Millions of girls using Facebook, Bebo and Myspace 'at risk' from paedophiles and bullies - and the Daily Mail.
Parents are alarmingly ignorant of the danger posed to millions of girls by social networking websites, a report reveals.
As you might expect, this being the lead super-splash in today's Daily Mail, the Ofcom report (PDF) the article is based on says absolutely nothing of the sort. The closest it comes to anything near that is where its research finds that two-thirds of parents say they set the rules on the their children's use of social-networking sites, while only 53% of children say that their parents set those self-same rules. The executive summary on privacy and safety doesn't so much as mention either paedophiles or bullies. In fact, the entire part of the report on privacy and safety doesn't mention paedophiles or bullies. It's only where we get to the "Literature review of harm and offence in social networking" that we finally get any reference to bullying, but still there is no direct mention of paedophiles.
The only possible justification that the Mail could have for leading with such a headline and opening couple of paragraphs is this section from the literature review of the current research:
Smith used the Pew Internet and American Life Project (as did Lenhart and Madden above) to look at the contacts made by subjects who create profiles on social networking sites (Smith, 2007). Smith found that seven per cent of this American sample said they had been contacted ‘by a stranger who made them feel scared or uncomfortable’. Teenage girls (the sample was aged 12-17) are more likely than boys to say this (11% and 4% respectively).
Only a very slight more percentage then than 1 in 10 had been contacted by someone who made them feel scared or uncomfortable, and we're talking in this instance about research done in the US.
It's quite obvious however why the Mail has decided to go with "GIRLS AT RISK" angle: it enables them to scaremonger recklessly about what YOUR KIDS might be up to online; means they can moralise about our debauched youth that are clearly asking for it, as we shall see; and lets them then publish those self-same profiles with the girls flaunting their assets at the same time as crowing about paedophiles.
I'm not going to reproduce them here in full for obvious reasons, but here's the Daily Mail doing some own personal research on the reckless and feckless youth:
Last night the Daily Mail discovered some of the shocking content youngsters are putting up on these sites.
This includes a 14-year-old girl whose profile picture, which can be viewed by anyone, focuses on her breasts.
Another 15-year- old is smirking at the camera as she grabs her breasts.
She has listed her date of birth, her home town and name of school.
One has also innocently posted pictures of her ten-year-old sister half-clothed alongside lots of personal information, including full name and home town.
Another 16-year-old is seen posing in her underwear in dozens of photographs.
The Mail has kindly pixellated the faces of those it's decided to "sexpose", but it naturally hasn't done the same to their bodies, because that obviously would mean that the Herbert Gussets out there wouldn't be able to get their rocks off. This is the sort of classy, by no means sensational copy placed alongside the images:
Doubtless, I'm sure these teens were asked permission for their profiles, whether public or not, to be reprinted in a national newspaper. That they'll be easily identified by their friends and schoolmates themselves and therefore likely to be um, bullied or mocked as a result is obviously neither here nor there. That it also means that some individuals might now attempt to find the profiles themselves in full is also obviously not a problem - after all, the Daily Mail doesn't seem to mind being the newspaper of choice for men like Mark Dixie, who recorded himself masturbating to pictures of his young model victim in the paper.
This is absolutely classic Daily Mail, having its cake and eating it, tut-tutting at the state of youth while condemning parents for having no boundaries, all the while engaging in the very strongest form of voyeurism that its readers will let it get away with, and distorting a report in order to do so in the first place. This just happens to be the same newspaper objecting to a tightening of the rules over the buying and selling of stolen information, citing "investigative journalism" concerns. Investigative journalism such as going on the social networking websites for the most "shocking" profiles they can find to titillate and outrage, presumably.
Labels: abuses by tabloids, bullshit, Daily Mail-watch, distortion, Mail-watch, paedophilia hysteria, scaremongering, social networking websites
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If kids are genuinely putting themselves at risk by using social networking sites then surely boys, as well as girls, would be in danger? Or is it just a particular type of kid, perhaps girls aged around 14 to 15, with prominent breasts, that sell papers... erm, I mean, are at risk!
Come on everyone, look at these young girls' tits so you can be REALLY outraged!
Posted by
Keith Foster |
Thursday, April 03, 2008 8:26:00 am
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