Online Predators: Boogeymen or a serious threat to our youth?
“One in five kids are sexually solicited online,” says the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children. Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of parents so easily as the threat of their child becoming prey to a sexual predator. But is that threat real? The Media Show takes a hard look at the statistics and finds that contrary to popular belief, the internet is a relatively safe place for kids. And while kids (I include teenagers) are sexually solicited online, half the time it’s by another kid. The actual percentage of kids sexually assaulted by people they talked to online turns out to be only 0.06% (2 out of 3,000).
Nobody is saying that kids aren’t sexually solicited online, or that there aren’t pedophiles out there preying on our children. However, when advocacy groups like the NCMEC inflate and misrepresent statistics it doesn’t do anyone any good. The odds of your child being sexually assaulted by someone they met online are very slim indeed, and fear mongering won’t protect them from the tiny minority that wants to hurt them. Teaching them common sense methods to protect their privacy and to respect themselves is going to go a long ways further than scaring them with exaggerated threats or severely curtailing their internet usage.
Beyond that you’ve just got to trust your kids. They’re pretty smart already and pretty hard to lead astray.
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