Chat rooms, IM riskier than social networking sites for kids

Computerworld - Parents who are concerned about their children being exposed to sexual predators and harassment on the Internet need to stop thinking of social networking sites, such as MySpace.com and Facebook, as the biggest threats.

Rather, it is in chat rooms and on instant messaging sessions that children are more likely to become victim of predators and unwanted sexual solicitation in general. That's the finding of a study conducted by child health researchers at Internet Solutions for Kids Inc., a Santa Ana, Calif.-based nonprofit group, and the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

The survey of 1,588 youths ages 10 to 15 was conducted in September 2006, although the results were released just this Monday. The survey was reviewed and approved by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What the results show is that much of the public perceptions related to child safety on social networking sites are misplaced, said Michele Ybarra, founder of Internet Solutions for Kids and co-author of the survey.

"There has been a lot of concern in the media and other places about the potential risk children face on social networking sites," she said. "But it is not clear when you look at the data that such sites are as dangerous as popularly believed."

About 15% of the survey respondents reported unwanted sexual solicitations, while 33% reported that they had been harassed online over the past year. Among those who had been victimized, only 4% reported unwanted sexual solicitations on social networking sites, while 9% said they had been harassed on such sites. For purposes of the study, online harassment included the use of offensive language, threats and malicious comments directed against a specific individual.

In contrast, 43% of those who reported unwanted sexual solicitations said they had been victimized via instant messaging, while 32% said such solicitations had happened in chat rooms. Similarly, 55% of those who said they had been harassed said the incidents happened during an instant messaging session.

"Certainly, this focus on social networking sites and the assumption that young people are facing a greater risk on such sites does not seem supported by the data," Ybarra said.

The issue is important because an increasing amount of attention is being paid by lawmakers to the problem of sexual predators on social networking sites, Ybarra said. Such scrutiny has already resulted in calls for greater regulation and oversight of social networking sites and moves to restrict access to such sites by minors.

In addition, "discussions also have emerged from states' attorneys general about the possibility of legal action against social networking sites to force them to introduce age-verification technologies to prevent children under the age of 16 or 18 years from posting profiles," the survey report noted.