Is there a place for fear mongering?

Yesterday's keynote speaker at a small tech conference in Marshall, MN, was Mike Detloff, a police officer from Moorhead, MN, working in the Crimes Against Children Unit. His topic was, of course, the dangers children face online.

Now I tend to dislike these sorts of presentations for a number of reasons, and Mike's talk was very similar to many I've heard from law enforcement agents - FBI to the local folks. Heavy on the gory stories of the repulsive acts of pedophiles.  The innocent child snatched from the jaws of an online predator in the nick of time. A strange brew of information about online predators, child pornography, child abuse, public masturbators, missing and abducted children and even serial killers. Of today's popular evils, only Bin Laden usually seems to be missing.

MIke's view of the civil rights of criminal suspects was, shall we say, at odds with the ACLU's. Some of the uses of hidden surveillance cameras he bragged about seemed like entrapment to me. His conclusion that reading books about serial killers showed a propensity to become one did not seem exactly logical. (If we become what we read, I should by now be a gumshoe or a space alien.) And since these things were being addressed at a tech conference, all technology was guilty by association.

I guess I am weary of the use of fear by the government and businesses in this country to sell an ideology or a product. Were one to listen only to law enforcement, the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or the manufacturers of webblocking/monitoring software, pedophiles lurk behind every web page and every click pushes a child closer to defilement or death. There are too few objective studies and analyses done in this area to help us gain some perspective. I appreciate the Nancy Willards and Ann Colliers and Larry Magids. (The ConnectSafely website has a good list of less sensational articles about Internet safety.)

But Mike made me think as well. More than I really wanted to. I don't want to think about this topic! 

1. Mike asked: If you are heterosexual, how many years of therapy would it take to make you homosexual? If you are homosexual, how many years of therapy would it take to make you heterosexual? If you are a pedophile, how many years of therapy would it take to make you no longer sexually attracted to children? (Why sex offenders are regarded as such for life.)
2. Lonely, neglected children are those most at risk from the solicitations of online predators. His line was memorable - "If you don't tell your children you love them, someone else will." YIkes!
3. He showed the video, The Eleventh Commandment: Honor Thy Children - a wrenching music video on child abuse that is nearly unbearable to watch. (Which also made me feel guilty for ever hollering at my kids.)
4. I don't know how a person like Mike can work in crimes against children field for years. I have the highest regard for his sense of mission and dedication. I know he does this work for his own children's sake as well.
   

When I do workshops on Internet safety, I tell participants that while I believe the threat of online predators is over blown, even if there is only ONE such creature, we need to help kids learn to guard against such a threat. It's an unpleasant, uncomfortable topic. But it is one we need to acknowledge and understand. Even when we don't really want to.

Did I mention that Moorhead is the sister city to Fargo - just across the Red River? When Mike is working to protect the area's kids, those kids include my two grandsons. We may not agree on a lot of things, but I am awfully glad Mike is on the job.

Safe mistakes

The girl was very upset.

One of our sixth grade girls reported that judging from her sent mail folder on Gaggle.net, someone else had been using her account to send messages. The principal was brought in. The guidance counselor, parents and media specialist all met. And even yours truly, the tech director, got involved.

After some discussion, the girl remembered that she had given her username and password to her "very best friend" at another school, and that they were using the e-mail program at her friend's house on the day the messages (which were innocuous) were sent.

The media specialist changed the girl's password. The counselor gave another talk on cyberbullying. The media specialist emphasized security and privacy in her next lessons. The principal learned the kids actually had e-mail accounts. The tech director was happy this turned into a "teachable moment" for all involved.

It is because of incidents like this that I am glad we have always given our students school sponsored e-mail addresses. It allows kids to make "safe mistakes." The girl and probably her classmates got a real-life lesson in protecting one's password and about identity theft without anyone getting hurt.

It's why we need to give kids as much access to Internet resources as we can while they're in school and while there are responsible adults to whom they can turn if there is a problem. How would this have been handled if the girl had only had a Yahoo account and home access? 

Oh, this sort of thing doesn't happen just to kids either. 

Threat level orange

The sign just outside the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport has read "Threat Level Orange" for as long as the sign has been up - I'm guessing about five years. I wonder if the message even registers on anyone anymore.

I thought about that sign and its message of fear after reading this great response to an early blog post, "Fear-Mongering": 

Thank you, Doug - and Nancy - for this timely post. "Fear mongering" is exactly the term I would use to describe the US Attorney's Project Safe Childhood video, which you can view or download at http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov/. Since I teach an Internet Safety workshop for my district, my boss gave me a copy to review. He attended an evening workshop the US Attorney's Office did last month at one of our high schools during which this video was shown. Fortunately, it was poorly attended or I think many students would have lost their parent permission to use the Internet while at school.

In a nutshell, the video is about Internet predators and has little to do with how to teach our students to use the Internet safely, effectively, and ethically.

I think a much better resource is the What You Need to Know video from http://ikeepsafe.org/PRC/, which introduces parents to the benefits and realities of Web 2.0.

Thanks for starting the conversation! - Gail Dresler

I watched both videos that Gail mentions. Wow, what a difference in treatment of Internet dangers. These clips are representative of the approaches taken:

from US Attorney's Project Safe Childhood video

from What You Need to Know video from ikeepsafe

Just a quick disclaimer: I am of the opinion that the easiest way to tell if the current administration and its ilk are lying is to see if their lips are moving. That they use irrational fears, whether of terrorists or child molestors (everything except global warming), to keep in power. You've been warned.

The Department of Justice video lumps all pedophilia, all child porn and all predation directly to the Internet. No statistics, no recognition that there is a difference between the Internet as causation or distribution of crimes against children, no attempt to gauge the scope of the problems. Agreed, that even one pedophile or child pornographer is one too many, but watching the DOJ video gives the impression that these dangers are omnipresent. At what point, as with the "Level Orange" hyperbole of airline safety, does the public simply tune-out?

The iKeepSafe materials, take a rational, positive, and, I believe, more effective approach to keeping kids safe online. Unlike the DOJ production, there are actually ideas about what parents can do to help protect their children, and more importantly, how they can help teach their kids to be safe, indpeendent of parental supervision.

I encourage you to watch both videos. And be aware that there may be fear-mongers who may be more interested in their own importance than in children's safety working within your community.  The opportunities and skills offered by the Internet are too important to kids to have these folks scare the bejeesus out of parents and school administrators who will attempt to block instead of teach.