The Internet’s a Dirty Dirty Place

Though we wouldn’t have any idea what she’s talking about, CBS3′s Stephanie Abrams wants you to know that “Sexual Predators Threaten Online Gamers.” Oh noes! Going all the way in-depth, she consults such experts as “Jason Vanore, a Best Buy employee” who says, “When you’re playing online with anyone else in the world, you don’t know exactly who your children are playing with.”, which is true…sorta. Thankfully, Vanore goes on to speak about the vast array of parental controls available to anxious parents built into each console, validating his Best Buy employee credentials.

Really searching at this point for anything interesting in the “story”, she turns to Detective Cy Bleistine of the New Jersey State Police, who says, “We have kids growing up in the computer age that are leaps and bounds ahead of the adults and as the parental controls come  out, they find ways around them.” In fairness, in eighth grade my best friend Matt Lomas and I found our way around the cable box block on the Playboy Channel, so this is probably pretty accurate (at least anecdotally speaking.) Now that I’m all grown up, well, I’m a murderer…NO! There’s always going to be a small niche of kids who get around parental blocks, just like there’s always going to be a niche of people who pirate digital information — it’s the actual effects you should worry about here Mr. Bleistine. How many actual cases of sexual misconduct involving minors have taken place after meeting in an online game (on a console, more specifically?)

And is anyone here going to point out that elephant in the room? Parents oughta actually be parents and make sure their kids aren’t being jerks! Letting a console babysit your child(ren) probably isn’t the best idea — and if you’re that concerned, maybe you should be paying some attention, right? Regardless of any of this, the piece she’s written here has no real depth and ledes with a sensationalist headline; “Sexual Predators Threaten Online Gamers” makes it sound like a real threat is being posed this very minute. While there are thousands of years of recorded Xbox Live audio detailing humanity’s racism, homophobia, gender discrimation and much much more, let’s nitpick and scaremonger instead of trying to address a real problem. Of course children are threatened online, but pieces like this do no good for changing that, they just scare parents more about something they already know very little about.

I’m officially stepping off the soapbox now. Discuss.