Think of the children!

It seems that with every new technology, indeed every social shift, there are those who will wave around a fistful of real but more usually imagined incidents to declare "Danger! Danger! Our children are at risk!" This is nothing new; when Meredith Wilson had Harold Hill panic a crowd with references to the corrupting influence of dime novels and "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang", he was not just making it up. And that's far from the only example.

A recent panic has been the looming specter of Facebook and its ilk, a web of dark, forbidding places where adult sexual predators seek their prey and danger lurks in every conversation.

Or not.

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all[, McClatchy reports on Wednesday].

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series and are the latest study to suggest that concerns about the Internet and sex abuse against children are overblown. ...

[An article about a study from last February can be found at this link.]

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force examined the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report cited research calling such fears a "moral panic," and concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults. ...

The 39-page document was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, childhood safety experts and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.

The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online sexual predators and found that children and teenagers are unlikely to be propositioned by adults online. In the cases that do occur, the report says, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper[, who "aggressively pushed" for the study,] in a statement Tuesday criticized the report, saying it "relied on outdated and inadequate research to downplay the problem of child predators."

"Law enforcement officers across the country are telling attorneys general that children are being solicited every day and that technology companies must do more to keep children safer," Cooper said.

And of course if cops are saying it, it must be true. So, y'know, just forget the study, 'cause it's just dumb ol' facts 'n' shit.

After all, in the immortal words of Mary Whitehouse, "We've got to get away from this silly business of having to prove things."