 When we did our youth internet safety surveys what we found is virtually every parent you talk to we had such high rates of Parents saying they were very concerned and they had rules and they had this and they had that We actually thought that probably there was what we call social desirability involved here where parents didn't want to say no We're not concerned. No. We don't have rules so we we didn't find any relationship between Kids who whose parents said no and and kids who had more solicitations, but we did certainly find Associations between Kids who were troubled and often that reflects on you know, what's happening in a home and and kids who are receiving unwanted solicitations in in our youth internet safety surveys and then We haven't analyzed our new data and then in the police survey in the police surveys yet Since you're all here, maybe we can get some free advice as Companies we all have aspects of social networking whether some of us are pure social networking But others have aspects of it and if we have to focus on the top three the four the top five things to do Whether it's technical policy or or education perspective, what would you recommend? Unrecommendation I would make Partly it's to make things easy to report to make problems easy to report but one thing that is coming up in the bullying literature and the awful I'm talking about offline bullying and Also in the sexual assault literature in prevention of sexual assault in places like college campuses is by standard involvement creating situations where Kids are looking out for each other and partly that involves education So that we're telling kids When you see this sort of activity online when you see You know sexual interaction sexual conversations having on law happening online for example you may be seeing a situation where one of your peers is about to get into big trouble and Creating suggestions for kids To intervene and to report. I think that is something that we're seeing is effective offline that could be effective online Before you you to also answer and Dana Do you think there's a danger where kids are gonna say oh wait narc? That's the narc button. Don't press it. Don't turn turn turn on your friends. And how do you overcome that issue? Well, I think you involve kids and how you set that up because I think most kids are concerned about safety Most kids don't want to be harassed by Fleezy older men I mean a lot of these situations kids would just as soon do without But you would involve kids in setting up situations so it wouldn't look that way Education is a huge component as well. So I mean, there's a lot of kids that don't understand because they're under age Sexual pictures of themselves as child pornography that type of education education about statutory rape what it is why it's Against the law that type of education is really useful and if I had a world with My own money that I could spend that would be significant I would I would get mental health professionals to troll social networking sites and reach out to these young people We can do it. It's not that we don't know how to do it. It's not that we don't have the reason we don't have the The people to do it. We just haven't connected yet. And so it would be great. I mean My my personal shtick is that social networking sites are such an amazing opportunity to identify at-risk kids before the internet They were silent. They were so hard to find And in here they are and and a lot of these kids you look at their profile and you go, wow And wouldn't it be amazing if we actually harnessed this opportunity to actually do something really cool and get these kids Connected with services both online and offline the mental health experts getting involved was so key for so many situations I actually tracked Yes, it was the 2006 all of the kids who killed their parents and I went to their profiles And you know what all of them talked about abuse in the home or problems that were going on Before they killed their parents right in detail in graphic detail where you as a police officer We'd immediately look at this and go child abuse in the home solve problem now right critical critical But people aren't reaching out to these kids I'm getting mental health experts and getting people not just trolling looking for the offenders But trolling looking for the really troubled kids would be really helpful in so many ways the model is not through schools, but partnering with social networking sites and There are So mental health professionals that have a presence online one that comes to mind is 1 800 suicide Which obviously started as a hotline and they now have online real-time chat Because we've done research and kids who are self-harming are online. I mean it's such an obvious way when When you're depressed at three in the morning, what are you gonna do? You're gonna be online So I don't think it's a school. I mean schools are wrestling with the whole intersection between face-to-face school Based bullying and internet bullying and kind of that intersection. I think It's related but a separate issue. I would say for what we're talking about here that it would be Social networking sites reaching out to mental health professionals reaching out to mental health service organizations and saying we think this is important work with us The only thing that I would add to all of this is I mean obviously I want to you know Third or second the education aspect of it I think that that's incredibly important here and I would also emphasize trying to bring peers into the mix peer educators peer contact As a site as a location For teens to to talk about this stuff because I think sometimes Some of these are more adult oriented the adults feels it feels a little bit more formal But peers are more accessible potentially. I mean that's a tested model in the schools as well And I think bringing that to the internet May help here as well a lot of Federal government or sort of local and local government funds street outreach programs and street outreach programs are a Combination of peers and mental health experts who reach out to kids who are on the street when they're getting themselves into trouble We need to teach the digit or treat the digital spaces as a new form of contemporary streets and engage in the same way