Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown

In a resounding voice for the freedom of the Internet, a task force that was commissioned by the order of 49 state attorneys general to examine the extent of the threats children face on social networks concluded that there is not a significant problem. And...yes. I, too, would like to know what state had nothing to do with this.

From the article:

[They] 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 278-page report, released Tuesday, was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, experts in childhood safety and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.

This is an amazing thing for the future of the Internet. And also a personal victory in my quest to prove that parents need to spend less time trying to officiate over what everyone else does and pay more attention to what THEIR KIDS are doing.

The Internet is amazing...as well as new. But, that doesn't mean that it is the destruction of our values. I love the Internet. Not that having a blog and my very own website wasn't a pretty good clue already. We can really decide to embrace it and make it a better place. And we can do it without having to sacrifice the freedom it grants us all. Information never hurt anyone...not to my knowledge anyway. I hate the sake of stupidity for the illusion of safety.

I'm not saying that I am unaware of the pressures on today's families. Two-income families are becoming the norm, which makes it much harder to spend quality time with the children involved. And with the economy headed the way it is, that doesn't seem likely to end anytime soon. I am not unsympathetic to that.

This was a blatant attempt to force politicians to stifle the progress of the Information Superhighway to do parents' job for them. I am happy as a clam that logic and reason prevailed. Thank God. Anyone who thinks that sexual predators outnumber regular people with the explosion of YouTube, Match.com, Facebook, MySpace, and every other way that the Internet is making the world smaller...should go stick their head back in the sand. The rest of us are going to be utilizing the amazing new technologies and discoveries that are fueling our world.

And with that...I'm going to go read more stuff about things on Wikipedia. And, yes...I've been taking many grains of salt.