Oh. My. God.

[andrewducker]

I just cannot believe the sheer stupidity that is rife amongst people who claim to know better.

This BBC news story

A forensic psychologist spoke about the dangers of online journals, or blogs, and pictures posted directly online.

Rachel O'Connell said adults could use weblogs to learn about children.

She said: "This is just a paedophile's dream because you have children uploading pictures, giving out details of their everyday life because it's an online journal."

She described a scenario where a group of paedophiles could exchange information on a child's movement, potentially leading to an abduction.

For Fuck's Sake! How many actual children are actually kidnapped by actual paedophiles in a year? And how many will get something good from being able to share their lives with others and find likeminded children? I'd have _killed_ as a kid to be able to not feel alone from the ages of 11 to 18. The internet would have added unimaginably to my life and LJ would have made it so much more worthwhile.

But apparently there may be paedohpiles out there so we should lock up our children.

Maybe we should make them wear Burkhas so that they don't inflame the lusts of any passing paedophile.

I just feel speechless with rage.

Comments

[deililly.livejournal.com]

It is getting out of hand.

Like how parents can't film their kids at their school shows in a lot of places. Obviously it isn't parental pride, they are making dirty videos. Utterly bonkers.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

Some people are so motivated by fear.... I feel sorry for the forensic psychologist.

And she seems to completely absolve the parents of any responsibility here as well. I mean, if your kid is online all the time, it's your responsibility as a parent to be aware of what they're doing, at least to have a little "don't have cyber sex with perverts" chat.

Okay, that last bit was a little flippant, but I find myself unable to express how I feel about this woman's statements.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Ach, no. That's exactly the conversation they should have.

"This is ethics. This is civics. This is how to be an informed consumer. This is how to be an informed citizen. This is how to communicate. This is how to better oneself. These are the risks, and these are the glories."

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

YES!!

I think people are honestly afraid to talk to their kids now though, and it's SO sad to me. I taught high school for 3 years, and if nothing else, it taught me that kids/young adults are willing to and capable of talking about just about anything. It's the adults that get embarrassed.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Exactly, exactly.

And imagine how much better informed you'd be about say, mortgage rates, or health, or literature, if you had a child to teach/talk to. *Everybody* wins.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

*laugh*

I'm a firm believer in art/literature with kids, because that's the only way they're going to develop a taste for it. I don't know if mortgage rates would ever be palatable, but I'm willing to try, should I ever have kids of my own!

[broin.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. =)

I just rejoined a club, the purpose of which is to run roleplaying games for kids. Ages 12+. And it's such a thrill, just endlessly satisfying to see them go on to create their own fictions.

With such clearly excellent genes (they *need* to be passed on), best wishes with your fertility. =)

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

It's really sad -- the most amazing people I know are all determined to be child free.

I don't blame them, but I wish we could sample their DNA and use that in the kids that other people want to have.

Thank you!

[broin.livejournal.com]

"...but I wish we could sample their DNA...".

Hey, check my room. The average IQ of my sheets probably exceeds 140.

[derumi.livejournal.com]

O_o;; I wonder if Rachel O'Connell is related to Ceara O'Connell. That'd be a mindfuck for me (especially as Dr. O'Connell doesn't appear to be from the US - CA or NY).

What kind of sick person poses as a child online, anyways? @_@ Besides Rachel and pedophiles, I mean.

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

I am of two minds. I am right there with you on this, because I want my daughter to have a vast and lovely life online when she gets old enough to type.

BUT...the web is a vast and powerful search engine for paedophiles. It's much *more* than that, obviously, but it is *also* that.

One of my LJ friends commented awhile back about how she found out that her daughter was chatting very earnestly (and secretly) online with a middle-aged man who was trying to set up a secret meeting.

She found it out only because, after she got suspicious of how her daughter was treating her computer time, she snooped on her daughter's browser history and a few other things, which she hates doing. There is nothing that will alienate a kid more than such distrust, and there is nothing that certain kids need more than exactly this kind of watchdogging. It's a big, fat parental mess.

