"We need to outlaw parks and playgrounds."
- From 'Bammer,' a Jonathan Swiftian poster on Ars Technica.
On July 27th, the House of Representatives passed the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) by an overwhelming margin of 410-15. It has been suggested that the vote was the
result of a poll-driven effort to entice suburban voters to the ballot box this November; voting no on H.R. 5139 would have all but ensured that any Congressman running for re-election would have been Swift-Boated with commercial ads that chorused, "He supports sexual predators!"
DOPA is now in the hands of the Senate. Specifically the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. While committee chairman Ted Stevens has been preoccupied with
getting the votes necessary for the rewrite of the 1934 Telecommunications Act (Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006), he will certainly seek passage of this bill.
While the necessity of preventing minors' access to social networking sites in schools and libraries will be the focus of House debate, passage of the bill would have unintended
consequences across the Internet due to its overly broad definition of social networks. While MySpace has been the obvious target for this legislation, Sony's Xbox360, which permits in-game chat, MTV's Xfire, Blogger, AOL, and most online newspapers could all be deemed by the FCC to fall within this designation.
But first to the bill's central claim: Co-sponsor Rep. Fitzpatrick (R-PA), who is in the midst of a re-election bid against
Iraq War veteran Patrick Murphy, introduced the bill to the floor as a means to beat back social networks such as MySpace, which he termed as "feeding grounds for child predators."
Until this year, there was little research to argue Fitzpatrick's claim. But two major recent studies disprove the Congressman's thesis. Both the Online Victimization of Youth (University of New Hampshire's Crimes
Against Children Research Center) and Adolescents in MySpace: Identity Formation, Friendship and Sexual Predators (Dr. Larry Rosen, California State University) found that compared to 2000, sexual solicitation was down. And of those minors who were compromised, a vast majority (92%) had the presence of mind to disengage themselves from the situation.
In an exclusive interview with Jack Myers Media Business Report, Dr. Rosen commented that controlling access to MySpace as a way to contain sexual predators was "flat out crazy." Most sexual assaults on our youth occur offline, (and originate in the real world) and
most victims are familiar with those who target them. Rosen was livid that parents do not have substantive conversations with their charges about their Internet usage. Over the course of his interviews more than three-quarters of parents reported that they've had a Cyber Birds and the Bees-type talk, but their own kids register half that percentage. "Watch out for the scary people online. OK, mom" does not a heart-to-heart make. More
worrisome is that this generation has few boundaries when it comes to divulging personal information. A significant percentage has no qualms about giving out their street or email address. Overall, though, Rosen is unequivocal. "We need to stop focusing on online predators, the kids are doing just fine."
David Finkelhor, Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, can speak authoritatively on whether sexual predators are on the rise since he also conducted a Youth Internet and Safety Survey five years ago. For
those who lambaste the Web as a haven for pedophiles, their focus is the chatroom. Finkelhor found that chatroom use by adolescents has plummeted from 56 to 39 percent. Finkelhor termed DOPA a "crude device," commenting "since Internet social networks are evolving so quickly, I doubt the ability of legislation to have any impact."
Larry Magid, co-director of BlogSafety.com, adds, "DOPA is ill-conceived because, rather than 'deleting' online predators, it deletes the ability of schools and libraries to determine whether kids can constructively take
advantage of social networking and other interactive services that are extremely popular among teens. Maybe the law should be called DOTA - the Deleting Online Teenagers Act," he adds.
While experts in the field feel that MySpace is wrongly the whipping boy in any discussion of sexual predators, the American Library Association is concerned about DOPA for a host of other reasons. Beth Yoke, executive director of
YALSA, (Young Adult Library Services Association) maintains that passage of the law would widen the digital divide. Some 26 percent of teens do not have Internet access at home and as MIT researcher Dana Boyd points out, teens feel "If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist."
Social ostracizing aside, DOPA will effect our economic bottom line: "These technologies - the Wikis, Live Chat, bulletin boards - defined by DOPA as social networks - have been embraced by the business world as productivity tools. If you ban one quarter of our youth, how will we be
competitive?" And do we want to broaden the scope of the FCC, which would then act as a gatekeeper of the Internet? Finally, Yoke worries that the law would "place a financial burden on under funded schools. It's more money sucked away from classrooms and more money spent on filtering."
On August 23rd, Google joined the Technology Coalition, whose members also include AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Earthlink, and United Online. Its stated purpose is to mount a campaign against child porn. At this point we know that "cheat codes,"
patches and upgrades for games are often ruses for an onslaught of sexual material. That, plus the failure of spam filters to keep pace with broadband-powered pornography, should suggest that the Technology Coalition has its hands full with finding a technology solution, rather than focusing on any Ad Council-like PR campaigns.
While MySpace itself seems paralyzed to speak on its own behalf (Facebook testified on the Hill but MySpace executives did not) Hemanshu Nigam, its Chief Security Officer, did offer this statement: "MySpace is committed to the safety and security of its
community. We have been working collaboratively on security and safety issues with an array of government agencies, law enforcement and educational groups, non-profits and leading child safety organizations. We've also met with several state and federal legislators and are working with them to address their concerns."
Beth Yoke reported that while the ALA has been "trying to work closely with staffers to educate the Senators and mobilize members" she was unable to gauge the likelihood of the
bill's fate. That said, since fewer Senators were up for re-election, DOPA might be tabled until after November 7th. This will give opponents, the ALA believes, time to mount a case against the legislation.
Both social researchers and educators agree that DOPA is misdirected. Whatever problems do exist can be resolved by the private sector, without government (i.e., FCC)
interference. Uppermost they find DOPA to be counter-intuitive. It removes libraries and schools as environments where teens might go online, places where there is the most supervision, certainly more than at home.
Rather than be castigated by Congress, broadcasters, advertisers, and the dreaded social networks should go on the offensive,
familiarizing themselves with the issues and offering solutions:
Too Much Information
Marketers should be pro-active where minors are concerned. Since adolescents are transparent where their personal
information is concerned, advertisers should embed an educational piece about safety in their messaging at the outset.
Netiquette
There's a real problem out there, but it's incivility, not an explosion of
sexual predators. We need to create programs around general harassment among peers.
Talk The Talk
Dr. Larry Rosen believes that substantive discussion between families or among peers is a major action item. Dr. Finkelhor, for his part, is less optimistic about parents jumping into
the breach: "We need messages directed at the teens themselves. Those that reflect their own experiences about the Web, and the need to help them realize the rationale behind good judgment."
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