e20211amwhitney

Narrate and Evaluate the Final Essay

yenithw — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:35:21 +0000

A topic dealing with online predators covers a lot of ground, but much of the things being written about this topic only skim the surface. I wanted to write about specific stories that could give concrete examples as to why someone would want to talk to a stranger online. I refined my research to cover two reasons I felt were important as to why teens might talk to strangers: meeting people with common interests and meeting people who will accept them for who they are and who are like them. I expanded upon my draft by tying in the story of Justin with the reasons why other teens talk to online strangers. I think this helped bring the whole paper full circle. I refined my paper by adding more facts and statistics to back up what I had said in my draft. This is shown in paragraph one of page two. The Polly Klass Foundation’s website provided concrete evidence to back up my claim that kids are talking to strange adults online everyday. I also moved certain things in my paper around so that it would make more sense. For example, I took some statistics from a block citation by Anastasia Goodstein and weaved them into earlier paragraphs concerning how often teens talk to new people through chatrooms and instant messengers. My essay shows my best ability as a writer by being able to incorporate the sources into my own thoughts. I was able to tie Justin’s story together with why other teens are talking to strangers by showing that he wanted to meet other people with similar interests and he wanted to feel loved and accepted because his family was doing a poor job of showing it. I feel that I was able to bring people a sense of not only why adolescents are talking to strangers online and how they are doing it, but also, let them know that a case like Justin’s is extreme. And though cases like this do happen, it is more common for kids to realize when they are in a situation they should stay away from. I feel that I was able to successfully incorporate different sources by paraphrasing, quoting, summarizing, and skillfully create a works cited page using these sources. I would rate my final paper an 8 on terms of content, a 9 on terms of organization, a 10 on terms of mechanics, and a 9 on terms of revision.

Reflection on Digital Dimension

yenithw — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:35:26 +0000

Through this class, I learned how to add things to wikies, post blogs on lyceum, and navigate a little bit better on the University’s library website. I think all in all, using these tools and posting our progress of our research on them helped out a great deal. At any one moment, you could go back and look at an earlier draft or at an earlier idea of what you wanted to fix or build upon. The blogs also made it a lot easier for students to interact with one another, by being able to read other’s posts and give them feedback on what they had typed. The wikies made it especially easy to look up information that we had discussed in class and get to links that we had been shown in lecture. The professor’s website also helped me out a great deal. It was so simple to use and I was connected to everyone in my class and could easily contact anyone if I needed to. Also, Dr. Sherwood’s website had a link to everything we could possibly have needed to use to be successful in this class. I think overall, that using these tools helped my drafting process, making it easier to navigate throughout my journey on this research topic.

I think that i would probably use these tools again if I was doing a similar project and had to be able to contact people in my class. I will definitely be able to use the editing skills learned (for the wiki) in the future. I would recommend this kind of digital dimension to people who are interested in learning more about communicating with others online through blogs and those who are interested in learning more about putting information on the web so other out there can read what they have to say.

I thought some of the individual blogs that didn’t relate to the final research paper were kind of pointless, but it made it easier for the professor to check the students’ progress throughout the semester. Because of this, this kind of work is much better than having to write papers and turn them into the professor on computer paper. It is so much easier to just look online at a student’s work.

yenithw — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:34:55 +0000

Reflection on Draft Revison

yenithw — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:44:53 +0000

My drafting process wasn’t as terrible as I was imagining it to be. Throughout the semester, we started working on building up a draft little by little; first coming up with an introduction, then adding on about 1000 more words to it, making it substantial. Then, as we talked more about specific things in class, such as transitions, I incorporated new sentences into my draft to make it flow better. Once the first draft of about 2000 words was turned in, we got feedback telling up what we might want to improve on. So a revision plan was posted onto my blog (Revision Plan). Some of the drafting was difficult because most sources out there, dealing with teens and tweens online, only talk about the dangers of sexual predators. Not many discuss exactly why people go online to meet others in the first place and the motivations behind doing so. But once I started looking deeper into my research, things became easier to find.

