DISQUS

Sean Garrett · 3 years ago

Thanks for posting. I'm curious. What was the reaction to your challenge?

MikeT · 3 years ago

There's another aspect that is being ignored. These teens know what they're doing. This fourteen year old should never have been going out with a nineteen year old that her parents didn't personally know. She secretly arranged this, most likely knowing that a sexual angle was going to be present. I've had enough of this "they're just innocent children" crap that gets pushed onto teens when they do this stuff and it backfires. Teens today are educated from earlier ages than ever to know the full ramifications of sexual activity. I refuse to believe that this girl actually had an innocent motive in arranging this meeting.

Adam Thierer · 3 years ago

Sean... The reaction to my challenge from the two state AGs was somewhat predictable: They agreed with me that the problem begins with getting tougher on real bad guys, but then, without missing a beat, they both immediately shifted blame back to the websites and said that social networking sites could "do more" to address the problem.

But "doing more" inevitably involved age-verifying teens, which despite being impossible, they said social networking sites should at least try to do more of. And then they made all sorts of misguided analogies about how we make people show ID before buying beer or tobacco so that youngsters can't get it. I countered that (a) what made that possible was a state-issued driver's license that most teens under the age of 16 don't have; and (b) the analogy was inappropriate because there is a world of difference between allowing kids to buy beer versus allowing them on a social networking website where the vast majority of their activities are socially beneficial and not harmful to them or others. They didn't care. They just kept on advocating age-verification for ALL teens even though they had no idea how to do so and the entire panel before us had said again and again that age verification for teens was impossible. I finally got so frustrated that I said something to the effect that "we should stop treating kids like criminals and start paying more attention to finding the real criminals and put them in jail." That just got them even more angry with me.