All-paranoia-all-the-time is worthless, but any discussion of kids-on-the-web requires at least a soupcon of paranoia or it's not being realistic.

If you had told me, say, twenty years ago, that I'd be reticent about posting my six-year-old daughter's picture online because I didn't want perverts masturbating to it, I'd probably have turned red and told you to get your sorry, filthy mind out of my sight.

But, that's exactly what I consider, every time I'm tempted to put a cute picture of her up on the web, for all those reasons. It's a brave new world.

[onceupon.livejournal.com]

I have to say though, that's precisely what your friend SHOULD have done. Yes, her kid will be mad at her. But her kid will also walk away with a deeper sense that her mom will do anything to look out for her.

It's not a parent's job to be well-liked by their children. Children are not built in little friends for their parents. I mean, it's great when that is the case, but there need to be more parents who aren't afraid little Tiffany or Johnny will be mad at them just because their parents busted up their relationship with a middle aged freak.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

I don't really understand what harm it does me or my kid if perverts are masturbating to my or my kid's picture on the Web, so long as they keep it at that. By logical extension, you should never bring your kid out in public, because a pervert might see hir and later masturbate to a mental image of hir.

[armoire-man.livejournal.com]

By logical extension, you should never have children, because life sucks. The whole "logical extension" thing is bullshit from the gitgo, n'est c'est pas?

Harm? I don't like it, period. It gives me the creeps, and by logical extension, so do you.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

The harm alleged is that some people do progress from using kid pictures for sex, to using actual kids for sex, or trying to (grooming), or using real kids to make porn, which is generally acknowledged to be abusive. No one knows if this is how it works but there is some evidence that for some potential paedophiles, it does. And that's all I'm going to say: I work in this area semi professionally and frankly, no one knows enough empirical evidence to get into a not totally emotive argt.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the poster was saying that he would find it creepy if someone was masturbating to a picture of his child, even if they never actually had any contact with the child and he never knew that it was happening. I find that incomprehensible. In general, it bothers me when people start expressing the wish to regulate others' desires, rather than behavior, and the whole line of research into whether porn affects behavior seems like a desperate attempt to prove a foregone conclusion, which is that there's a good reason to regulate desires.

Don't get it either

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

Because... children are so scarse these days that you have to track them down using the internet or what?

Re: Don't get it either

[broin.livejournal.com]

Please don't offer suggestions. =)

Re: Don't get it either

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

No of course not: you RFID chip them :-)

[dragonscholar.livejournal.com]

The majority of molested and kidnapped children are molested or kidnapped by people they know.

Somehow this keeps getting forgotten, probably because people don't want to admit it.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

Thanks for bringing this point up, it's saved me the trouble.

[moniqueleigh]

Yup. 'Zactly.

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

I was going to make a flippant comment about cars being a paedophile's dream because they allow them to travel to another area to look for children. But on reading the article I think it ought to be pointed out that she doesn't seem to be actually advocating banning of blogs or stopping children having them - what she's doing is pointing out some of the dangers that people may not have thought about. To take the car analogy again, we don't have to ban the automobile to take measures against people using them unwisely.

I'm all for kids having blogs. But a lot of parents aren't aware of the potential issues, and I think they need to be made aware of that, though in a manner that would give a sense of proportion.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

I agree TBH. I altready said to Andy: most people (teachers/parents/policymakers/lawyers) don't know what blogs are, nor what RSS can do, and they need to be aware how these technologies can be used. Yes the current concentration on the Internet paedophile is deranged given the vast proportion of child abuse is inflicted by people they know, not strangers; but that doesn't mean we should ignore it. (In fact there is already a huge amount of govt/charity web stuff informing parents about how to deal with cyber safety ; but again, naturally it's the parents who need it who won't know it's there :-)

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

Excuse me but did I just slip into the Monkey Dust Universe? First there's the Jodi Jones boyfriend killed her bacause he is a *Goth* (looks more like a ned to me) and then I read this in the Metro paper this morning. Yes, nanny. No, nanny. Five pounds of flax, nanny...