Myth busting

I was only able to catch the last 15 minutes of Frontline last night, but I plan to watch the whole segment online as soon as I can reserve an hour of time. Called Growing Up Online, it seems to do a good job of dispelling some of the fear mongering around Internet predator concerns. Instead, it confirms what I've often observed and tried to pass on to our students and their parents - that teenagers have a lot more to fear from those they know than those they don't know. Co-Producer Rachel Dretzin makes the following observation:

"One of the biggest surprises in making this film was the discovery that the threat of online predators is misunderstood and overblown. The data shows that giving out personal information over the Internet makes absolutely no difference when it comes to a child's vulnerability to predation. Also, the vast majority of kids who do end up having contact with a stranger they meet over the Internet are seeking out that contact, at least at first."

I also appreciate this excerpt from the Frontline interview with Anne Collier, author of MySpace Unraveled.

"We need to start thinking about our kids less as victims and more as participants, because this is the participatory Web, it's the social Web. They're participants, they're driving this space, and the research also shows that the kids who are most at risk online ... are kids who are showing aggressive behavior themselves. So they're the ones most at risk, not the kids who passively sitting around like sitting ducks ..."

So... I take all this to mean that it's more important than ever to talk, talk, TALK about this stuff at school and at home. About what it means to represent yourself online, and about how you read and process the information you find online.