Hacker News Reader

Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

> Of all the missing children, less than 1% is non-family abductions.

How much of it is because stranger danger is false, and how much of it is because parents no longer let their children out of their sight? I am not making a statement, I am genuinely curious and I am asking a question hoping someone knows the answer. But I wonder if the reason so few children are harmed by strangers is that children's unsupervised interactions with strangers have now shrunk to almost nothing, so there is almost no opportunity for harm anymore.

View on HN

This is not a new trend, it's always been the case. My quick search shows in 2001 in the US of 50,000 minors reported missing, around 100 were abducted by strangers. I didn't immediately find any older data but I've heard this same thing since I was a kid.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150216071609/http://www.crimel...

Does it mean that all of the missing cases apart from that hundred were resolved and confirmed as not abductions by strangers? Otherwise, how many of the remaining cases were? I suspect this number might make a world of difference.

I believe most of those cases were resolved, including adults there are only a couple thousand unresolved missing persons cases per year. Using different years of data for this, which isn't ideal, but in 2012 ~99.6% of missing persons cases were resolved. Those remaining cases wouldn't make a significant difference.

https://www.npr.org/2013/05/07/182000622/majority-of-missing...

Yeah, but that's still 100 kids!

Yeah, 100 is waaay too many

Disagree, there is a >0 number of stranger child abductions we should expect with optimal policies.

Same as there is a >0 number of car crash deaths with optimal policy. And a >0 amount of rat droppings in our food.

And in your personal life, a >0 chance of dying of avoidable accident.

This ain't LessWrong, I'm allowed to complain about a single child abduction as a stain on humanity. But yes, I appreciate your math.

You're allowed to complain about anything but that doesn't mean they are good complaints.

If the head of a self-driving car company exclaimed "100 car accident deaths per year is too many," we wouldn't say his opinion is wrong, we'd be throwing money at it. It's just that, an opinion.

I was not arguing that we should make laws or set policy. I was just saying, wow, 100 kids a year taken!

Is there any non-zero number that's not too many in a real sense?

There is a balance in almost anything at the scale of hundreds of millions of people. People die in all kinds of ways. Some drown, but we still build pools. Some die on trampolines, but we still install those. Some die in the tub/shower, but we still clean ourselves.

I don't see any reason to think that there isn't any possible nuance on the balance between freedom to move as a kid and the danger of stranger violence. (I have two kids who aren't yet teens. The concept scares me, but I also let them swim, play on trampolines, ride in cars/airplanes, bathe, etc.)

"Is there any non-zero number that's not too many in a real sense?"

No because he does not mention the denominator and is thus free to increase it ;)

Again, you cannot make this argument in a world where cars are legal.

"Stranger danger" as a concept is far older than 20 years, so you're just looking at the same type of statistic as OP. I'm guessing you need to go back well over 50 years for a meaningful difference in attitudes.

Edit: when I was growing up (well before 2001!) that was certainly the attitude – we didn't have the phrase "stranger danger" (maybe that's from the US?) but "don't take sweets from strangers" was common.

I also remember, as an adult, watching the film M and that finished with a strong message about not leaving your children unsupervised, and that's from 1931! But that message doesn't prove it was common at the time so I just mention that for curiosity.

There has been some level of distrust towards strangers in society forever. The comment I was replying to is about the rather recent complete segregation of children from possibly interacting with strangers.

I believe the major US panic about "stranger danger" arose in the 1980s and early 1990s—in particular, there were a couple of high-profile cases of children going missing in the early '90s that were sensationalized far beyond what made any sense. As a child growing up in the '80s, I was allowed to poke around the neighborhood unsupervised, but by the time I was a teenager, I was already hearing about children being strictly watched at all times as "the norm".

There were a few cases of multiple children missing in major cities (like the Atlanta child murders, 28 dead in two years), and also the proliferation of cable news. The former was a valid, regional, concern but people let it blow up into a more national fear.

Cable news, in turn, started emphasizing singular disappearances/killings (not serial cases), which further exacerbated this fear. When you have 24 hours of coverage on CNN and 10 of them are about "Missing Girl in California", your perception of how common this is gets distorted. It's a singular case, but seeing it all the time causes people to perceive it as a frequent thing instead of the relatively rare thing it is in most of the country.

Why would a stranger be a problem?

Imagine for a moment that you are the most evil person ever. Why would you harm/kidnap a child? There is no gain for the most part - the kid's parents probably cannot afford enough of a ransom to pay for your time. and even if they do it is hard to collect without getting caught. There are much better crimes you can commit to satisfy your evil desires.

i generally agree that stranger danger is overblown

but your point is definitely in error. if you are the most evil person, and desire to rape, torture, and murder a person, then a child is the best target. they are least able to fight back, and are the most naive so they can be tricked into going somewhere unsafe.

Oh, please, terrible people who enjoy abusing children just create their own children to abuse. Why would anyone abuse other people's children when they can make their own and have complete control over them?

Ask me how I know.

You guys are acting like there's some sort of vetting to become parents, it's bizarre.

You're assuming this person would be thinking rationally about a crime they'd like to commit, when it's often a very specific urge that overcomes their fear of consequences.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com