How Safe Are America's Teens?
By CBSNews.com producer Joel Roberts
Violent video games and Internet porn; cyber-bullies and online predators; school shootings and teen gangs. The image of today's teenagers often seems to be that of a tech-crazed generation run amok – either committing acts of unfathomable brutality, like Columbine or Red Lake, or else, falling victim to malevolent adults via the same technology teens themselves have so widely embraced.
But how widespread are these dangers really? Are America's teens more likely to be the victims – or perpetrators – of crime today than in the past? How worried should parents be about what their kids are doing on the Internet?
The surprising answer is that while they remain vulnerable to a host of threats online and off, teens are actually safer today than they've been in years.
"Teenagers are safer today, absolutely," says University of California-Berkeley law professor Frank Zimring.Want to comment on this story? Want to see what other readers think?Click here.
While preliminary figures just released by the FBI show a rise in most categories of violent crime in the U.S. in 2005, there have been dramatic declines overall since the bad old days of the early 1990s, including a huge drop in teen crime and teen violence. (The FBI has not yet released 2005 crime data by age group.)
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there were 49.7 victims of violent crime (homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) for every 1,000 12-to-15-year-olds in 2004, compared with a high of 118.6 in 1994. There was a similar drop of more than 50 percent among 16-to-19-year-olds.
"Serious crime in general is down," says Zimring, author of "American Youth Violence" and the forthcoming "Great American Crime Decline." "Burglary, robbery, auto theft, across the spectrum, the things we used to worry about, have gone down and down substantially."
Even the nation's schools have gotten safer, despite the media focus on a wave of horrific school shootings. Violent crime rates in public and private schools are about half what they were in 1992, according to "Indicators of School Crime and Safety," a report from the U.S. Justice and Education Departments.
While many criminologists cite the demise of the crack cocaine plague in U.S. cities as the primary cause of the decreased juvenile crime rate, Zimring says that's just part of the story. He says the same factors that contributed to an overall drop in U.S. crime since the 1990s are responsible for the drop in youth crime. These include a high imprisonment rate, a strong economy and expanded opportunity for young people, and demographic shifts that saw the highest risk age group, young people ages 15-29, decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population.
"The big story why crime dropped among kids is the same as why crime dropped among all age groups," Zimring says.
None of this is to downplay the serious risks teens face. They remain more likely than any other age group to be the victims of violent crime. And they're especially vulnerable to online threats ranging from sexual solicitation to identity theft.
Most alarming is how frequently teens are targeted by sexual predators. Almost one in five young Internet users will receive an unwanted sexual solicitation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice; nearly half the time, the harasser is another teen. One in 33 teens will receive an aggressive invitation to meet the solicitor.
Since 1998, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says more than 16,000 cases of online enticement of children for sexual acts have been reported to its CyberTipline.
John Shehan, the CyberTipline's program manager, says teens aged 14 to 17 are the most common targets of these cyber predators.
"As children get older they have more freedom online," Shehan says, which can translate into greater vulnerability.
While most of these contacts never progress past e-mails or instant messages, sometimes they cross into the real world. In March, for example, federal authorities arrested two men on charges that they had illegal sexual contact with Connecticut minors whom they first met on MySpace.com.
"We teach kids 'don't talk to strangers' when they go to the library or walk down the street," Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance, says. "The same is true online. Don't talk to strangers. Protect their privacy. Keep their personal information personal. Information can be used not only to hurt them but to hurt their families as well."
But kids, of course, don't always do as they're told – and don't always tell their parents what they're doing. Nearly two-thirds of teens surveyed by The Pew Internet & American Life Project said they do things online that they wouldn't want their parents to know about. That includes, for many, corresponding with strangers.
Teixeira tells a story about his own niece, whom he describes as "a pretty average teenager" with a profile on MySpace.com.
Concerned about who she may be communicating with, Teixeira checked out her profile and found she was lying about her age, calling herself 17 when she was really 14.
Teixeira decided to test her. He put together his own profile, posing as a 14-year-old, and asked his niece where she went to school and where she lived. She e-mailed him right back with the information.
"This scared the hell out of us," Teixeira says of the fact that she so quickly shared this information with a complete stranger – information that could be used to harm her. His niece was "shocked" that she was so easily fooled.
But Teixeira's niece is typical. Nearly 60 percent of teens in the Pew study said they've received an IM or e-mail from a stranger, and 50 percent said they've written the strangers back.
Teens' tendency to trust the people who contact them online and their willingness to share personal information is also making them increasingly susceptible to fraudsters and hackers.
A Federal Trade Commission survey, for example, found the number of victims of identity theft under 18 doubled from 2004 to 2005. It also found young people between 18 and 29 were the age group most often victimized.
Despite these threats, a survey by i-SAFE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to keeping children safe on the Internet, found 75 percent of teens say they actually feel safer online than off. Convincing them that these perils are real is the biggest challenge for parents and educators.
"The number one thing they need to know is that there are dangers online," Teiuxeira says. "There are people who want to hurt them and people who want to steal their money."
By Joel Roberts