Moral Panic: Misdirected?

Chapter 4 of Danah Boyd’s book focuses on the moral panic of parents regarding adolescent behavior and safety on the Internet. She begins with describing that parents have been concerned with the safety of their children even before the Internet was common in households. In the 1950’s parents worried about their children being exposed to provocative Elvis Presley and rock n’ roll, in the 1980’s and 1990’s people believed that curfew and anti-loitering laws would reduce crime. Looking back at these instances it is much easier for adults to see how misguided this moral panic was, but today the moral panic is extremely real in terms of technology and the Internet.
Boyd uses the television show To Catch a Predator as an example of how the moral panic became widespread. She explained that on To Catch a Predator, the producers would set up fake profiles of young girls and would then see what older men tried to talk to them. When they agreed to meet up in person, the tv show would ambush the older man, instead of being a young girl. This show was popular before I started watching television programs that weren’t on Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, so I never saw it at the peak of its popularity, but it did remind me of a show on MTV called Catfish. This show is a self-proclaimed “docu-series” that helps people in Internet relationships find out if the person they are dating really is who they say they are. I thought this show was interesting when compared to How To Catch a Predator and the moral panic concerning adolescents online because most of the people this show deals with are actually young adults or adults, and not just teens being tricked into these relationships. I thought this was as interesting because just as the Internet is not the only place that adolescents are in danger, adolescents aren’t the only ones that can have trouble with the people they meet online. Boys, girls, men, and women should all be equally aware, but not paranoid on the social websites online.

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