schrockmedia

It strikes me as amazing that with all the attention on Internet safety, we don’t yet even have a taxonomy of online “solicitation.” This lack of definition has led to all kinds of misunderstandings on the part of parents, the media, and those seeking to understand studies on the topic. For instance, “online solicitation” includes unwanted (and in many cases, wanted as well) contact with a sexualized theme. This includes teasing (say about real or fictionalized gender preference), sexual harassment (designed to intimidate or threaten), and, coercive requests for cybersex or pictures. These communications range from the merely risqué to those designed to threaten to entice youth into sexualized online discussions. Depending on their age, it could be difficult to get youth to even understand the distinctions between these various modes, which have vastly different goals and motivations.

The latest media blitz, partly in response to the Berkman report, attempts to simplify the issue by focusing on the number of sexual offenders online (See: “MySpace: 90,000 sexual offenders removed from site”). This follows a pattern of individuals less interested in solid research and discourse than sensationalized presentations, and of course, overlook the role of the minors. I’m not going to revisit the areas of concern that danah boyd, Amanda Lenhart, Mimi Ito and others have covered well (minor-minor relationships, everyday usage, etc.). Rather my query is techno-social in nature: why do a majority of online solicitations (77%-86%) still predominantly occur through chat (Wolak et al., 2006)?

Also, from the perspective of law enforcement, 86% of Internet solicitation incidents that resulted in arrest involved communication that first occurred over chat or instant messaging. This is a fascinating topic, and one that is not simply explained by the popularity of online chat with youth. Chat room use itself was found to be correlated with depression (Ybarra et al., 2005), which to me says that youth are using these online resources as support mechanisms. In other studies, youth have reported that dating requests to other youth are popular using text messaging, because it can always be explained away as a joke, deflecting a refusal of affection. A certain amount of contact is likely this motivation, and similar flirting activities that are developmentally normal for teens.

Then there is the solicitor side of the equation, where individuals delivering sexualized messages to youth get a certain charge (arousal?) out of the experience. By comparison, it probably simply isn’t as exciting to send an email or MySpace solicitation to a youth. Or perhaps typed chats are an analogue representation for brief verbal contact in the real-world: honking at or yelling lurid comments out of a moving vehicle at another individual. Harassers do this full with the knowledge that there is no possibility of it coming back to haunt them, but it offers increased power and satisfaction. In this sense, sexualized online solicitation might be more like a test to see if a response is gained, more like passing words yelled out of a vehicle than other dynamics. This mode of harassment, while not entirely benign, is far less dire than the perception of many that most forms of online contact by adults are designed for seducing youth into offline relationships. This idea is not supported by the data; Internet-initiated connections by adults with youth that result in offline contact are typically friendship-related, nonsexual, formed between similar-aged youth and the parties are known to parents (Wolak et al. 2002).

Labels: amandalenhart, berkman, danahboyd, internet, online, pewinternet, safety, solicitation