Once I had a plan, I quickly started making changes on my paper. First on my list was to change common mistakes such as spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors. Once I went through my paper doing that, I fixed some of the sentences that didn’t quite make sense because of the way they had been worded. I continued to make my transitions stronger, so the reader would be able to jump from one kind of thought to another easily and follow my thought process. Also in this revision plan, I compressed my introduction and I took the advice from my peer reviewers and searched different websites to back up some of my statements in which they felt people might need more evidence to back them up. One specific part of my paper that I had changed was that I tied Justin’s story together with both reasons as to why teens would talk to strangers online, while knowing about online sexual predators.

Reflection on one Process Step

yenithw — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 16:45:28 +0000

In choosing a research question about using technology in some way, I looked to a previous blog post for inspiration (Minni Essay (final copy): Is Virtual Rape Even Possible). This post got me thinking about how people feel when they have been sexually harassed on their computer. Also, a lot of our class discussions covered the topic about how some kind of trauma like rape can affect our lives and how this could affect an adolescent. One discussion, in particular, dealt with the issue of underage teens being virtually raped on Second Life, this triggered me to come up with a topic for research dealing with teens talking to strangers, not just in Second Life, but on other virtual mediums as well: MySpace, Facebook, AIM, chatrooms, etc. I wanted to know exactly what programs and websites teens were using to talk to people, friends and strangers alike. Also, I wanted to know how often teens talked to people they have not already previously known and how many of these people were older men or women pretending to be someone much younger. Upon digging for information about how often teens talk to strangers online, more and more sites came up with information about how to protect kids from online predators. I thought that adding something in about how kids could get sucked into talking with online predators would be something exciting to talk about. All of these different questions combined led to my research question “What makes teens and adolescents, who know about the dangers of online sexual predators, decide to talk to and confide in strangers online and how are teens using the Internet to talk to these people?”

Revision Plan

yenithw — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:19:10 +0000

1.) Fix all punctuation/spelling/grammar errors.
2.) Work on fixing some sentence structure and making things more clear in particular sentences.
3.) Make stronger transitions throughout the paper.
4.) Try to compress the introduction of the paper.
5.) Gather more evidence on statements i make that might not really be 100% factual, but rather my opinion presented as the truth.
6.) Tie in the story about Justin’s encounters with online predators with the reasons why kids and teens are talking to strangers online.