And so I'm not convinced it's just the social network sites that should be paying for it But it actually should be working with governments doing the street outreach program dealing with it with the numerous Folks that we've trained to do street outreach because those who are doing street outreach that are 18 and 19 They know how to use the internet. They're not they don't need training on that Great, so we've got really fast because I've got a lot of questions already lined up Yeah, I was gonna also say quickly that we need to stop get out sort of ghetto Realizing the idea of online sexual victimization if there's not We need to look at the full spectrum of what kids experience and be frank about it with kids and the internet is Such a better way to do it than say sex education classes and schools where teachers often feel so Constricted by what they're allowed to say and what kind of reactions they're gonna get One request could speakers identify themselves and their organization, please I mean, I know John asked that but some of them haven't been I think it'd be helpful for us So we're gonna go Donna Dean at John Morris and then swing over there a couple on the side to go to Stephen Hi Donna enough is enough I'm back to a few questions ago. How did you take into account the process of grooming? When when you were evaluating aggressive sexual solicitations, for instance You said that that most of that the teens knew the age of the person that they were dealing with Well, when did they know did they know what initial contact? Did they know throughout the grooming process? You know, and then how also do you take into account? Which your findings that they left voluntarily and the role again of grooming the effective grooming to where they would Leave voluntarily Am I making sense? I We ask young people to describe What happened in the particular sexual solicitation? I mean we ask them to describe the most bothersome Solicitation and if they didn't have one that was most bothersome the most recent and then we asked them detailed questions I wouldn't say that what these kids told us amounted to grooming Grooming I think implies two things first a process that happens over time that reduces inhibitions and introduces sexuality It's often something you see a lot more with younger children Because the reality of adolescence is they're highly interested in sex already And you see it in some of the crimes that we found but these sexual Solicitations as I said most of these were very mild incidents. They didn't amount to grooming. They weren't prolonged Contacts that kids had with solicitors but in most cases the kids just Cut off contact with them. Does that answer your question? Hi, Dina Sacco and with the Berkman Center. I just following up on something that you said earlier and on a Portion of the online predators in their victims piece that we had in our packets for today I'm just wondering if somebody can talk a little bit about the use of child pornography As something that kids engage in as a conduct and also as something that People might use in contacting kids because that's Oh, yeah, well, so For full disclosure, I'm a former federal prosecutor handling primarily child pornography cases So I was very interested in that part of the article so we have data on pornography and we're talking about intentional seeking of pornography and We wanted to understand kind of how often it's happening online But also how often it's happening offline to kind of get a better context for you know What influence is the internet having and I know that there's some concern that that with increased ease of access that the internet affords that there may be sort of this explosion of Access and use of pornography and what we're finding is that the percentage of young people who report looking at pornography online is similar to the percentage of people who look at Looking at pornography online offline rather so that internet and face-to-face Pornography seeking behavior among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 15 is similar Kids using webcams and engaging in kind of producing child pornography And also in the use of child pornography in the grooming process in the cases where you do have online predators But I don't know if anything if it's sort of anything you have goes beyond what's already in this Piece that we have or if there's anything you wanted to point out from that or not We'll have new data from our current study in a few months But what we found in our second youth internet safety survey was about four percent of the kids had been Solicited to create sexual images of themselves and send them to someone online I think it was about 25 percent of our cases in our first law enforcement study involved the production of child pornography What in these online meeting cases and we see a huge variety of ways child pornography is produced a lot of ways that it's used So we'll have some updates We'll have some updates on that. I do think One thing about the internet is it is a place that attracts for years So there are people online who are soliciting these images And exhibitionists people who are creating images of themselves and transmitting them who have no interest in any face-to-face meeting that the voyeurism and exhibitionism are some you know There's a lot of that on the internet that doesn't necessarily Involve any kind of face-to-face contact or desire for that and kids are exposed to it I have to say it's a little disconcerting to be sitting in a focus group of eighth graders and find out that most of these kids have You know seen 40 year old guys masturbating on webcams I mean I I'm laughing just because it was as I said it was disconcerting and they're all saying yuck But it's a pretty common experience One other thing is is that across the board the kids don't see the production of content as child porn And this is actually where education becomes a very very critical thing and most of them are even Putting together certain kinds of images for the attraction of guys often two to three years older than them They're not gone for the 40-year-olds, but they are often doing it for Men a little bit older and they're often doing it to look older right because they see themselves as being able like you know they've got breasts