The new media monsters we've created for our kids

In adjusting to a media environment very different from the mass-media one we grew up in, we adults have created some monsters. They're large, intimidating "creatures" that threaten the mutually respectful parent-child and educator-student communication that young people want and deserve in this highly participatory, sometimes overwhelming new media environment.

One of the monsters is the "digital native" – the term, not the child. Coined by author Marc Prensky in 2001, the phrase has its usefulness in helping us adults grasp the major media shift we're experiencing and embrace young people's openness to it. But two leading new-media thinkers – Sonia Livingstone of the London School of Economics and Henry Jenkins at the University of Southern California – both have concerns about the phrase becoming too definitive. Why?

'Digital natives' as alien life forms

In February Dr. Livingstone said in a keynote at a University of California, San Diego, conference that all the hype around "digital natives" suggests that new media "brought into being a whole new species, a youth transformed, qualitatively distinct from anything that has gone before, an alien form whose habits it is our task to understand," when what we need to do is think about and work with children in the context of their full life – home, school, friends, media and cultural environments, etc. – in order "to understand what young people do online," not the other way around.

Dr. Jenkins recently wrote, “As a society, we have spent too much time focused on what media are doing to young people and not enough time asking what young people are doing with media.... Despite a tendency to talk of ‘digital natives,’ these young people are not born understanding how to navigate cyberspace and they don't always know the right thing to do as they confront situations that were not part of the childhood world of their parents or educators. Yes, they have acquired great power, yet they ... don't know how to exercise responsibility in this unfamiliar environment."

By viewing kids as alien life forms called "digital natives," we send the message that children don't need tech-, media-, and social-literacy training to navigate the ocean of information at their fingertips 24/7 and the tricky sometimes harsh waters of digital-media-informed adolescent social development. And by focusing on technology instead of children, we create daunting, new-sounding things to fear like "cyberbullying," directing attention away from the good work already being done against bullying as well as cyberbullying by changing school cultures and teaching and modeling empathy, ethics, and citizenship (at school and online). [This is not to say that cyberbullying isn't a problem, but we need to address it calmly and thoughtfully, not fearfully, and in context. There's a lot of overlap between bullying online and what happens offline at school. And for context, see this in MSNBC.com about research showing that the number of youth aged 2-17 who reported being bullied actually declined between 2003 and '08.]

Let's do some social norming by focusing on the social norming that actually does change behavior in positive ways! (For info on social norming, see the last three Related Links below.)

The paralyzing remove-all-risk monster

Another monster we've created: the "ideal" of a risk-free childhood or media experience. The Internet has become for youth "an escape from [the] offline constraints," as Livingstone put it, that we have put on our children out of fear for their safety in public spaces. "We are raising our children in captivity," UK psychologist and Net-safety expert Tanya Byron famously stated. And yet risk can't be deleted online or offline (and experts tell us risk-assessment is a primary task of adolescence). In her research, Livingstone has found that "the online opportunities and risks, as adults define them, go hand in hand – the more children experience of the opportunities, the more also of the risks.... Children do not draw the line where adults do, so these are often the same activity: making new friends or meeting up with strangers; exploring your sexual identity or exposing your private self; remixing new creative forms or plagiarising/breaking copyright."

That's unnerving for parents, but this is even more so: The risk-removal monster eats away at children's healthy development. "To expand their experience and expertise, to build confidence and resilience, children must push against adult-imposed boundaries: identity, intimacy, privacy and vulnerability are all closely related," Livingstone said. So instead of trying to remove risk, we need to allow our children to figure out how to negotiate it – at home and school, in the very media environments (wikis, social sites, Google docs) where they're already presented with those risks and opportunities, as well as the real-world ones.

Livingstone suggests to the authors of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (MIT Press, 2009) that, after "geeking out," they tack on a fourth category addressing youth risk assessment: "Playing with Fire." Why? She says "children are not weirdly motivated to take risks online; they are motivated to explore precisely what adults have forbidden, to experiment with the experiences they know to lie just ahead of them, to take calculated risks to test themselves and show off to others." Checking out sites like ChatRoulette (see this) is "not so very new," Livingstone says, when you think back to the time when "young teenage girls told their parents they are staying at a friend’s house but then dare each other to sleep in the street or park instead. Now they play with fire online. It’s evident even from their screen names – Lolita, sxcbabe, kissmequick."

The extremely busy adult-blinding monster

A third very large monster is our own preoccupation with adult life, perspectives, and goals. We have a very hard time seeing past it to understand and respond appropriately to children's best interests. For example, Livingstone asked the question (only lightly considered at the end of a recent piece in The Economist about "the Net generation") of whether the disappointing apparently shallow civic engagement of youth online is because of a lack of interest on their part OR a boring, top-down, adult approach to engaging them online – see p. 9 of her keynote for examples (an example I can think of is the way we impose our mass-media perspective on their media use – see this on the Kaiser Family Foundation study released in January).

