Report: Threat overblown of online sexual predators

The Internet may not be such a dangerous place for children after all.

A task force created by 49 state attorneys general to look into the problem of sexual solicitation of children online has concluded that there really is not a significant problem.

The findings ran counter to popular perceptions of online dangers as reinforced by depictions in the news media like NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series. One attorney general was quick to criticize the group's report.

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report cited research calling such fears a "moral panic," and concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

"This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet," said John Cardillo, chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex-offender database and was a member of the task force.

"Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons."

The report will be released today, but The New York Times obtained a draft copy. The 39-page document was the result of a year of meetings between dozens of academics, childhood-safety experts and executives of 30 companies, including Yahoo, AOL, MySpace and Facebook.

The task force, led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, looked at scientific data on online-sexual predators and found that children and teenagers are unlikely to be propositioned by adults online.

In the cases that do exist, the report said, teenagers are typically willing participants and are already at risk because of poor home environments, substance abuse or other problems.

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, said he disagreed with the report. He said it "downplayed the predator threat."