apophenia is a blog that I was turned on to some time ago by a friend and it remains one of the ‘smarter’ blogs I read to this day; I highly suggest you subscribe to it.
Danah recently posted the series of YouTube videos which consist of her being on a panel of four acclaimed experts on youth and Internet victimization. I’ve posted the same video below, after the jump. If you’re interested in the mp3 audio of the series or the pdf transcript, both of those are available from her website linked above.
The gist of what these experts say is that the things which we previously thought were “risky” online behavior like sharing personal information or talking to strangers, really aren’t that risky after all.
First, things that we assume to be true did not seem to be worn out by the data. For example, we assumed that if adult men are meeting young women online, deception must be involved. We assumed that if young people are posting and sending personal information to other people, this must place them at greater risk for victimization.
The data suggest that the vast majority of young people who are
meeting adults online are not deceived and instead, knowingly, at
least as knowingly as a young person can, consent to this relationship. And we
