Fast Facts about Internet Safety and DOPA

A recent Pew Internet and American Life Project report, "Teens, Privacy & Online Social Networks: How Teens Manage Their Online Identities and Personal Information in the Age of MySpace" (2007), found that 55% of minors between the ages of 12 to 17 use these sites. So why are social networking sites so popular?

Social networking sites encourage interaction

• Lawrence Lessig in Free Culture notes that websites which allow for reading and writing, allows for the full potential of a literacy, “to empower people to choose the appropriate language for what they need to create or express” (p. 38)

Social networking sites allow participants to have a voice - an identity

• John Seely Brown states: “… our generation focused on information, but these kids focus on meaning.”
• In Brown’s "Learning in the Digital Age" he states “knowledge can be distributed as a shared, socially constructed understanding that emerges from collaboration” (p.66) and that in doing, students “learn to be” versus just “learning about” something.
  

• Lawrence Lessig states “technology has thus given us an opportunity to do something with culture that has only ever been possible for individuals in small groups, isolated from others. Think about an old man telling a story to a collection of neighbors in a small town. Now imagine that same storytelling extended across the globe (Free Culture, pp. 184- 185).

What has been done in the past …
It restricts a minor’s First Amendment Right of Free Speech

• Supreme Court stated in Erznoznik v City of Jacksonville (1975) that "speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable [422 U.S. 205, 214] for them. In most circumstances, the values protected by the First Amendment are no less applicable when government seeks to control the flow of information to minors.”
• Minors already are receiving filtered content at school and in the public library; it was put in place to protect, not restrict.

• Supreme Court ruled in 2003 (United States v American Library Associaton) that filters must be used in public libraries and schools that receive e-Rate funds. The ruling was in favor of content-based filtering; determined to be needed to protect minors from viewing or coming in contact with pornography

Several recent studies suggest that targeting social networking sites may be the wrong target.

• February 2008 report in Pediatrics, an official journal of the American Medical Association, reported that of1588 youth in their study (ages 10-15) only 4% reported an unwanted sexual solicitation online in the last year from a social networking site vs 15% from other online communication applications ("How risky is social networking sites? A comparison of places online where youth sexual solicitation and harassment occurs" p.e350).

• February-March 2008 issue of the American Psychologist journal article “Online “Predators” and Their Victims: Myths, Realities, and Implications for Prevention and Treatment,” reported on a U.S. Justice Department survey, “National Crime Victimization Survey” which found sexual assaults on teens fell 52% between 1993 to 2005 (p. 121) and that only 5% of sexual predators attempted to “trick” their victims by posing to be a teen (p. 112).
• Authors also note that they “conducted over 400 interviews with police about Internet-related sex crimes”, including abducting minors, based on information posted on social networking sites between June 2007 and October 2007 and no cases were reported.” (p. 117)

If filtering of social networking sites allowed, those without access will make up the new digital divide

• If social networking sites allowed to be filtered, then those minors who have no other access to a computer except in their school and in a public library, will become the “have nots.” We have been working to eliminate the digital divide and this will erase the work that has been done, creating a group who have been singled out and restricted from having the experience and knowledge that others will have access to

Education is the Answer!

• The American Psychologist articles states that prevention should focus on education; recommending more through peer-to-peer education, to include education on sex crimes and how to avoid victimization in health classes, and to identify and focus on minors who are more at-risk to becoming victims. (They identify at-risk minors as those coming from an environment of abuse, minors questioning their sexual orientation, and those suffering from depression and social interaction problems.)

The way to protect our children from sexual predators is not to suppress our children with censorship, but instead to acknowledge there is evil in the world and to educate them on how to handle situations so they do not become a victim. The predators have no power is there are no one to victimize.

Empower our youth with education!

(PDF of this page can be found at the bottom of this page)
(PDF of a paper I wrote for my Ethics class can be found at the bottom of this page)