Study: Fears over kids' online safety overblown - Eric Bangeman, ars technica

One of the commonly accepted mantras is that the Internet is a very dangerous place for kids—especially social networking sites, where innocent youngsters can be approached by strangers offering them virtual candy—hence the recent moves by sites such as MySpace to tighten up access controls for younger users. A new study from the National School Boards Association suggests strongly that many of those fears are misplaced and that the overwhelming majority of kids have never had an unknown adult ask them for personal information.... Of the over 1,200 students surveyed, only seven percent said that they have been the victims of cyberbullying. That figure is in stark contrast to a report issued a couple of months ago by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In a survey of 935 teens aged between 12 and 17, nearly a third of them reported that they had experienced some form of cyberbullying. Three percent of the kids surveyed said that unwelcome strangers attempted to communicate with them online. Two percent said that such a person attempted to arrange an in-person meeting. A miniscule .08 percent of the kids responding to the survey said that they went through with such a meeting without their parents' permission.

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