A high-profile task force created by 49 state attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem, despite years of parental anxieties and media hype.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that older adults were using these popular sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report compared such fears to a “moral panic” and concluded that the problem of child-on-child bullying, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

My dissatisfaction with Brad Stone grows.

It is worth looking at the full report, or at least the executive summary. As with Brad Stone's recent iTunes story, he seems to be reading a different report.

The gist of Stone's article is "there's no there there." This is hard to square with the summary:

The Task Force remains optimistic about the development of technologies to enhance protections for minors online and to support institutions and individuals involved in protecting minors, but cautions against overreliance on technology in isolation or on a single technological approach.

If there was no danger, then they wouldn't need to express optimism about protective technology, or warn parents about the limitations of technological answers.

Also, if you search the full report for the term "moral panic" (or simply "panic"), you will find a single instance -- in the title of a First Monday article cited in the references section:

Marwick, Alice. 2008. “To Catch a Predator? The MySpace Moral Panic.” First Monday 13(6): article 3.

This article is cited twice in the report: once in the opening paragraph:

There is some concern that the mainstream media amplifies these fears, rendering them disproportionate to the risks youth face (Marwick 2008). This creates a danger that known risks will be obscured, and reduces the likelihood that society will address the factors that lead to known risks, and often inadvertently harm youth in unexpected ways. This is not to say that there are not risks, but it is important to ask critical questions in order to get an accurate picture of the online environment and the risks that youth face there.

And then once more at the opening of section 2:

One of parents’ greatest fears concerning onli... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

noteworthy wrote:

It is worth looking at the full report, or at least the executive summary. As with Brad Stone's recent iTunes story, he seems to be reading a different report.

Thanks for all of this detail. Getting a straight story out of a reporter is usually impossible.

Do you think Stone's article accurately reflects the tone of the report and the context in which "moral panic" is referenced?

Well, I read the executive summary. It certainly doesn't lend to the conclusion that "there really is not a significant problem" with child predation. It says child predation "remains a concern."

Based on your analysis, its clear that the report did not "compare such fears to a “moral panic”, but it did seem to indicate that the concerns had been overemphasised. Perhaps its merely a choice of wording.

The report did conclude that bullying and harassment were more serious problems and that most of the minors who got wrapped up in relationships with adults were not merely the hapless victims of cunning manipulation but rather were troubled teens who mostly knew what they were doing, and that the risks they faced were not significantly increased because of the fact that they used the Internet. In fact, the observation that "the psychosocial makeup of and family dynamics surrounding particular minors are better predictors of risk than the use of specific media or technologies" suggests an approach to the problem which has absolutely nothing to do with the Internet, which makes a hell of a lot of sense, frankly.

While Brad Stone may have gone too far in his characterization of this report, I don't think the content of this report is going to satisfy politicians who are promoting themselves by going after social networks.

Certainly Mr. Blumenthal has read the executive summary:

“Children are solicited every day online,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Some fall prey, and the results are tragic. That harsh reality defies the statistical academic research underlying the report.”