[fr]
Le Daily Mail remet ça aujourd'hui, abasourdi de découvrir que les adolescents rencontrent "offline" des étrangers d'internet. Il va donc falloir que j'écrive le fameux billet auquel j'ai fait allusion dernièrement, mais avant cela, je suis en train de lire le rapport sur lequel se basent ces articles alarmés et bien-pensants.
Ce billet contient quelques commentaires sur la situation en général, ainsi que mes notes de lecture -- citations et commentaires -- du début de ce rapport de l'Ofcon.
[en]
I don’t know if I’ll get around to writing about the teen cleavage scare before the story goes completely cold, but in my endeavour to offer a balanced criticism of what’s going on here, I’m currently reading the Ofcon Social Networking Report which was released on April 2 and prompted this new wave of “think of the children” media coverage. The Daily Mail is at it today again, with the stunning and alarming news that teenagers are meeting “strangers” from the internet offline (big surprise). I find it heartening, though, that the five reader comments to this article as of writing are completely sensible in playing down the “dangers” regularly touted by the press and the authorities.
Here are the running notes of my reading of this report. I might as well publish them as I’m reading. Clearly, the report seems way more balanced than the Daily Mail coverage (are we surprised?) which contains lots of figures taken out of context. However, there is still stuff that bothers me — less the actual results of the research (which are facts, so they’re good) than the way some of them are presented and the interpretations a superficial look at them might lead one to make (like, sorry to say, much of the mainstream press).
Here we go.
Social networking sites also have
some potential pitfalls to negotiate, such as the unintended consequences of publicly posting
sensitive personal information, confusion over privacy settings, and contact with people one
doesn’t know.
Ofcon SN Report, page 1
Good start, I think that the issues raise here make sense. However, I would put “contact with people one doesn’t know” in “potential pitfalls”. (More about this lower down.)
Ofcom research shows that just over one fifth (22%) of adult internet users aged 16+ and
almost half (49%) of children aged 8-17 who use the internet have set up their own profile on
a social networking site. For adults, the likelihood of setting up a profile is highest among
16-24 year olds (54%) and decreases with age.
Ofcon SN Report, page 5
This is to show that SNs are more popular amongst younger age groups. It makes sense to say that half of 8-17 year olds have a profile on SN site to compare it with the 22% of 16+ internet users or the 54% of 16-24 year olds. Bear in mind that these are percentages of internet users — they do not include those who do not go online.
However, saying “OMG one out of two 8-17 year olds has a profile on a SN site” in the context of “being at risk from paedophiles” is really not very interesting. Behaviour of 8 year olds and 17 year olds online cannot be compared at all in that respect. You can imagine a 16 year old voluntarily meeting up to have sex with an older love interest met on the internet. Not an 8 year old. In most statistics, however, both fall into the category of “paedophilia” when the law gets involved.
27% of 8-11 year olds who are aware of social networking sites say that they have a profile on a site
Ofcon SN Report, page 5
I’d like to draw you attention on the fact that this is 27% of 8-11 year olds who are aware of social networking sites.
Unless otherwise stated, this report uses the term ‘children’ to include all young people aged 8-17.
Ofcon SN Report, page 5
I don’t like this at all, because as stated above, particularly when it comes to concerns about safety one cannot simply lump that agegroup into a practical “children”, which plays well with “child abuse”. In the US, cases of “statutory rape” which might very well have been consensual end up inflating the statistics on “children falling victim to sexual predators online”.
Although contact lists on sites talk about ’friends’, social networking sites stretch the
traditional meaning of ‘friends’ to mean anyone with whom a user has an online connection.
Therefore the term can include people who the user has never actually met or spoken to.
Unlike offline (or ‘real world’) friendship, online friendships and connections are also
displayed in a public and visible way via friend lists.
The public display of friend lists means that users often share their personal details online
with people they may not know at all well. These details include religion, political views,
sexuality and date of birth that in the offline world a person might only share only with close
friends.
While communication with known contacts was the most popular social
networking activity, 17 % of adults used their profile to communicate with
people they do not know. This increases among younger adults.
Ofcon SN Report, page 7
Right. This is problematic too. And it’s not just the report’s fault. The use of “friend” to signify contact contributes to making the whole issue of “online friendship” totally inpenetrable to those who are not immersed in online culture. The use of “know” is also very problematic, as it tends to be understood that you can only “know” somebody offline. Let’s try to clarify.
First, it’s possible to build relationships and friendships (even loves!) online. Just like in pre-internet days you could develop a friendship with a pen-pal, or kindle a nascent romance through letters, you can get to know somebody through text messages, IM, blog postings, presence streams, Skype chats and calls, or even mailing-list and newsgroup postings. I hope that it will soon be obvious to everybody that it is possible to “know” somebody without actually having met them offline.