and they're able to flaunt it in a way or perform it in a way where they can show it off and There's no linkage in their heads that this that this is child porn There's no linkage that that that putting this up for guys two three four years older might be problematic And that to me is is above all else an education issue So John Morris and I saw Steven sand was up a Little bit off a little bit different focused You know that there are social networks we're familiar with obviously my space and Facebook and others, but they're also kind of for that lack of a better term pre social networks a Club penguin or you know the things that are in between club penguin For that category of more restricted Interaction, I mean does your research suggest there are Significant problems in the bullying area or in the sexual solicitation area. No, we we asked Especially in the the second growing up with media surveys of those data that we closed field in December of last year the virtual world like like Club penguin less than 10% of those who are solicited and less than 10% of those who harassed that it had ever happened In a virtual world, so there there are other spaces online where it's much more common our data doesn't We stop it though the youngest we go is 12 and those Spaces right now are aimed more at children a bit younger than that Steven Balkan with the family online safety Institute listening to the Presentations this morning. I was hugely relieved in a way by the statistics and by the direction that it's all going Yet I also felt and I know I said this in the line for lunch earlier But I felt like I was into some kind of altered universe because this is not the universe that the AGs are sitting in This is not the universe that the media particularly the to catch a predator type of TV programs are in So how do we bridge this gap? It doesn't seem to be and the whole purpose of why we're even here and why we're going to be continuing to meet Throughout this year is to address an issue or a problem that what may only exist in three percent of cases What are we doing here Amanda? I mean, I think this is exactly why we're here is to help you frame the question in a way That helps to understand what's going on and that the media in my experience picks up on the story that scares the bejesus out of the most people and The story that we're telling here today is vastly less sexy than that We're talking about Complicating and making it less black and white and making it a more of a nuanced story I think there's still stuff to discuss here. There's still an issue. It affects kids I think what we're telling you today and obviously everybody else can can kick in their own thoughts is that this is a complicated issue and that the kids you really need to be reaching the ones who are really getting into trouble who are Engaging in behaviors that cause serious harm to themselves are the kids who are already at risk and who aren't listening and That's where we need to be focusing more of our energies and I guess from my point of view we have a problem as long as What one there's psychologically we're really built to for fear That's how we're meant to respond and so we pay attention to things that are fearful and any time time media Kind of capitalizes on that they get us to pay more attention to them And so we create a cycle they never clarify things, right? I followed a bunch of different cases That were supposed abductions due to social network sites and when I followed them and worked with police officers and talked What was going on? They ended up being runaways, right? Is that ever clarified in the media? No, it's not and so One of the things we have a challenge is is like what is our role and responsibility in one educating the media and in two Figuring out how to actually balance some of this because they make a lot of money off of fear mongering It works really really well and that's going to create a disconnect over time You know in most things that the the media sort of spirals out as like you know the culture of fear the numbers have been going down Right like violence in schools Surprisingly have been going down which I didn't expect adult teen pregnancies going down a lot of these things that we think are skyrocketing Are and so I've got more of a question for all of you about how we get back to a sense of reality within our culture I don't know the answer to that Yeah, I Would just add to that we're so nervous about talking about talking frankly about sex and in this culture As I tried to point out with you know always with sexual offenses against kids We want to say it's strangers. We want to say the danger is external. We don't We're not comfortable being frank with kids One thing I think is heartening is that this generation of kids in my experience is a lot more comfortable talking about sexual matters than the adults at any rate in my generation are and I and I think that's a good sign and I think that may be as You know as we mature if we mature as a society that People will be more open to hearing the real story and less inclined to being so nervous about this But again education and candid Talk about what's really going on. I think is key The other thing is that to the degree that we can help kids report Cases that are happening to themselves particularly since what 90 something percent of them are people that they know That they're afraid to report. They're not going to report their parents to who their parents right that that doesn't work So to the degree we can use these technologies not only to find these kids But also to support them in reporting the fact that the majority of child abuse cases are happening in the home That's also to our advantage because that Solving that problem will solve a huge percentage of our real child abuse cases Larry maggot with connect safely.org, but after hearing Dana's critique of the media. I have to confess I'm also a journalist in another world And you're right there there is pressure on journalists. I've personally experienced pressure from television networks to Comment in ways that reinforced the fear mongering in it and when you don't do that Sometimes you get less airtime. So it's pretty obvious why why that is so successful There's a real theme here and and we've heard these themes before