fixing draft 1

yenithw — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:41:18 +0000

A young boy, still not mature enough to be fully self-aware, sits behind his computer screen flirting with the idea that he’ll be able to find himself by talking with strangers in an online world, a world so different than the one he’s been forced to live in by his parents. In his real life, he was never allowed to talk about his sexual feelings because they were not accepted as normal in his community, his church, and household. But with this new freedom, he was able to show his true colors and explore the possibilities and experiences that he had been missing out on. As he stretches his fingertips to the keyboard and signs into a chatroom, a message pops up. “Hi, my name’s Dave. What’s yours?” Strangely excited by this interaction with this stranger, he types back. The boy and Dave start to have a conversation, but the conversation soon gets serious and quickly turns onto adult issues. The boy, struggling with his sexuality finds comfort in talking to this man about his sexuality, like he is the only one who would understand what he is going through. The time passes in what seems like minutes, but it has really been four hours. The boy signs off, but as soon as he gets a chance the next day he logs on. Dave is there waiting for him, like he knew the boy was going to be there. Dave and the boy talked for 3 days straight about sexual things the boy would not be able to talk about with his friends and family. The two decide to meet. But the sad part of the story is that Dave just didn’t find an interest in just this one boy, he was a serial online predator, waiting for his next victim to come along.
Stories like this happen everyday. But what makes teens and adolescents, who know about the dangers of online sexual predators, decide to talk to and confide in strangers online and how are teens using the Internet to talk to these people?
There seem to be many different reasons why teens would talk to strangers online and not in their everyday lives. For instance a teen might be too shy to talk to someone in person, but they are comfortable enough to talk to him or her behind the safety of their computer screen. It seems that the top two motivations teens have for talking to strangers are to meet people with common interests and find someone who is willing to accept them for who they are.
Throughout history, it has been made clear that the human race likes to be around other people with the same common interests. In the same manner, kids in today’s society are no different now than they have been in the past, but now they have easier ways of meeting people who share the same interests. Even more so in modern society, it appears that adolescents feel like they need to be different than everyone else around them. The Internet gives them an outlet to express their individuality and meet people who share the same views and interests as them. And because of this way of meeting new people, masses of people are able to connect with one another and talk about things they have in common. In addition to kids wanting to find other people with common interests, they also want find people who can relate to them on a different level.
It is true that society has become more accepting of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals over the years, but a lot of homosexual people are logging on to chatrooms to find and meet people of the same sexual orientation. Over the past 10 years, more and more homosexual teens are finding it easier to come out. They have found a space to come together over the Internet, one in particular called the “Queer Global Village” (Silberman). This specific site, other sites, and chatrooms of the same type are becoming a safe haven for teens in the gay community and more popular everyday. Here, homosexual teens and those coming to terms with their sexuality can come together in one place and talk about issues that they cannot seem to talk about with their friends and family members. It wasn’t until recently, in the past decade or so, that teens would not have to wait until they were old enough to go out to gay clubs to meet other homosexual and bisexual people (Silberman). Now they can converge and converse with people with the same orientation without even leaving their bedrooms. As one can see there are different motivations for teens to talk to strangers, but how are they going about it?
It is apparent that almost every teen today is connected to the online world. The most common places to find them now are sites where “collecting friends” seems to be a big deal like MySpace and a social network called Facebook (which is more commonly used by college students). Kids are also meeting people online through chatrooms and blog pages, AOL Instant Messenger and other instant messaging programs, and virtual online worlds in which players use avatars and create their own virtual lives, such as Second Life. More and more kids are meeting new people online and now since collecting friends appears to be the cool thing to do, meeting people online is more prevalent now than ever before. Teens and kids are meeting people of all age groups, social classes, and races through these online social networks.
