Numbers don't lie (not)
This morning's Boston Globe featured a fright-fest of an article that surely caused many a parent to spew his or her coffee across the breakfast table. In "The Secret Life of Boys," writer Bella English rings the alarm bells about boys and Internet porn. Her most disturbing statistic? "The largest consumer of Internet porn is kids between ages 12 and 17."
Hold on parents. Before you race upstairs to pull little Billy away from the computer, consider the source of the statistic: Family Safe Media, a company "that sells Internet filters and other blocking devices." Hardly a neutral source. And certainly one that has a vested interest in stirring parental paranoia.
Now, given the recent spate of hoaxes -- the Wendy's chili-bowl finger, the three guys and a baby bundle of "found" cash, the absurd "runaway bride" fiasco -- you would think the Globe would be a bit more cautious. Perhaps do a little homework before running such an inflammatory statistic.
Well, I spent just two minutes on the Web and found something interesting. Take a look at this page on the Family Safe Media site. Scroll down to the subhead, "Children's Exposure to Pornography." At the second bullet, you'll find the statistic in question, "Largest consumer of Internet pornography" and in the adjacent column, "12 - 17 age group."
But doesn't the context for the statistic, under the "Children's Exposure to Pornography" header, imply that the 12 - 17 age group indicates the largest group of consumers among children, not the public at large? At the very least, isn't that a qualification that should have been noted in English's article?
And if you look carefully at the top of the page, you'll see that Family Safe Media has itself drawn these statistics "from a number of different reputable sources including Google, WordTracker, PBS, MSNBC, NRC, and Alexa research." Is such a potpourri a credible source of fact? Or would a reasonable person insist on research that was much more rigorously constructed?
And why isn't the Globe asking these questions -- before dropping bombshells on the front page of its Living/Arts section?
Hold on parents. Before you race upstairs to pull little Billy away from the computer, consider the source of the statistic: Family Safe Media, a company "that sells Internet filters and other blocking devices." Hardly a neutral source. And certainly one that has a vested interest in stirring parental paranoia.
Now, given the recent spate of hoaxes -- the Wendy's chili-bowl finger, the three guys and a baby bundle of "found" cash, the absurd "runaway bride" fiasco -- you would think the Globe would be a bit more cautious. Perhaps do a little homework before running such an inflammatory statistic.
Well, I spent just two minutes on the Web and found something interesting. Take a look at this page on the Family Safe Media site. Scroll down to the subhead, "Children's Exposure to Pornography." At the second bullet, you'll find the statistic in question, "Largest consumer of Internet pornography" and in the adjacent column, "12 - 17 age group."
But doesn't the context for the statistic, under the "Children's Exposure to Pornography" header, imply that the 12 - 17 age group indicates the largest group of consumers among children, not the public at large? At the very least, isn't that a qualification that should have been noted in English's article?
And if you look carefully at the top of the page, you'll see that Family Safe Media has itself drawn these statistics "from a number of different reputable sources including Google, WordTracker, PBS, MSNBC, NRC, and Alexa research." Is such a potpourri a credible source of fact? Or would a reasonable person insist on research that was much more rigorously constructed?
And why isn't the Globe asking these questions -- before dropping bombshells on the front page of its Living/Arts section?
1 Comments:
If you watched the promos each evening for the 11 o'clock news, you'd live your life in a state of perpetual fear. Apparently, there are millions of missing children, registered sex offenders living just around the corner, hordes of thieves anxious to steal my identity (which they are welcome to, by the way....Groucho Marx: "There's a Groucho nobody knows, and I wish they'd find him because he's been signing my name to a lot of checks."), horribly unsanitary restaurants, and pharmacists who can't read. Frankly, if my kid wants to look at photos of naked women on the internet, that would seem to be the least of my worries.
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