but I think this is the first gathering I've been to where where the theme is unanimous We have three of the leading or four of the leading researchers in the country all of whom are saying basically the same thing Showing different studies that are pointing to the same data One is that many of the victims if not most of the victims are compliant Two is that most kids are doing okay that the vast majority of the population actually does not seem to be Suffering any great harm with the result of the internet or the extent to which their harm They seem to be coping with them and handling with them And three that there are there is a significant important minority of underserved youths in the term we've been talking about them all day high-risk teens and I'm not sure I can really ask anything that hasn't been asked before but I Still do feel that that I feel like we're we're inoculating a population Against an illness that is very unlikely to affect most of the population Yet we're failing to inoculate the very people who need that that vaccine and it just strikes me that that There needs to be a radical rethinking of internet safety education policy and legislation and You know, whatever attorneys general do We need to really rethink Who are we reaching and how do we reach the people who really need to be reached? Sounded like a comment not a question saying and keep going in case there are actually questions. Thank you There though not that it was disallowed to make a comment on a question, but Hi drew weaver with a well It would seem intuitive that abductors strangers would use the internet to reach out to children to find them I'm curious what your theories are on why that's not happening to a large degree. Is it a matter of Education that kids for example just aren't revealing their locations and therefore the internet is not an efficient way to do that well, I think It's important to recognize that most sex offenders Who offend against children and adolescents aren't strangers? The stranger abductions that you read about that get a lot of publicity, of course because they're so frightening are Actually extremely rare. They're really a small minority of the sex crimes that victimize kids And the people who commit those sorts of crimes have certain Characteristics that mean that probably the internet isn't really that favorable to them. First of all, they tend to be People who don't have other ways to get to kids So So they abduct so they grab someone who's walking home from school or they do they have sadistic tendencies and Because of that they use violence, but again Those are a minority of offenders most sex offenders Are not violent most use if they're targeting adolescents they use seduction and As I said, most adolescents are very interested in sex. It's even Reluctantly nonetheless, they're drawn into these relationships with younger children most Sex offenders use the authority that they have over kids because they're caretakers or family members It's easy to get kids to comply with their desires. So the idea of stranger abductors That's a it's a rare kind of crime and most of those people are impulsive offenders They're not going to take the time to look for someone on the internet They're going to drive by like some famous cases. We've seen and cease a kid playing in their yard Or grab someone off the street. It's simply the way they operate Two things that come out of our data that I think also suggest why it's it's not such a great It's not a great hunting ground as it were. It's one is the ignore-delete issue is that even if you do contact teens and And you actually attempt to make contact with somebody you're generally quite unsuccessful With the most majority of teens but also that's on data that I didn't present which is also a part of our teens online safety report Sorry teens and online privacy report which should basically suggest that most teens don't actually reveal a lot of information about themselves publicly on the internet They actually are getting the message on that particular On that particular message quite strongly and in fact restrict quite a significant amount of information So it's hard to find information about teens The other component is is you want to actually look at how many abductions take place in the United States every year And what that data looks like abductions are pretty well reported although they can sometimes be conflated with Runaways the vast majority of abductions in this country are abductions by the non custodial parent Next grouping of abductions is actually by somebody who knows the kid usually under an extended family member And then you get into this sort of like this vague knowing right which is the the degree in which the neighbors are the Abductors so even in the cases of abductors internet or no stranger abductions are really small of abductors Let alone when you get to internet into the factor because as you saw some of the data even of sex offenses It's like 1,000 out of 68,000 right so when you start doing the combination It's where you see that and so it's so much easier to access kids that you see around you If you have if you are going to abduct but even because of how rare that is According to a source, I know from the FBI a stranger abductions of children is about 300 a year So Perry gets the last Question on substance might get a question on process and then we promise them. You've been very generous for your time Thank you that we will let you go Great work, and you guys are doing and have been doing extraordinary work. I talked to 10,000 kids a month in person and They often tell me some different things from one of your your studies, and I know that your studies are Done there can find numbers. They're generally adult permission when you're doing it And and maybe some of the kids may be concerned about what they're saying Has anyone done? Larger work where we set up a social network group or something else and saying have you ever encountered someone offline and you were sexually exploited Against your direct consent and that's a larger studies where the kids who you may not have spoken to will give us a better sense In our youth internet safety survey, we actually ask kids about offline sexual victimization and We have some Anyway, I can't remember the