Bullying and harassment, most often by peers, "are the most frequent threats that minors face," the report says. And though kids concede that minors routinely proposition other minors for sex on these sites, such incidents "are understudied, underreported to law enforcement, and are not part of most conversations about online safety," it adds.
"It's an important message for parents," says Katherine C. Cowan, communications director for the National Assn. of School Psychologists and, with four kids ages 17 to 24, a "grizzled veteran" of parenting teens. "Sure, there are crazy sexual predators out there. But the most common problem is kids being mean to each other, and 13-year-old girls posting naked pictures of themselves."
The highly publicized suicide of a Missouri teenager after a campaign of cyber-bullying has helped solidify parents' perceptions that malicious adults, not their own children, are the Internet's main threat. In 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier hanged herself after a neighborhood parent posed as a 16-year-old boy on MySpace, befriended and flattered Megan for six weeks and then, just as suddenly, turned on her, calling her mean. Before Megan's online romantic interest was exposed as an adult neighbor four houses down -- the mother of a childhood friend -- others joined in, calling Megan "fat" and a "whore."
The message that kids might be their own worst enemies on the Internet certainly resonates with Anthony E. Wolf, a practicing clinical psychologist in Massachusetts and author of "Get Out of My Life, But First Could You Drive Cheryl and Me to the Mall?"
"What are the big problems in cyberspace?" he asks. "One definitely is the stuff that kids do to and with each other. Yes, there's cyber-bullying, but a pretty surprisingly high percentage of kids on the Internet are talking about drugs, sex and drinking in ways that are semi-innocent and not so innocent at all."
A survey conducted by USC Annenberg School's Center for the Digital Future found that in 2006, 63% of parents surveyed believed there were "quite a few" sexual predators on MySpace. In Los Angeles, parental fear appeared to have gained further traction: In a 2006 survey of L.A.-area parents by Cal State Dominguez Hills professor Larry D. Rosen, 83% reported they were concerned about sexual predators on the Internet. The same study found that 15% of kids using social networking sites reported that they'd been contacted by strangers online, and that 92% of those took appropriate steps in response.