So, there is a difference between “friends” that “you know” and “SN friends aka contacts” which you might in truth not really know. But you can see how the vocabulary can be misleading here.
I’d like to take the occasion to point out one other thing that bothers me here: the idea that contact with “strangers” or “people one does not know” is a thing worth pointing out. So, OK, 17% of adults in the survey, communicated with people they “didn’t know”. I imagine that this is “didn’t know” in the “offline person”‘s worldview, meaning somebody that had never been met physically (maybe the study gives more details about that). But even if it is “didn’t know” as in “complete stranger” — still, why does it have to be pointed out? Do we have statistics on how many “strangers” we communicate with offline each week?
It seems to me that because this is on the internet, strangers are perceived as a potential threat, in comparison to people we already know. As far as abuse goes, in the huge, overwhelming, undisputed majority of cases, the abuser was known (and even well known) to the victim. Most child sexual abuse is commited by people in the family or very close social circle.
I had hoped that in support of what I’m writing just now, I would be able to state that “stranger danger” was behind us. Sadly, a quick search on Google shows that I’m wrong — it’s still very much present. I did, however, find this column which offers a very critical view of how much danger strangers actually do represent for kids and the harmful effects of “stranger danger”. Another nice find was this Families for Freedom Child Safety Bulletin, by a group who seems to share the same concerns I do over the general scaremongering around children.
Among those who reported talking to people they didn’t know, there were significant
variations in age, but those who talked to people they didn’t know were significantly more
likely to be aged 16-24 (22% of those with a social networking page or profile) than 25-34
(7% of those with a profile). In our qualitative sample, several people reported using sites in
this way to look for romantic interests.
Ofcon SN Report, page 7
Meeting “online people” offline is more common amongst the younger age group, which is honestly not a surprise. At 34, I sometimes feel kind of like a dinosaur when it comes to internet use, in the sense that many of my offline friends (younger than me) would never dream of meeting somebody from “The Internets”. 16-24s are clearly digital natives, and as such, I would expect them to be living in a world where “online” and “offline” are distinctions which do not mean much anymore (as they do not mean much to me and many of the other “online people” of my generation or older).
The majority of comments in our qualitative sample were positive about social networking. A
few users did mention negative aspects to social networking, and these included annoyance
at others using sites for self-promotion, parties organised online getting out of hand, and
online bullying.
Ofcon SN Report, page 7
This is interesting! Real life experience from real people with social networks. Spam, party-crashing and bullying (I’ll have much more to say about this last point later on, but in summary, address the bullying problem at the source and offline, and don’t blame the tool) are mentioned as problems. Unwanted sexual sollicitations or roaming sexual predators do not seem to be part of the online experience of the people interviewed in this study. Strangely, this fits with my experience of the internet, and that of almost everybody I know. (Just like major annoyances in life for most people, thankfully, are not sexual harrassment — though it might be for some, and that really sucks.)
The people who use social networking sites see them as a fun and easy leisure activity.
Although the subject of much discussion in the media, in Ofcom’s qualitative research
privacy and safety issues on social networking sites did not emerge as ‘top of mind’ for most
users. In discussion, and after prompting, some users in the qualitative study did think of
some privacy and safety issues, although on the whole they were unconcerned about them.
In addition, our qualitative study found that all users, even those who were confident with
ICT found the settings on most of the major social networking sites difficult to understand
and manipulate.
Ofcon SN Report, page 7-8
This is really interesting too. But how do you understand it? I read: “It’s not that dangerous, actually, if those people use SN sites regularly without being too concerned, and the media are making a lot of fuss for nothing.” (Ask people about what comes to mind about driving a car — one of our regular dangerous activities — and I bet you more people than in that study will come up with safety issues; chances are we’ve all been involved in a car crash at some point, or know somebody who has.) Another way of reading it could be “OMG, even with all the effort the media are putting into raising awareness about these problems, people are still as naive and ignorant! They are in danger!”. What will the media choose to understand?
The study points out the fact that privacy settings are hard to understand and manipulate, and I find this very true. In doubt or ignorance, most people will “not touch” the defaults, which are generally too open. I say “too open” with respect to privacy in the wide sense, not in the “keep us safe from creeps” sense.
This brings me to a comment I left earlier on an article on ComMetrics about what makes campaigns against online pedophiles fail. It’s an interesting article, but as I explain in the comment, I think it misses an important point:
There is a bigger issue here — which I try to explain each time I get a chance, to the point I’m starting to feel hoarse.
Maybe the message is not the right one? The campaign, as well as your article, takes as a starting point that “adults posing as kids” are the threat that chatrooms pose to our children.
Research shows that this is not a widespread risk. It also shows that there is no correlation between handing out personal information online and the risk of falling victim to a sexual predator. Yet our campaigns continue to be built on the false assumptions that not handing out personal information will keep a kid “safe”, and that there is danger in the shape of people lying about their identity, in the first place.
