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 online safety is the risk of “predators.” This topic is the center of tremendous public discourse and angst (Marwick 2008) and attracts viewers nationwide to the popular TV show To Catch a Predator. In 2007, more than half (53%) of adults agreed with the statement that “online predators are a threat to the children in their households” (Center for the Digital Future 2008). Embedded in this fear are concerns about the threats of online sexual solicitation and the possibility that these will lead to dangerous offline encounters between youth and predatory adults.

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

If you look at Marwick's paper, her abstract concludes:

Research demonstrates that legislation proposed — or passed — to curb these problems is an extraordinary response; it is misguided and in many cases masks the underlying problem.

Far from saying "there's no there there", she's saying that a legislative response is the wrong answer to a real problem.

Stone's concluding remark is this:

One problem is that it is difficult to verify the ages and identities of children because they do not have driver’s licenses or insurance.

The implication is that the task force might endorse the issuance of official electronic identity cards to children. On the contrary:

An encouraging part of the Task Force deliberations was that no one in the group argued for or promoted the idea of a government mandate to use a particular technology or method to identify or verify a child’s age.

RE: Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown