagers are more likely to have a computer in their room, rather than in the living room or den, where their usage could be more easily monitored.

Three percent of the victimization cases the panel studied resulted in abduction. However, 73% of cases involved the teenagers meeting the predator for a sexual encounter. These teens are quite often the longtime victims of sexual and physical abuse, so they are already vulnerable to victimization.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Internet safety education is essential for today's teenagers, but it doesn't have to focus on stranger danger and paranoia. One idea that Goodstein has is to mental health advocates on the Internet to stage interventions for at-risk teens. Could this work? Probably not, in my opinion. There are too many at-risk teens on the Internet and not enough people willing to help. (Kind of like real life.)

This article brings up some interesting issues for young adult librarians: in addition to having a social media policy, should your library have Internet safety classes? Who would attend these classes (voluntarily)? Perhaps a more reasonable solution would be to require all users of public access computers in libraries to take a short quiz about Internet safety. Of course, this brings about all sorts of issues in itself.

Goodstein's article would also be a good resource to have in one's proverbial bag of librarian tricks: if a parent asks what the library is doing about the hordes of Internet predators just waiting to attack their teens, the librarian can show them this article as an alternative viewpoint.