"To Catch a Predator"...Not So Much

Turns out the old story about a pervy man lurking around youth-oriented chat rooms is just that – a story.  Or at least not as extensive as NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” would have you believe (then again, there’s a fine line between catching a predator and creating one…) According to a new report commissioned by 49 state attorneys generals looking into the sordid affair that is on-line solicitation of minors, the dangers have been grossly exaggerated.   The 278 page report, compiled by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, was the end-result of year long meetings between dozens of academics, childhood safety experts and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.  Contrary to popular belief, they found that most people using social networking sites, like MySpace and Facebook, were not, in fact, creeps looking to lure children away with the promise of wine coolers and lore.  Rather they were regular folk who, much like everyone else, have opted to forgo face to face communication for the ease of poor punctuation and acronyms.  And the few teenagers who were solicited were seemingly willing participants and are already at risk due to poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems, according to the report. All in all, the threat of on-line sexual predators is much less worrisome than previously imagined, in spite of of the numerous studies citing thousands of sex offenders on MySpace and the like.  So maybe, despite the all the hype and panic, the Internet is a relatively safe space.  Kind of like your neighborhood bar, so long as you go to the bathroom in pairs and never leave you drink unattended.