These sites and activities have become so addicting to some people that they compulsively sign on and login to their personal pages to see if they have received any new comments, messages, friend requests, and picture comments. CBSNews.com has recently posted an online poll asking kids how much time they spend online a day; they found that “On average, teens say they spend almost three hours a day on the Internet on a typical day.” Kids are even linked to their favorite bands through these pages where fans can meet each other and share their love for these artists, which is just another medium for meeting new people with common interests. Furthermore, social networks and online journals have become so popular over the past three years that the number of users has grown at an enormously fast pace. According to USATODAY.com MySpace has grown from 4.9 million users in November of 2004 to 26.7 million users in just one year. The information for the number of Facebook users was not available for November of 2004, but by November of 2005 it had grown to 11.1 million. In November 2004, Xanga had 5.8 million users and by November 2005 its numbers had reached 7.9 million. As of October 2007, Myspace has over an astonishing 100 million users and is growing at a rate of 500,000 every week, and now Facebook has 49 million users (Facebook). Though its true many of the users of these social utilities are adults, the vast majority of them are kids and teens. Also, although many parents may be aware that their children are using online social sites, some are clueless of what really goes on behind their child’s computer screen and who may be trying to contact their child.
Anastasia Goodstein, author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online, posts helpful blogs on her website, Totallywired.ypulse.com, for parents and guardians that give insight into what teens and adolescents are really doing online. One article has information taken from a poll of 3,000 teens and tweens who use the virtual world Habbo Hotel. These are the following statistics:
“86.4% of teens say their parents have discussed online safety with them. 51.7% say they visit chat rooms at least once every day. 18.5% say they have experienced chatting online with someone they found out was an adult pretending to be much younger. 57.2% say they have chatted, IM’d or emailed with someone online that they have never met face to face. 26.6% say they have been asked questions about their sexuality or sexual experiences while chatting online that made them feel uncomfortable. 31.7% say they have posted personal information online before. 72.5% are aware that anyone can view personal information they post online, not just their friends.”
These statistics might scare some, but kids aren’t stupid. Most teens know to stay away from people who make them feel uncomfortable, uneasy, and anxious. Parents are telling children to stay away from strangers from a young age, but who isn’t a stranger on the Internet? Anytime you sign into a chatroom and start talking to someone, are they not a stranger at first? Even if you meet someone face to face, are people not strangers the first time they meet? The problem is how to distinguish between a person who can be trusted and who cannot be trusted.
There are a growing number of cases where tweens and teens are talking to people about personal issues who they don’t know if they can trust. Most of the things we hear in the news about online sexual predators are concerning middle age men. It doesn’t matter what race, age, or kind of background these people come from, and apparently neither does gender. “Although almost all of the research shows that the majority of sexual perpetrators are males, there is growing evidence that female-perpetrated sexual abuse is not rare and that the consequences of female-perpetrated sexual abuse can be just as traumatic as male-perpetrated sexual abuse” (Oliver). But what happens when situations between minors and adults online go beyond just talking or chatting?
In September of 2005, The New York Times carried an interview with Justin Berry (then 18), from California, who was selling his body on a porn website and talking to men online who would watch him through his webcam. According to the article, Justin bought a webcam at age 13 with the idea of meeting other teens online and hopefully some girls. But, for the most part, the only people Justin got messages from were adult men, some even going so far as to pretend to be teenage girls but later revealing themselves as men. So Justin started talking to these men, thinking they were no threat and could possibly be potential friends.
One day Justin received an instant message from a man who offered Justin fifty dollars to sit in front of his computer without a shirt for three minutes. Justin thought it was no big deal, but after this first experience with being paid to sell his body online, he was addicted to the attention (because he longed for affection from his family) and was lured by the money to continue selling himself. These men even started a “wish list” on Amazon.com where Justin could pick anything he wanted and they would buy it for him. According to the article, “Justin was watched by more than 1,500 people who paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to undress, shower, masturbate, and have sex in front of his webcam.” The article goes on to note that, “in its investigation, The Times obtained the names and credit card information for the 1,500 people who paid Justin to perform on camera, and analyzed the backgrounds of 300 of them nationwide. A majority of the sample consisted of doctors and lawyers, businessmen and teachers, many of whom work with children on a daily basis.” Today Justin has stopped performing for these men and has since helped the police and other law enforcement agencies catch online sexual predators.
There are many cases of children performing for adults and meeting them in person, but for the most part, kids are smart about who they talk to online. In many cases, kids say they only talk to friends online that they have met in person already or have met online through a mutual friend in their shared network; they claim that if they start to feel uncomfortable they sign off or just simply stop talking to whomever they are chatting with. Most teens say they talk online to keep in touch with their friends, comment on pictures their friends have posted, and play games with other people who they feel comfortable with. For a worrying parent, the best way to help stop kids from chatting with predators online is to talk with them about the potential dangers of talking to people they don’t already know and ways to spot predators.