exact numbers that we found But the numbers of kids who admitted being sexually abused or assaulted and most of these were peer assaults That had had nothing to do with the internet Were similar to the numbers that we've gotten in other years considerably higher than what we saw In terms of internet the study was about 1500 kids, right right, okay? So I'm talking about large numbers of kids and kids who may not be comfortable telling you Who they are so you can track back to the phone number However, you contacted them but anonymously to get a sense of how often it's happening not and I absolutely agree with you No one's tracking down these kids and climbing in their windows at night 100% of the cases the kids have gone willingly to the meeting whether they knew who they were or weren't And so it's just is can we use the power of social networking to get even greater data? Although it's not going to be confirmable and truly academic getting a Better sense of what the kids are saying when they think we can't find out who they are Well, I would just say Perry. There are a lot of studies of rates of sexual assault done in a lot of different methodologies I don't know one that's used exactly the methodology you're talking about But there are a lot of studies out there that talk about rates of sexual assault Internet-related on ways of using the technology to find out more It's like you guys are saying the answer is no to Perry's question just because we have to move on I also want to clarify that there are ways of going at it like for example with another hat on I work for an Organization that works to end violence against women and girls So we actually purposely get the girls who have been assaulted who are willing to admit it or do so anonymously online and even from that group The I mean it's horrible what you hear that goes on in the household So even in that group what I'm seeing is that while we don't have the numbers the percentages of this line up with What I'm seeing when I go from just the cohort where the vast majority of it is in the home Or with people that they know even in this place where they're admitting to it anonymously So I don't think that this data is as off as you might think So I want to give it to Mike for a last process question But just to throw in one thing as well process-wise which is if there are other Studies that others want us to look at as the task force with Dana's the chair. We're data glutton We we want it This is not a point of trying to confine what we're looking at but expand it and if there are ones with Methodologies that use social networks in different way, of course we want to see it. I have just finished a book on this topic I haven't found what you're talking about either But but there are obviously other ways to ask the question We want we just want to get that data and find a way to bring it bring it forward in the most reliable way Obviously, we're not going to bring every study if it seems to have a weak methodology But where there's something credible we want it. We want it in the mix Mike gets the last process question Thanks, John. You answered one of them. I Assume we're going to hear from the research advisory board again during the course of the task force meetings You'll Dana you'll come back to us with updates or other researchers or new research from these folks Is that how it's going to work? The research advisory board will have sort of multiple steps right now. We're doing Well, we meaning me and one intern are doing a literature review of the entire space including an annotated bibliography That will be available to you in this period to the degree that you want me to bring in Experts to deal with specific topics Tell me and of course once we have this all of the literature out there And once we actually, you know bring together and convene the research advisory board as a sort of hole We will put out sort of a statement and a literature review connected to that So that people have a sense of what's going on and so that you have a sense from all of the researchers in The space that they generally agree on but for any of you who have things where you want me to specifically look at a topic You want me to specifically look at a study? Please send it my way I'm more than happy to and I'm more than happy to bring in Researchers or to have people speak to specific topics I spent today focusing on you know contact issues because that seemed from our last meeting to be the primary Concern and so if there are other concerns that people have let me know and I will look I will bring in researchers in the space Okay, and then the last thing is will copies of today's charts be available to task force members Online you mean the power points. Yes, they will be available not only to the task force members But to the public at large as will this video that's one of the reasons that we're videoing it one of the reasons It's part of the public, okay And one last favor can somebody summarize some conclusions that were reached today or There was a lot of stuff said and a lot of information given a one pager or two pager Huge chunk of it's in that packet that you're sitting on there Some there's some reason in there of the studies as well as one sort of well-written Sort of going over a lot of different studies from these two. So I actually think you less that's Problematic most of it is in what you have and there will be minutes as well So Megan over there most likely is typing away at this and as she did for the first meeting We'll represent what we heard so if the one page that comes out of that is not What you need Mike? We'll get it done But but hopefully the idea is really to be a funnel in a way that we can use use the information That's why we videotaped it so we can watch it over and over again It's totally going YouTube down it When will the power points be available? I'm planning on posting mine tomorrow to our website the pew internet product Orc and I can email As soon as I have them I will put them in some in a space where everybody can grab them even before the video the video I'm gonna cut so that because you can't really put this online. So that'll take a little longer Great. So to our group. What a wonderful wonderful job. You did. Thank you very much for your generosity