Internet Safe For Kids!
Well, mostly and only from adults.
You know all the scary stuff the media has been telling us about on-line predators and how they’re all out to get our kids? Turns out, it’s not as true as the sensationalist, bottom-feeding media would have us believe. In a story at the New York Times, via Slashdot, they discuss a report done by an independent group who took a closer look at those claims about the endless waves of Very Bad People who were just lurking on social media sites to steal our children and it turns out they were mostly over-blown. Oh, to be sure, such things happen and those people do exist, but the study indicated that those children who were at risk on-line were at risk period. In other words, the Internet was just a facilitator, not a root cause.
Also, the study found that kids were more likely to have trouble with other kids. Cyber-bullying, and bullying in the real world, was found to be a much, much bigger problem and far more pervasive.
The thing is, though, it’s much easier to take the low road and whip everyone into a frenzy over a problem like child molesters running free on the Internet than it is to take responsibility for our own kids and how they treat others.