Transition Revisions

yenithw — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 16:40:04 +0000

1a.) Throughout history, it’s been made clear that the human race likes to be around other people with the same common interests. Kids in today’s society are no different today than they have been in the past, but now they have easier ways of meeting people who share the same interests.

1b.) Throughout history, it’s been made clear that the human race likes to be around other people with the same common interests. In the same manner, kids in today’s society are no different today than they have been in the past, but now they have easier ways of meeting people who share the same interests.

2a.) The Internet gives [adolescents] an outlet to express their individuality and meet people who share the same views and interests as them. And because of this way of meeting new people, masses of people are able to connect with one another and talk about things they have in common.
It’s true that society has become more accepting of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals over the years, but a lot of homosexual people are logging on to chatrooms to find and meet people of the same sexual orientation. Over the past 10 years more and more homosexual teens are finding it easier to come out.

2b.) The Internet gives [adolescents] an outlet to express their individuality and meet people who share the same views and interests as them. And because of this way of meeting new people, masses of people are able to connect with one another and talk about things they have in common. In addition to kids wanting to find other people with common interests, they also want find people who can relate to them on a different level.
It’s true that society has become more accepting of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals over the years, but a lot of homosexual people are logging on to chatrooms to find and meet people of the same sexual orientation. Over the past 10 years more and more homosexual teens are finding it easier to come out.

3a.) Kids are even linked to their favorite bands through these pages where fans can meet each other and share their love for these artists, which is just another medium for meeting new people with common interests.
Social networks and online journals have become so popular over the past three years that the number of users has grown at an enormously fast pace. According to USATODAY.com MySpace has grown from 4.9 million users in November of 2004 to an astonishing 26.7 million users in just one year. The information for the number of Facebook users was not available for November of 2004, but by November of 2005 it had grown to 11.1 million. In November 2004, Xanga had 5.8 million users and by November 2005 its numbers had reached 7.9 million. As of October 2007 Myspace has over 100 million users and is growing at a rate of 500,000 every week, and Facebook has 49 million users (Wikipedia). Though it’s true many of the users of these social utilities are adults, the vast majority of them are kids and teens.

3b.)Kids are even linked to their favorite bands through these pages where fans can meet each other and share their love for these artists, which is just another medium for meeting new people with common interests.
Furthermore, social networks and online journals have become so popular over the past three years that the number of users has grown at an enormously fast pace. According to USATODAY.com MySpace has grown from 4.9 million users in November of 2004 to an astonishing 26.7 million users in just one year. The information for the number of Facebook users was not available for November of 2004, but by November of 2005 it had grown to 11.1 million. In November 2004, Xanga had 5.8 million users and by November 2005 its numbers had reached 7.9 million. As of October 2007 Myspace has over 100 million users and is growing at a rate of 500,000 every week, and Facebook has 49 million users (Wikipedia). Though it’s true many of the users of these social utilities are adults, the vast majority of them are kids and teens.

4a.) Though it’s true many of the users of these social utilities are adults, the vast majority of them are kids and teens.
Anastasia Goodstein, author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online, posts helpful blogs for parents and guardians that give insight into what teens and adolescents are really doing online on her website Totallywired.ypulse.com. One article has information taken from a poll of 3, 000 teens and tweens who use the virtual world Habbo Hotel.

4b.) Though it’s true many of the users of these social utilities are adults, the vast majority of them are kids and teens. Also, although many parents may be aware that their children are using online social sites, some are clueless of what really goes on behind their child’s computer screen and who may be trying to contact their child.
Anastasia Goodstein, author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online, posts helpful blogs for parents and guardians that give insight into what teens and adolescents are really doing online on her website Totallywired.ypulse.com. One article has information taken from a poll of 3, 000 teens and tweens who use the virtual world Habbo Hotel.

5a.)Today Justin has stopped performing for these men and has since helped the police and other law enforcement agencies catch online sexual predators.
There are many cases of children performing for adults and meeting them in person. But for the most part kids are smart about who they talk to online.

5b.) Today Justin has stopped performing for these men and has since helped the police and other law enforcement agencies catch online sexual predators.
Like Justin, there are many cases of children performing for adults and meeting them in person. But for the most part kids are smart about who they talk to online.