What could guide us around and past this hyperactive monster is the approach to youth taken by the researchers who contributed to Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out. In the book's introduction, they write: "Adults often view children in a forward-looking way, in terms of 'ages and stages' of what they will become rather than as complete beings 'with ongoing lives, needs, and desires' ... [and] as active, creative social agents who produce their own unique children's cultures while simultaneously contributing to the production of adult societies."

Viewing youth as active agents and stakeholders in their own, their peers', and their communities' well-being (in or out of media, online and offline) will not only defeat the adult-blinding monster, it’s likely also to increase adult-child communication in a media environment where respectful, informed communication is protective. How so? It opens thought to other perspectives and unconsidered solutions, making it less likely that kids will go "underground" for fear of ignorant overreaction, and encourages youth who are being victimized to seek help from adults they can trust, to name only two highly desirable outcomes. Clarity and communication are more important than ever in an unregulated, user-driven, and uncharted new media environment in which children are children so much more than they're "digital natives."

Related links

On parenting these days: "Parenting & the digital drama overload"

On the media sea change we adults are adapting to: "Youth, adults & the social-media shift"

That Economist piece: "The net generation, unplugged," The Economist found some other scholars who find mass generalizations like "digital natives" unhelpful, including Kansas State professor Mike Wesch, who says that "many of his incoming students have only a superficial familiarity with the digital tools they use regularly.... Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives.... The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population."

"Let's not create a cyberbullying panic," by ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid at CNET

"Major obstacle to universal broadband & what can help"

"Social norming: So key to online safety"

"Clicks & Cliques, Part 2: Whole-school response needed"

The Net effect

Just why do we need to think before we post and text? A logical question your kids may be asking you. Here's a possible answer: because...

online socializers and media sharers have invisible audiences

those audiences could be small or huge (tough to tell)

those readers, viewers, friends, acquaintances, potential ex-friends and employers can copy, paste, do just about anything they want with our content in other places online and on phones that we may never even have heard of

what we post and share is out there pretty permanently and can probably be found - indefinitely - with a search engine

and we can't really be sure of how private it is.

These conditions, some very familiar to many of us but neatly packaged by social media scholar danah boyd in her just-released PhD dissertation, is what I call the "Net effect." It's how digital media and technologies change the equation - even though much of the behavior (adolescent or adult) is age-old. As danah (who lower-cases her name) explains, the different contexts in which we used to speak and behave - e.g., home, school parking lot, Xbox Live, classroom, Thanksgiving Dinner - are all mashed up. According to the New York Times, "much of the danger lies in the fact that, increasingly, our 'friends' on social networking sites are actually a mix of people - friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues - with whom we would normally share only a piece of our lives." This is one of the real "online safety" issues for 99.9% of online-youth population (and about that many adults) - a better umbrella term is probably "digital citizenship" or "online safety 2.0." It's about growing up with the Net effect in place, for example, as the Times put it, "learning how not to share." Find out how Sarah Illman - who, when she graduates this spring, "will be among the first Canadian university students to have lived her entire post-secondary academic career on Facebook" - managed all this in the Toronto Globe & Mail article.

9 parts of digital citizenship

These make complete sense ("complete" as in comprehensive, too). The nine elements grew out of a three-year PhD dissertation project by educator Mike Ribble at Kansas State University. Mike defines "digital citizenship" as "the norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use." The nine elements are Digital Etiquette (I think I'd use the broader term "ethics," which includes standards of conduct); Digital Communication; Digital Literacy (sub-categories might be media literacy and behavioral critical thinking); Digital Access ("full electronic participation in society," Mike writes, but I'm not sure "electronic" is the best word); Digital Commerce; Digital Law ("electronic responsibility for actions and deeds" - I'd delete "electronic" and include taking responsibility for a basic understanding of digital law); Digital Rights & Responsibilities ("those freedoms extended to everyone in a digital world"); Digital Health & Wellness ("physical and psychological well-being in a digital technology world"); and Digital Security (self- and collaborative protection of one's data and equipment). [Ribble describes all of these in great depth on that page.] I think twice wherever anybody puts "electronic" or "digital" in front of "communication," "ethics," etc. because of the disappearing distinction between digital behavior and the real-life kind, certainly as young people experience it. Hey, ethics is ethics, right? [Thanks to Anne Bubnic of the California Technology Assistance Project for pointing this page out.]

'Law 'n' order' in virtual worlds

It's a fledgling concept, but there are some interesting community-policing efforts afoot in virtual worlds such as Second Life, VZones, World of Warcraft, and mobile-phone-based Cellufun for mobile phone users, the Washington Post reports. For example, "in World of Warcraft, a popular online fantasy game, a character who is acting out runs the risk of being attacked by a group of self-appointed sheriffs. While the avatar doesn't face official penalties, the interference from other players can deter future crimes." In one of Worlds.com's worlds, users created a novel sort of virtual scarlet letter: "an animated bird that drops an unpleasant [virtual] substance on the heads of outlaws, known as 'griefers' in virtual-world lingo." There needs to be a flip side too, of course. I love the way London-based Childnet International put it recently: "Digital citizenship isn’t just about recognising and dealing with online hazards. It's about ... using your online presence to grow and shape your world in a safe, creative way, and inspiring others to do the same" (see this item) - an important focus for parenting and schooling going forward along the lines of "an ounce of prevention," "a stitch in time," etc., etc.... Speaking of which, virtual world safety expert Izzy Neis recently blogged about how a kids' world itself will be used to teach civility. She wrote that Dizzywood.com for kids 8-12 was "selected by the YMCA of San Francisco to enhance the youth program’s technology curriculum ... to reinforce its program emphasis on activities that promote values such as caring, honesty, respect and responsibility."