There is a disconnect between the language the campaigns speak and what they advocate (you point that out well in your article, I think), and the experience kids and teenagers have of life online (“they talk to strangers all the time, and nothing bad happens; they meet people from online, and they are exactly who they said they were; hence, all this “safety” information is BS”). But there is also a larger disconnect, which is that the danger these campaigns claim to address is not well understood. Check out the 5th quote in the long article I wrote on the subject at the time of the MySpace PR stunt about deleting “sex offenders’” profiles.
I will blog more about this, but wanted to point this out here first.
Yes, I will blog more about this. I think this post of notes and thoughts is long enough, and it’s time for me to think about sleeping or putting a new bandage on my scraped knee. Before I see you in a few days for the next bout of Ofcon Report reading and commentating, however, I’ll leave you with the quote I reference in the comment above (it can’t hurt to publish it again):
Now, on the case of internet sex crimes against kids, I’m concerned
that we’re already off to a bad start here. The public and the
professional impression about what’s going on in these kinds of
crimes is not in sync with the reality, at least so far as we can
ascertain it on the basis of research that we’ve done. And this
research has really been based on some large national studies of
cases coming to the attention of law enforcement as well as to large
national surveys of youth.
If you think about what the public impression is about this crime,
it’s really that we have these internet pedophiles who’ve moved
from the playground into your living room through the internet
connection, who are targeting young children by pretending to be
other children who are lying about their ages and their identities and
their motives, who are tricking kids into disclosing personal
information about themselves or harvesting that information from
blogs or websites or social networking sites. Then armed with this
information, these criminals stalk children. They abduct them.
They rape them, or even worse.
But actually, the research in the cases that we’ve gleaned from
actual law enforcement files, for example, suggests a different
reality for these crimes. So first fact is that the predominant online
sex crime victims are not young children. They are teenagers.
There’s almost no victims in the sample that we collected from – a
representative sample of law enforcement cases that involved the
child under the age of 13.
In the predominant sex crime scenario, doesn’t involve violence,
stranger molesters posing online as other children in order to set up
an abduction or assault. Only five percent of these cases actually
involved violence. Only three percent involved an abduction. It’s
also interesting that deception does not seem to be a major factor.
Only five percent of the offenders concealed the fact that they were
adults from their victims. Eighty percent were quite explicit about
their sexual intentions with the youth that they were communicating
with.
So these are not mostly violence sex crimes, but they are criminal
seductions that take advantage of teenage, common teenage
vulnerabilities. The offenders lure teens after weeks of
conversations with them, they play on teens’ desires for romance,
adventure, sexual information, understanding, and they lure them to
encounters that the teams know are sexual in nature with people who
are considerably older than themselves.
So for example, Jenna – this is a pretty typical case – 13-year-old
girl from a divorced family, frequented sex-oriented chat rooms, had
the screen name “Evil Girl.” There she met a guy who, after a
number of conversations, admitted he was 45. He flattered her, gave
– sent her gifts, jewelry. They talked about intimate things. And
eventually, he drove across several states to meet her for sex on
several occasions in motel rooms. When he was arrested in her
company, she was reluctant to cooperate with the law enforcement
authorities.
David Finkelhor, in panel Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization: Researchers Present the Facts and Debunk Myths, May 2007
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Digital Crumble
Ouvrir ou non les commentaires?
A midi, un ami m’apprenait qu’il avait un blog déjà depuis un petit moment, mais qu’il n’avait pas osé ouvrir les commentaires (c’est-à-dire: permettre aux lecteurs de s’exprimer directement sur son site, en réaction à ses articles) de peur de se faire déborder ou d’y passer trop de temps.
Souvent, lorsque je commence à “parler blogs” avec des clients (ou futurs clients), c’est autour des commentaires que tout se crispe. On a peur de ce qu’autrui pourrait venir écrire “chez nous”, et on se retrouve aux prises avec ce bon vieux pote qui nous joue pourtant de bien sales tours: le contrôle.
Si vous avez lu Naked Conversations (fortement recommandé pour qui voudrait comprendre l’importance que les blogs prennent dans le monde économique et social d’aujourd’hui) ou bien The Cluetrain Manifesto (le “manifeste” est traduit en français mais franchement, il m’a passé complètement par-dessus la tête plusieurs fois avant que j’attaque le livre — que je dévore en ce moment — disponible gratuitement sur le site), si vous avez donc lu un de ces deux livres, vous saurez de quoi je parle. On ne peut plus contrôler.
Sur internet, chacun peut en deux minutes, gratuitement et sans compétences techniques particulières, créer un blog (filez chez WordPress.com si vous êtes tenté) et y écrire ce qu’il souhaite. Tôt ou tard, si ce qu’il écrit présente un intérêt pour suffisamment de personnes (et ce nombre n’a pas besoin d’être bien grand), il se trouvera un public.
