The internet

Unknown said:

However, it facilitates crimes to a rather horrendous level.

I mean so does the post. and the telephone. Mail fraud used to be a big thing before the internet as telephones fraud is still an issue, especially for the elderly. Terrorists use the phone and letters to arrange their activities. People send letters stuffed with bombs or anthrax. Poison pen letters were a thing. I'm sure back in the day someone said the post or the phone was ruining society.

Unknown said:

It also isolates people and childhood appears to have drastically changed because of it.

Childhoods have drastically changed but I don't think the internet is chifley to blame. Bullying for example isn't new. It's just moved online like lots of other things. It wouldn't disappear if the internet did. People have isolated each other because of social changes beyond the internet. The workplace has become less social, possibly a side effect of a more litigious and politically correct society. People move about more for work and study which makes it harder for them to put down roots and maintain long term face to face social networks, That's really more a product of economic forces and globalisation.

Children these days are much more supervised in real life because the average parent has been scared into thinking under every rock is a dirty old man in a trench coat about to run off with their child under their arm. Ultimately on some level kids can't have full social lives without some autonomy. Unless the adults get lost and let them spend time some unsupervised with their peers.

The internet itself has changed though. It's become less social. Partly this is driven by enshittification (look it up) but also the boggy man that cyber stalking has become. Because ultimately all active attempts to get to know someone new can seem like stalking or harassment if cast in the wrong light, and people have become hyper sensitive to this.

I mean people actually worry these days about employers checking their social media for controversial things. The issue is not that controversial opinions / activities are out there for all to see but rather employers care in the first place. Because fundamentally people should be hired for their skills not their views or personal hobbies.

These are things driven by social changes. Political correctness, the erosion of the work / personal life divide, fear about violent crime (especially towards kids) even though statistically it's going down, globalisation, geographical mobility, generally increasing levels of financial instability, a more litigious society etc.

Peter said:

fear about violent crime (especially towards kids) even though statistically it's going down,

https://punchng.com/the-rise-of-online-paedophilia/

According to the 2021 Global Threat Assessment report published by WeProtect Global Alliance, the scale of child sexual exploitation and abuse online is increasing at such a rapid rate that a step change is urgently required in the global response to create safe online environments for children.

A decade old:

https://www.wired.com/2014/12/80-percent-dark-web-visits-relate-pedophilia-study-finds/

80% !!!

https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/vkpp-launch-national-analysis-of-police-recorded-child-sexual-abuse-and-exploitation-csae-crimes-report-2022

Yes but I'm talking specifically about violent crime. That's face to face crime, particularly from strangers. That's the reason, or at least a reason, why parents don't let their kids play out on their own or go off to the shop or cinema etc with out an adult etc. Those figures don't apply to that. Not even the last one. Read the statistics to the end and you find 52% of them are 'crimes' committed by children. That is to say consensual acts between people underage. Incidents that the CPS will almost always say it's not in the public interest to prosecute but the police are obligated to record because the law in this country defines consensual sexual acts between under age teenagers as a crime. Statistics on prosecutions would be more meaningful.

You have this string of high profile child abduction cases in the 90s and 00s. The Milly Dowler case, the Rose West case, the James Bulger case, the Mccann case, the Soham murders. The news started sensationalising these long hunts for missing children or the dramatic trials of child murderers like soap operas and the general public ate it up and started looking for child killers under every rock. This is why so many parents won’t let their 15 y/o catch a bus home from their friends house after dark these days. It’s nothing to do with the internet.

You’ve totally got the wrong end of the stick. my argument is there is little evidence that the Internet has lead to an increase in the production of child porn.

The fact that child porn is an old problem that predates the Internet is one of the bases for my argument.

I’m saying really it’s no different than the proliferation in the post. Bluntly I am unconvinced that the Internet is a driver of the production of child porn. I suspect that the Internet is merely bringing the problem into the public view by distributing the material that was already being made more widely and more openly. Some people might even argue that that is a good thing because it gives you a greater understanding of the scale of the problem.

i’m asking you if you have any evidence to the contrary. not evidence that there is child porn on the Internet. evidence that the Internet is causing more to be created.

I’m saying really it’s no different than the proliferation in the post. Bluntly I am unconvinced that the Internet is a driver of the production of child porn. I suspect that the Internet is merely bringing the problem into the public view by distributing the material that was already being made more widely and more openly. Some people might even argue that that is a good thing because it gives you a greater understanding of the scale of the problem.

i’m asking you if you have any evidence to the contrary. not evidence that there is child porn on the Internet. evidence that the Internet is causing more to be created.