Draft 2000 words

yenithw — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:08:30 +0000

A young boy, still not mature enough to be fully self-aware, sits behind his computer screen flirting with the idea that he’ll be able to find himself by talking with strangers in an online world, a world so unfamiliar than the one he’s been forced to live in by his parents. In his home life, he was never allowed to talk about his sexual feelings because they were not accepted as normal in his community, his church, and household. But with this new freedom, he was able to show his true colors and explore the possibilities and experiences that he’d been missing out on.
As he stretches his fingertips to the keyboard and signs into a chatroom, a message pops up. “Hi, my name’s Dave. What’s yours?” Strangely excited by this interaction with this stranger, he types back. The boy and Dave start to have a conversation, but the conversation soon gets serious and quickly turns onto adult issues. The boy, struggling with his sexuality finds comfort in talking to this man about his sexuality, like he’s the only one who would understand what he’s going through. The time passes in what seems like minutes, but it’s really been 4 hours.
The boy signs off, but as soon as he gets a chance the next day he logs on. Dave’s there waiting for him, like he knew he was going to be there. Dave and the boy talked for 3 days straight about sexual things the boy would not be able to talk about with his friends and family. The two decide to meet. But the sad part of the story is that Dave just didn’t find an interest in just this one boy, he was a serial online predator, waiting for his next victim to come along.
Stories like this happen everyday. But what makes teens and adolescents, who know about the dangers of online sexual predators, decide to talk to and confide in strangers online and how are teens using the Internet to talk to these people.
There seem to be many different reasons why teens would talk to strangers online and not in their everyday lives. For instance a teen might be too shy to talk to someone in person, but they are comfortable enough to talk to him or her behind the safety of their computer screen. It seems that the top two motivations teems have for talking to strangers are to meet people with common interests and find someone who is willing to accept them for who they are.
Throughout history, it’s been made clear that the human race likes to be around other people with the same common interests. Kids in today’s society are no different today than they have been in the past, but now they have easier ways of meeting people who share the same interests. Even more so in modern society, it seems that adolescents feel like they need to be different than everyone else around them. The Internet gives them an outlet to express their individuality and meet people who share the same views and interests as them. And because of this way of meeting new people, masses of people are able to connect with one another and talk about things they have in common.
It’s true that society has become more accepting of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals over the years, but a lot of homosexual people are logging on to chatrooms to find and meet people of the same sexual orientation. Over the past 10 years more and more homosexual teens are finding it easier to come out. They have found a space so come together over the Internet, one in particular called the “Queer Global Village” (Silberman). This specific site, other sites, and chatrooms of the same type, are becoming a safe haven for teens in the gay community and more popular everyday. Here, homosexual teens and those coming to terms with their sexuality can come together in one place and talk about issues that they cannot seem to talk about with their friends and family members. It wasn’t until recently, in the past decade or so, that teens wouldn’t have to wait until they were old enough to go out to gay clubs to meet other homosexual and bisexual people (Silberman). Now they can converge and converse with people with the same orientation without even leaving their bedrooms. As one can see there are different motivations for teens to talk to strangers, but how are they going about it?
It seems that almost every teen today is connected to the online world. The most common places to find them now are sites where “collecting friends” seems to be a big deal like MySpace and a social network called Facebook (which is more commonly used by college students). Also, kids are meeting people online though chatrooms and blog pages, AOL Instant Messenger and other instant messaging programs, and virtual online worlds in which players use avatars and create their own virtual lives, such as Second Life. More and more kids are meeting new people online and now since collecting friends appears to be the cool thing to do, meeting people online is more prevalent now than ever before. Teens and kids are meeting people of all age groups, social classes, and races through these online social networks.