Le rapport avec les commentaires? Si vous avez peur de ce qu’on pourrait dire de vous ou répondre à vos écrits, ne pas avoir de commentaires ne change rien. Si vous avez des choses peu honorables à cacher, si vous êtes malhonnête, si vous refusez de dialoguer avec autrui, alors certainement, internet est un grand méchant espace effrayant, et si vous y avez un site, vous allez éviter d’encourager les gens à s’y exprimer. Oui. Laisser à ses lecteurs la possibilité de s’exprimer chez vous, via des commentaires, c’est inviter au dialogue — et bien des personnes qui s’expriment dans les commentaires ne l’auraient pas fait s’il leur avait fallu prendre la peine d’envoyer un e-mail ou d’ouvrir leur propre blog. Mais de l’autre côté, fermer les commentaires n’empêchera jamais quiconque de déverser du fiel à votre sujet en ligne — que ce fiel soit justifié ou non n’est ici pas la question.
Admettons cependant que la plupart des gens (et des entreprises) sont (raisonnablement) honnêtes et n’ont pas trop de vilains cadavres pourrissant au fond de leurs placards. (Il y en a toujours quelques-uns, de squelettes ou de cadavres, mais on finira par comprendre que les vrais êtres humains ont parfois des boutons d’acné sur le nez et qu’ils ne sont pas retouchés en permanence sous PhotoShop.) Donc, pourquoi cette peur des commentaires, si au fond on est relativement comfortable avec qui l’on est et ce qu’on fait? Quelques hypothèses:
Les gens peuvent dire n’importe quoi! C’est vrai. Ils peuvent aussi dire n’importe quoi ailleurs. Sur votre site, l’avantage c’est que vous pouvez immédiatement répondre au commentaire en question pour corriger le tir. Pensez-y: dans la “vraie vie” (arghl, je déteste utiliser cette expression) on agit pareil. Quand quelqu’un dit quelque chose de stupide ou de faux à notre sujet, eh bien, on répond. On discute. (La conversation, vous vous souvenez?) De plus, notons que la plupart des gens ne passent pas leur temps à aller laisser des commentaires débiles sur les blogs des autres. Pas dans le monde des adultes civilisés, et sur un blog qui a l’air “sérieux”, en tous cas.
Ça va prendre du temps! Là, il vaut la peine de s’arrêter une minute et de se demander ce qui va prendre tellement de temps. Déjà, réaliser que les craintes du point 1. se réalisent peu souvent. Ensuite, savoir que la plupart du temps, le problème d’un blog n’est pas qu’il y a trop de commentaires, mais pas assez. Sur Climb to the Stars, avec environ 2000-2500 lecteurs par jour (ça varie, mais voilà l’ordre de grandeur), j’ai entre trois et cinq commentaires par jour en moyenne. Parfois zéro. Combien de lecteurs a votre blog? Ce qui peut prendre du temps, c’est de nettoyer le spam, si l’outil de blog que l’on utilise n’a pas un bon filtre. Mais ça, ce n’est pas une question de principe, c’est une question de choix de moteur de blog (et aussi pour ça qu’en général je recommande WordPress — le filtre à spam fourni avec, Akismet, est assez efficace).
Les gens pourraient poser des questions difficiles, ou dire des choses incomfortables… Ça, honnêtement, je pense que c’est la seule crainte réelle à avoir. Si la conversation n’est certes pas impossible sans commentaires (on avait des conversations via nos blogs avant que ceux-ci ne comprennent cette fonctionnalité), ceux-ci invitent clairement au dialogue. Et le dialogue, cela implique une certaine ouverture à l’autre — d’assumer une certaine humanité. On ne peut pas dialoguer si l’on parle comme un communiqué de presse ou des prospectus de marketing. Oui, il y des choses qui sont imparfaites. Oui, on fait des erreurs. Non, on ne sait pas tout. Oui, la concurrence peut être bien aussi. Il vaut donc la peine de se demander si on est prêt pour ça — sachant que dans le fond, ce n’est pas si difficile que ça (discuter, c’est quelque chose que l’on fait tous les jours, sans y prêter vraiment attention), et qu’en fin de compte, l’évolution d’internet nous permet de moins en moins d’échapper à ce dialogue…
Moralité: ouvrez les commentaires, ne les filtrez pas, gardez un oeil attentif dessus au début si vous êtes inquiet, résolvez les problèmes posés par les commentaires “difficiles” en y répondant plutôt qu’en censurant… et si vraiment vous considérez que vous êtes débordé de commentaires, activez la modération, voire supprimez-les. Mais dans cet ordre. Essayez d’abord. Faites marche arrière ensuite si nécessaire (et je vous parie que dans 99% des cas, cela ne le sera pas).
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