Another day, another hysteria.
by asi
Another day, another hysteria.
The Guardian reports this morning that social networking sites, including MySpace, Facebook and Friendster could be banned in America’s schools and libraries under legislation aimed at sexual predators that is working its way through Congress.
To be honest, i really can’t see it happen simply because of that old rule of business according to which when money talks bullshit keep silent; there is too much money involved here and mogul the size of Murdoch will not let it happen.
Danah Boyd, Yahoo! researcher and SNS guru in the making, already discussed this issue lengthly (here, here and here). She rightly argues that
"The problem isn’t the predators. With parents banning participation or stalking their kids’ profiles, teens are being smart. They’re creating new profiles and lying through their teeth. ::sigh:: An entire generation adept at lying to cope with super publics and fear of mom".
Spot on. Its the same culture of fear and stigmatization that pushes teenagers from physical public spaces to virtual public spaces because, being teens, all they want to do is to hang out with their friends, construct their identities and reach a hand to forbidden fruits as they play with their individuality and sexuality. This is what teens do and they can’t do it out in the neighborhood because their parents don’t allow them to hang out outside.
Just about a month ago, research (Download)
has shown that:
- Only 7% of those 1500 teens interviewed were ever approached by anyone with a sexual intent and nearly all of them simply ignored the person and blocked him from their page.
- Two-thirds of the parents were sure that there were many sexual predators on MySpace, while only one-third of the teenagers shared this concern.
- When asked about media coverage, 66% of the parents felt that it was either understated or close to the truth.
- Conversely, 58% of the teens felt it was vastly overblown.
MySpace is the 13th largest country in the world with over 80 million citizens. And where there are more than one hundred human beings, there is crime and misdemeanours. But I bet that proportionally, young girls being harassed on myspace by their fellow testosterone-fuelled boys much more than by adult predators.
There’s a great difference between caring and educating and strangling and the puritan US media, politicians and parents in post 9/11 era sometimes just can’t tell the difference.