These sites and activities have become so addicting to some people that they compulsively sign on and login to their personal pages to see if they have received any new comments, messages, friend requests, and picture comments. CBSNews.com has recently posted an online poll asking kids how much time they spend online a day; they found that “On average, teens say they spend almost three hours a day on the Internet on a typical day.” Kids are even linked to their favorite bands through these pages where fans can meet each other and share their love for these artists, which is just another medium for meeting new people with common interests. Social networks and online journals have become so popular over the past three years that the number of users has grown at an enormously fast pace. According to USATODAY.com MySpace has grown from 4.9 million users in November of 2004 to an astonishing 26.7 million users in just one year. The information for the number of Facebook users was not available for November of 2004, but by November of 2005 it had grown to 11.1 million. In November 2004, Xanga had 5.8 million users and by November 2005 its numbers had reached 7.9 million. As of October 2007 Myspace has over 100 million users and is growing at a rate of 500,000 every week, and Facebook has 49 million users (Wikipedia). Though it’s true many of the users of these social utilities are adults, the vast majority of them are kids and teens.
Anastasia Goodstein, author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online, posts helpful blogs for parents and guardians that give insight into what teens and adolescents are really doing online on her website Totallywired.ypulse.com. One article has information taken from a poll of 3, 000 teens and tweens who use the virtual world Habbo Hotel. These are the following statistics:
“86.4% of teens say their parents have discussed online safety with them. 51.7% say they visit chat rooms at least once every day. 18.5% say they have experienced chatting online with someone they found out was an adult pretending to be much younger. 57.2% say they have chatted, IM’d or emailed with someone online that they have never met face to face. 26.6% say they have been asked questions about their sexuality or sexual experiences while chatting online that made them feel uncomfortable. 31.7% say they have posted personal information online before. 72.5% are aware that anyone can view personal information they post online, not just their friends.”
These statistics might scare some, but kids aren’t stupid. Most teens know to stay away from people who make them feel uncomfortable, uneasy, and anxious. From a young age parents are telling children to stay away from strangers, but who isn’t a stranger on the Internet? Anytime you sign into a chatroom and start talking to someone, are they not a stranger at first? Even if you meet someone face to face, are people not strangers the first time they meet? The problem is how to distinguish between a person who can be trusted and who cannot be trusted.
There are a growing number of cases where tweens and teens are talking to people about personal issues who they don’t know if they can trust. Most of things we hear in the news about online sexual predators are concerning middle age men. It doesn’t matter what race, age, or kind of background these people come from, and apparently neither does gender. “Although almost all of the research shows that the majority of sexual perpetrators are males, there is growing evidence that female-perpetrated sexual abuse is not rare and that the consequences of female-perpetrated sexual abuse can be just as traumatic as male-perpetrated sexual abuse” (Oliver). But what happens when situations between minors and adults online go beyond just talking or chatting?
In September of 2005, The New York Times carried an interview with Justin Berry (then 18), from California, who was selling his body on a porn website and talking to men online who would watch him through his Webcam. According to the article, Justin bought a webcam at age 13 with the idea of meeting other teens online and hopefully some girls. But, for the most part, the only people Justin got messages from were adult men, some even going so far as to pretend to be teenage girls but later revealing themselves as men. So Justin started talking to these men, thinking they were no threat and could possibly be potential friends.
One day Justin received an instant message from a man who offered Justin fifty dollars to sit in front of his computer without a shirt for three minutes. Justin thought it was no big deal. But after this first experience with being paid to sell his body online, he was addicted to the attention because he longed for affection from his family and was lured by the money to continue selling himself. These men even started a “wish list” on Amazon.com where Justin could pick anything he wanted and they would buy it for him. According to the article, “Justin was watched by more than 1,500 people who paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to shower, undress, masturbate, and have sex in front of his webcam.” The article goes on to note that, “in its investigation, The Times obtained the names and credit card information for the 1,500 people who paid Justin to perform on camera, and analyzed the backgrounds of 300 of them nationwide. A majority of the sample consisted of doctors and lawyers, businessmen and teachers, many of whom work with children on a daily basis.” Today Justin has stopped performing for these men and has since helped the police and other law enforcement agencies catch online sexual predators.
There are many cases of children performing for adults and meeting them in person. But for the most part kids are smart about who they talk to online. In many cases kids says they only talk to friends online that they have met in person already or have met online through a mutual friend in their shared network, and if they start to feel uncomfortable they sign off or just simply stop talking to whomever they are chatting with. Most teens say they talk online to keep in touch with their friends, comment on pictures their friends have posted, and play games with other people who they feel comfortable with. For a worrying parent, the best way to help stop kids from chatting with predators online is to talk with them about the potential dangers and ways to spot them.

Draft 1000 Words

yenithw — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:33:20 +0000