How Can You Fear Monger If The Stats Don't Support What You Say?
from the just-fear-monger-anyway! dept
We've written multiple times in the past about a UK-based "children's" charity called NCH that seems to go out of their way to release misleading and/or biased studies about how "our children are at risk." Usually these involve blaming modern technology and are accompanied by breathless quotes about how something must be done to stop the technology. In the past, this has included blaming the internet for child porn, blaming new 3G phones for allowing kids to see porn, falsely claiming that 11-year-olds are gambling online (when all that happened was they pushed one 16-year-old to gamble online themselves). After all of this, when they did a study showing most parents aren't as worried about all of this as they are, rather than thinking that (perhaps) it's because they're overhyping the problem, they got angry and talked about how parents are clueless and need to be educated. They're still pushing that education campaign, and did some research to try to support the fact that parents are clueless when it comes to what their kids are doing online. Unfortunately, their study barely seems to support the premise. This is doubly amusing since their past surveys had been shown to be written in a biased manner. Assuming they employed similar techniques, it's pretty impressive to find that only 10% of 11-year-olds say their parents don't know who they communicate with online. That means 90% do know -- which is pretty good. So, what does NCH do? They use these stats to claim that it's a problem anyway: "our research shows they need to increase their knowledge if they want to protect their children." This isn't to say keeping parents educated and aware of what their children are doing online isn't important. Obviously, it's extremely important. But, rather than fear mongering, why not report this as good progress?Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
But if they did that...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: But if they did that...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
OH NO!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
oh yesses
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
90% know
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I see this crap everyday
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
more like
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stats never work anyway
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
11-year0olds don't know
Since when do 11-year-olds really know what there parents do and don't know? I'm certain MOST parents don't know what their kids are doing online. Does anyone knoe what YOU are doing online?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It would put them out of work
Honestly - they wouldn't get their funding if studies showed that they weren't needed....
There are any number of useless services, commissions, panels, think tanks, whatever, that are a colossal waste of money, yet they get funding because they make themselves seem important.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tubes
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
How the Internet works
If you elect me president, I will make the Internet faster by moving the Windows closer to each other. This means shorter tubes. Shorter tubes mean it is faster to copy the Internet to your local Windows. I don’t know about you, but I am tired of waiting to download the Internet each day. That’s why I keep a copy of it on a floppy at all times.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]