John Stossel raises a good point about the widespread fear over child predators.  It’s basically a point I’ve tried to convey to my wife (to no avail) often.  People today think that child abductions and other harms are widespread and there is ample cause to be afraid and not trust anyone.  My gut feeling is that such stories are like news porn and are thus disproportionately reported because they get good ratings.  If some white kid gets abducted from a prosperous neighborhood you might as well turn the TV off for a few weeks if you’re interested in real news.

Further exacerbating this apparent increase in the number of crimes per child is the fact that children’s complaints about overly “friendly” strangers, friends, and relatives (the most common group, by the way) are treated much more seriously than in recent decades.  That encourages more kids to step forward and report abuse, but it does not necessarily mean that there are more abuses per child.

Stossel hits home the point about the relative scarcity of the most feared abductions:

The stereotypical kidnapping, where a child is abducted by a stranger and murdered, ransomed, or kept for a significant period of time, rarely happens. In fact, there are only 100 or so such cases every year.

Those abductions are tragic, but kids are more likely to be caught up in a tornado. Maybe we should have warnings about that, with lots of pictures to put everyone on edge.

He also points out that many, including the media and security companies, have a vested interest in making you think that your child’s well being is in grave danger.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 8:33 pm and is filed under Media, Social Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.