Good citizens in virtual worlds, too

I truly believe that children's good citizenship online helps protect them - and it's a large and growing piece of the online-safety puzzle. How so? Because (I know I've quoted this here before) "youth who engage in online aggressive behavior by making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization," according to an analysis from the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center. So I was delighted to find "Raising Good Citizens for a Virtual World," a five-lesson course from author and tech educator Doug Johnson (thanks for bookmarking it, Anne Bubnic). But this is not rocket science, parents. Don't be put off by the words "course" or "five lessons." If you can just help your kids apply what they're learning about how to treat people respectfully and function in community to the online part of their lives, you're accomplishing a lot. Doug points out that the degree of anonymity cyberspace has an all-bets-off effect that people take advantage of. It's true. But this doesn't complicate things; it's simply why the same ethics and citizenship we've always taught them need to be applied to online behavior too. The other protective tool that needs to be applied online is critical thinking (see "How to recognize grooming" and "How social influencing works").

Cyberethics training needed

“She was a little big for her age, her face still chubby and prepubescent,” writes ZooeysRoom.com’s Kaley Noonen in Edutopia.org. “She pulled me aside after the cyberbullying workshop I'd just given to a room full of 20 middle school girls. She looked as though she were hiding something. ‘Would you help me get my MySpace page shut down?’ she asked.” The girl explained to Kaley that an ex-friend had used her password to hijack her MySpace profile and proceed to bully her by posting “all kinds of malicious [sex-related] lies” about the girl on it.

As hard as that is to read, anecdotes like Kaley’s and so many others from teens, reporters, and other experts are not unusual. Then there’s…

The brand-new finding from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that some 8 million US 12-to-17-year-olds have been bullied (see this issue).

The recent finding from the Crimes Against Children Research Center about the fine line between bullying an victimization: “Youth who engage in online aggressive behavior making rude or nasty comments or frequently embarrassing others are more than twice as likely to report online interpersonal victimization” (see this summary), and…

All this points to a serious and growing need for ethics training. Kaley quotes a 2005 Pew/Internet study that found girls are “now considered the ‘power users’ of online communication tools. This kind of power needs to be tempered by ethics training. You wouldn't give a 16-year-old girl a chainsaw without warning her of its dangers, yet with a keystroke, many girls are capable of carving up names, reputations, even entire lives with cheerful indifference.”

At the end of his 10-part Internet-safety series, author, public-policy expert, and dad Adam Thierer writes that “one of the most important parenting responsibilities involves teaching our children basic manners and rules of social etiquette.” Helping them apply those basics in their online experiences is equally important, he suggests, offering eight “sensible rules” for online behavior. Rule No. 1 is “Treat others you meet online with the same respect that you would accord them in person.”

Kaley takes it a step further when she teaches middle-schoolers what empathy means – with a real-time demo of their own completely non-empathetic reactions to a photo of Britney Spears with her head shaved and dark circles under her eyes (see the article for those heartless reactions).

One thing is clear: If we don’t want our children to be victimized themselves, we need to talk with them about treating people online the way they would to their faces, and if someone else is cruel online, not to make the situation worse by participating. Note one high school student’s intelligent attitude:

"’I've heard of [cyberbullying] and experienced it. People think they are a million times stronger because they can hide behind their computer monitor.’ This student called them ‘e-thugs,’ while displaying his own maturity about the practice: ‘Basically I just ignored the person and went along with my own civilized business’.” [This is on p. 5 of the Pew/Internet report, also quoted in InternetNews.com’s coverage.]

More on this

The latest numbers: My summary two weeks ago of the Pew Internet & American Life Project's just-released study on cyberbullying in the US, based on both a survey of and focus groups with teenagers.

Cyberbullying's seriousness. In a commentary at MSNBC, Helen Popkin suggests we need to come out of denial about cyberbullying’s seriousness, especially when dealing with not-yet-fully-developed teenage brains. But we also need to acknowledge, she suggests, that this new/old social ill is certainly not “owned” by teens – and she’s right. There is a lot of ugly online harassment being committed by adult bullies too, male and female.

An adult’s-eye-view of social-networking etiquette at The Times of London: Note No. 8 in writer Jack Malvern’s “A Guide to Internet Manners” at the bottom: “The golden rule for Facebook Etiquette is the same as for manners generally. Manners mean how we behave in society. Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. And this does not mean having to admit every unknown Tom, Dick and Harriet to your friendship.”

Mobile bullying across the pond – one in five 11-to-19-year-olds in the UK have been bullied either via phone or the Internet, the BBC reports.