Hot topic of the week: Internet Predators. There was Wednesday’s Dateline NBC report (incredibly depressing), Dr. Moser’s blog about sexual exploitation and his friend’s 13-year old daughter, and hardly a day goes by that there isn’t a new MySpace report.
Posts that contain Myspace per day for the last 30 days.
Source: Technorati.com
On the flip side, Liz has a reasonable post reporting the debunking of Internet Predator statistics.
The MySpace hysteria has gotten a bit out of hand, in my opinion. The cynical part of me wonders whether the focus on MySpace has been the result of who the owner is rather than the site itself. After all, there are other social networking sites besides MySpace where kids hang out and they are also targets for predators.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. One kid being hurt as a result of being online is too many. On the other hand, comical hysteria benefits no one. The Dateline special highlighted the incredible intellectual dishonesty that otherwise reasonable and rational men engaged in to justify the prospect of sex with a minor. It must be such a heady prospect that some are willing to abandon all reason when faced with the mere temptation.
As the parent of a preteen daughter who loves the social aspects of the Internet, I’m looking for solutions rather than hearing about more problems. And I’d prefer that part of the solution be my daughter taking informed ownership over her time on the Internet and using it to positive ends.
This is no different than what I expect from her in “real life”. She’s been taught to be kind to others, to give where she can, and she has a generous nature and kind heart. Why should she be different online?
What I’d really love to see is an offshoot of Blogher for teen girls, where the positive aspects of Internet life are the focus and integral to the social interaction. Earlier this month I blogged about a couple of sites that were reported on Blogher for younger girls. I sent them to dancergirl, who pronounced them just “okay”. When I asked why, she said they focused too much on clothes, makeup and music that didn’t interest her.
The site that has captured her imagination is Flickr (I’m telling ya, it’s total photo crack…). Here’s what she did after discovering how much fun it could be:
- Did a search for groups on Irish dance, joined the one group that was on there which had one member and 4 photos.
- Did a search for photos tagged “dance” and “irish”.
- Commented on every person’s irish dance photos she found
- Invited everyone with Irish Dance photos to the group
- Posted a welcome message on the group telling them to invite their real-life dancer friends to Flickr and the group.
All of this was done with absolutely no help or prompting from me. In fact, she went much, much farther than I have ever gone on Flickr. After over six months, I finally just got brave enough to actually post to groups!
The result: In two weeks the group has grown to 9 members, 2 of which are overseas dancers, she’s got new contacts, they’re posting dance photos like mad, and she’s having a great time!
If I were to pull back from the macro view of this and look at a broader view, my analysis would be that she is drawn to Flickr because it is easy to use, very intuitive, simple to find people with similar interests, and has the visual appeal (photos). Flickr has been extraordinarily successful at making it easy to build community easily and rapidly.
So this is one solution, but it’s just a piece. What other ones are out there?
Here’s an idea I’ve had that’s not fully fleshed out… I’d love it if there were a mentoring place on Blogher for kids like my daughter who love the Internet, love the interaction and love the idea of online community as more than just a zone to be boy crazy….but it would need to have kids in that age group giving input into the content and creation of it to succeed.
Other thoughts?
Technorati Tags: blogging, myspace, internet predators, online community, flickr
