Overestimating Threats Against Children

Bruce Schneier recently wrote about the MySpace ‘safe­guards’ being put in place to pro­tect minors. His very suc­cinct clos­ing com­ments are a must-read.

…there isn’t really any prob­lem with child preda­tors — just a tiny hand­ful of highly pub­li­cized sto­ries — on MySpace. It’s just secu­rity the­atre against a movie-plot threat. But we humans have a well-established cog­ni­tive bias that over­es­ti­mates threats against our chil­dren, so it all makes sense.

To the right is a thumb­nail of a pic­ture show­ing the allowed wan­der­ings of the chil­dren in one fam­ily through recent gen­er­a­tions. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing comparison.

Thanks for the image, Carl (orig­i­nally from the Daily Mail)