| PaulKing 2005-01-31, 10:42 am |
| Online Warnings Mean Well,
But the Numbers Don't Add Up
January_21,_2005
It's an alarming statistic: One in five children has been sexually
solicited online.
That stat is turning up on billboards and television commercials around
the country, driven by an aggressive push from child-protection advocates.
In the TV version, eerie music plays as a camera pans over a school
playground and then shows a park.
A female narrator intones: "To the list of places you might find sexual
predators, add this one" -- as the image changes to a girl using a
computer in her bedroom.
The spot ends with the one-in-five stat. It's all part of an ad blitz that
has gotten millions of dollars of free media time since its launch last
year and is set to continue through 2007.
But while the motivation behind the campaign appears to be sound, the
crucial statistic is misleading and could scare parents into thinking the
danger is greater than it really is.
Here's a more accurate use of the statistic that we'll likely never see in
an ad: Five years ago, one in five children -- ranging from fifth graders
to high school seniors -- who used the Internet at least once a month said
in a telephone survey that they'd received an online sexual solicitation,
according to research paid for by advocates of the issue. Solicitations
were broadly defined to include "unwanted" sexual talk, whether from
someone they knew or a stranger, or any sexual talk with someone over 18.
Only 24% of the solicitations came from people who identified themselves
as adults; the bulk of the remainder came from other minors (or those
purporting to be under 18).
Only 3% of the children surveyed said they received an "aggressive
solicitation," which includes measures like requests for an offline
meeting or telephone calls.
None of the solicitations led to actual sexual contact or assault. And
most children successfully cut off the undesired communication themselves.
(The study focused largely on "live" chats like instant-messenger
exchanges; e-mail spam wasn't counted.)
The upshot of all of this is a dated stat -- five years is an eon in
Internet time -- that makes once-valid research seem scarier than it is.
It is no great surprise that advertising can present statistics in
misleading or slanted ways. But when this happens in commercial ads,
competitors can fire back. For noncontroversial issue advertising, no one
has great motivation to challenge advocates' claims -- who would argue
that parents don't need to be vigilant about their children's online
activities?
All of this has created fertile ground for the one-in-five statistic to be
recycled over the five years since it was born. Between August 1999 and
February 2000, university of New Hampshire researchers directed a
telephone survey of more than 1,500 10-to-17-year-olds. The survey was
conducted with about $300,000 in funding from the National Center for
Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), an Alexandria, Va., nonprofit group
that works to prevent the sexual abuse of children. In June 2001, the
study was published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical
Association, which issued a press release about it. (Here are links to a
summary of the study and the study itself as published in JAMA, and a full
report on the study from the researchers.)
That press release precipitated a barrage of media coverage, mostly
headlining that 19% of children had received sexual solicitations. Some
news accounts noted that the study covered only regular Internet users,
and others noted that the age range of some of the respondents is older
than what some may think is meant by "children."
But many presented the stat without qualification. One Albuquerque Journal
editorial seemed to indicate that the research was coming from actual
reports to law enforcement, stating, "Those are only the reported cases;
real numbers are likely much higher."
The statistic got new life last May, when NCMEC signed a three-year deal
with the Ad Council, the big New York nonprofit organization that places
public-service ads for advocacy groups and government agencies.
Advertisers pay to produce the ads and the Ad Council gets media companies
to donate ad space and time.
In this case, NCMEC says it paid $600,000 to New York firm Merkley &
Partners to cover costs of producing and filming the ads, and received $11
million worth of advertising time in the third quarter of last year alone,
according to the Ad Council. The campaign -- with some new ads -- is
expected to continue through 2007.
The one-in-five stat figures prominently in many of the advertisements.
You can view the ads from this Ad Council Web page.
There's no question that online sex crimes are a serious problem.
According to a separate university of New Hampshire study partially funded
by NCMEC, law-enforcement officials made about 2,600 arrests for Internet
sex crimes against minors over 12 months in 2000 and 2001. That number
surely is lower than the actual number of Internet sex crimes, because
many don't lead to arrests and some may not have been classified as
arising from online interaction. Still, that's a long way from one of
every five children.
Numbers Guy reader Kraig Eno spotted billboards carrying the stat in the
Seattle area and researched its source. When he discovered it was based on
a five-year-old study and hardly covered all children, he concluded in an
e-mail, "The billboard's statement is so misleading as to be almost
completely false, however important its warning is. ... But so what if the
billboard's statement isn't true? It's propaganda, but it's the RIGHT KIND
of propaganda. Nine out of 10 ad executives would surely agree!"
The stat also got attention from university of Delaware professor Joel
Best, who in his book last year, "More Damned Lies and Statistics,"
mentioned it alongside some other published stats about children, like how
many are involved in bullying and the percentage of girls abused on dates,
in which researchers made methodological choices that tended to lead to
bigger numbers.
Dr. Best points out that everyone involved -- advocates, researchers,
journal editors and newspaper reporters and editors -- benefits from
bigger numbers. And it's not coincidental that he found several examples
of questionable statistics involving children. "Expressing threats in
terms of dangers to our children is very emotionally powerful in our
society," he says.
Kimberly Mitchell, a co-author of the one-in-five study and a research
assistant professor at the university of New Hampshire's Crimes Against
Children Research Center, says it was probably misleading to use the term
"children" in ads, since "teenagers" would be more appropriate. Her group
chose the age group 10 to 17 in part because "teenagers really are the
at-risk population here." She says the research wasn't influenced by the
advocacy funding.
Groups behind the ad campaign defend its use of the stats. Ernie Allen,
president of NCMEC, says, "We understand that the data are dated and that
there are limitations on the use of the data." He says that, if anything,
the ad may be understating the risks. He says that in more recent
focus-group research conducted by NCMEC, far more than 20% of children
interviewed said they had been sexually solicited. "Believe me, these
numbers do not hype or exaggerate," Mr. Allen says. He adds that the group
is paying about $350,000 for a follow-up study by the New Hampshire
researchers to get a more updated number. (It's unclear how five years
might have changed things.
More teenagers are online more frequently, but automated parental controls
from Internet service providers have improved in the interim. There is
certainly a lot more awareness now about the risks kids face online.)
Heidi Arthur, senior vice president and group campaign director at the Ad
Council, says that the one-in-five statistic grabbed parents' attention in
focus groups.
Ad Council public-service ads are "never meant to displace other issues
like you would if you were an advertiser trying to get someone to switch
products," Ms. Arthur says. "You're just trying to get on that list of
things people need to be thinking about."
Fair enough, but the details are important. Parents can't be everywhere
all the time, and there is no shortage of things to be worried about when
it comes to kids -- drug abuse, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, to name but
a few. Parents and policy makers need accurate information so that they
can figure out how best to focus their prevention efforts.
Unfortunately, when they rely only on shocking stats like the one at the
center of NCMEC's campaign, they're not getting the whole picture.
http://online.wsj.com/public/articl...mod=2%5F1125%5F
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