I have a huge problem with numbers and how people abuse them and manipulate them. It just pissed me off when I hear numbers that can not possibly be verified used as fact. For example, on my drive home from work I heard a commercial that said "One in five children are sexually solicited online." Now I tried to set aside my bias for how much I hate the scare tactics they use to push their point, but then they threw numbers out but did not qualify them. One in five children means nothing.
What is a child? Is it everyone under the age of 16? That sounds like a good cut off. They can legally drive then, that is a huge responsibility, that makes them an adult right? No, I don't think so, how about 18, you can vote and join the military. There are two of the biggest responsibilities to shoulder. Hell, I am in my late 20s and I think most college age people are kids...and I know to people my parents age, I am a kid. So, how did they define child? I am guessing more like 8-18, just thinking that there are not a huge number of under 8 year olds that would either be online or understand if they were being sexually solicited. In all honesty, they could quote their source on their webpage, but I forgot the page. The commercial sounded a lot like the ones cybertipline.com gives out, so I checked there and could not find anything.
So, what is a child? I am going to arbitrarily say under 15. I chose this number for a reason. If we go over here to The CIA World Factbook it says the estimate US population as of July 2006 is 298,444,215, with 20.4%, or about 61 million, of them being 14 and younger. So given our 1 in 5 of 61 million children, a little over 12 million children are sexually solicited online.
That is a staggering amount of sexed up children. Now lets see here...I live in Indiana, we have a little over 6 million people (grab your own state for comparison). Ok, so the number of children sexually solicited online is almost twice the population of my home state...or 24 times the population of Wyoming. If you live in Illinois or Pennsylvania, imagine everyone in the state (even you) being a sexually solicited child.
Lets do another comparison. There are an estimated 207 million people online in the United States. So 1 in 17 people online in the US is a sexually solicited child under the age of 15. That is horrible. But it also means that if you take a group of 17 people you know who use the internet, 1 of them is under 15 and has been sexually solicited. Or that almost a third of the people online are under 15.
My other problem with these statistics is how did they find out? I keep getting this image in my head from South Park where a a guy is molesting a doll in a classroom to try and find out if the Chef ever touched the children. Would most children even understand some of the things that were happening. Hell, I remember hitting on girl in high school and them having no idea what I was saying. I am sure I am not alone in that. How can this 1 in 5 be accurate at all?
I think I am going to end this now before I start getting real offensive. I am in no way condoning sexually soliciting children. I am also in no way condoning those stupid commercials that try to scare you by showing you just how easy it is to track down children by illustrating how to do it thus teaching people how to track down children. Anyways, my final note, statistically speaking, there is a 1 to 1 ration of people who have or has had cancer to people who have or has had cancer and has breathed air...so air must cause cancer. Numbers apparently don't lie.
