Worried About the Wrong Things Read online

  The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning

  Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, ed. W. Lance Bennett

  Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility, ed. Miriam J. Metzger and Andrew J. Flanagin

  Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected, ed. Tara McPherson

  The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, ed. Katie Salen

  Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media, ed. Anna Everett

  Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, ed. David Buckingham

  Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software, by Mizuko Ito

  Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media, by Mizuko Ito et al.

  The Civic Web: Young People, the Internet, and Civic Participation, by Shakuntala Banaji and David Buckingham

  Connected Play: Tweens in a Virtual World, by Yasmin B. Kafai and Deborah A. Fields

  The Digital Youth Network: Cultivating Digital Media Citizenship in Urban Communities, ed. Brigid Barron, Kimberley Gomez, Nichole Pinkard, and Caitlin K. Martin

  The Interconnections Collection, developed by Kylie Peppler, Melissa Gresalfi, Katie Salen Tekinbaş, and Rafi Santo

  Gaming the System: Designing with Gamestar Mechanic, by Katie Salen Tekinbaş, Melissa Gresalfi, Kylie Peppler, and Rafi Santo

  Script Changers: Digital Storytelling with Scratch, by Kylie Peppler, Rafi Santo, Melissa Gresalfi, and Katie Salen Tekinbaş

  Short Circuits: Crafting E-Puppets with DIY Electronics, by Kylie Peppler, Katie Salen Tekinbaş, Melissa Gresalfi, and Rafi Santo

  Soft Circuits: Crafting E-Fashion with DIY Electronics, by Kylie Peppler, Melissa Gresalfi, Katie Salen Tekinbaş, and Rafi Santo

  Connected Code: Children as the Programmers, Designers, and Makers for the 21st Century, by Yasmin B. Kafai and Quinn Burke

  Disconnected: Youth, New Media, and the Ethics Gap, by Carrie James

  Education and Social Media: Toward a Digital Future, ed. Christine Greenhow, Julia Sonnevend, and Colin Agur

  Framing Internet Safety: The Governance of Youth Online, by Nathan W. Fisk

  Connected Gaming: What Making Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, by Yasmin B. Kafai and Quinn Burke

  Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality, by Meryl Alper

  Worried About the Wrong Things: Youth, Risk, and Opportunity in the Digital World, by Jacqueline Ryan Vickery

  Worried About the Wrong Things

  Youth, Risk, and Opportunity in the Digital World

  Jacqueline Ryan Vickery

  The MIT Press

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  London, England

  © 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Set in ITC Stone Sans Std and ITC Stone Serif Std by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Vickery, Jacqueline Ryan, author.

  Title: Worried about the wrong things : youth, risk, and opportunity in the digital world / Jacqueline Ryan Vickery ; foreword by S. Craig Watkins.

  Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2017. | Series: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation series on digital media and learning | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016038045 | ISBN 9780262036023 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  eISBN 9780262339322

  Subjects: LCSH: Information society--United States. | Digital media--Social aspects--United States. | Information technology--Social aspects--United States. | Internet and teenagers--United States. | Internet--Safety measures. | Internet--Security measures.

  Classification: LCC HM851 .V527 2017 | DDC 303.48/33--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038045

  ePub Version 1.0

  for Mom and Dad—Thanks for believing that a silly story about a bunny could lead to bigger dreams.

  Table of Contents

  Series page

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Series Foreword

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: A Generation at Risk?

  I Risk 1 Historical Fears: Teens, Technology, and Anxiety

  2 Policies of Panic: Porn, Predators, and Peers

  3 Access Denied: Information, Knowledge, and Literacy

  4 Negotiating Control: Distractions, Stress, and Boredom

  II Experiences 5 Networked Sharing: Participation, Copyright, and Values

  6 Visible Privacy: Norms, Preferences, and Strategies

  7 (Dis)Connected Pathways: Expectations, Goals, and Opportunities

  Conclusion: Opportunity-Driven Expectations

  Appendix A: Participants and Methodologies

  Appendix B: Theorizing Risk

  References

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  Figure I.1 Characteristics of harm-driven and opportunity-driven expectations.

  Figure I.2 Disconnections that contribute to harm-driven expectations.

  Figure 7.1 A framework for connected learning. Source: Ito et al. 2013 (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License).

  Figure 7.2 A model of an ideal learning ecology.

  Figure 7.3 Sergio’s learning ecology.

  Figure 7.4 Javier’s learning ecology.

  Figure 7.5 Gabriela’s learning ecology.

  Figure 7.6 Selena’s learning ecology.

  Figure 8.1 Connections that contribute to opportunity-driven expectations.

  Series Foreword

  In recent years, digital media and networks have become embedded in our everyday lives and are part of broad-based changes to how we engage in knowledge production, communication, and creative expression. Unlike the early years in the development of computers and computer-based media, digital media are now commonplace and pervasive, having been taken up by a wide range of individuals and institutions in all walks of life. Digital media have escaped the boundaries of professional and formal practice, and of the academic, governmental, and industry homes that initially fostered their development. Now they have been taken up by diverse populations and non-institutionalized practices, including the peer activities of youth. Although specific forms of technology uptake are highly diverse, a generation is growing up in an era when digital media are part of the taken-for-granted social and cultural fabric of learning, play, and social communication.

  This book series is founded upon the working hypothesis that those immersed in new digital tools and networks are engaged in an unprecedented exploration of language, games, social interaction, problem solving, and self-directed activity that leads to diverse forms of learning. These diverse forms of learning are reflected in expressions of identity, in how individuals express independence and creativity, and in their ability to learn, exercise judgment, and think systematically.

  The defining frame for this series is not a particular theoretical or disciplinary approach, nor is it a fixed set of topics. Rather, the series revolves around a constellation of topics investigated from multiple disciplinary and practical frames. The series as a whole looks at the relation between youth, learning, and digital media, but each contribution to the series
might deal with only a subset of this constellation. Erecting strict topical boundaries would exclude some of the most important work in the field. For example, restricting the content of the series only to people of a certain age would mean artificially reifying an age boundary when the phenomenon demands otherwise. This would become particularly problematic with new forms of online participation where one important outcome is the mixing of participants of different ages. The same goes for digital media, which are increasingly inseparable from analog and earlier media forms.

  The series responds to certain changes in our media ecology that have important implications for learning. Specifically, these changes involve new forms of media literacy and developments in the modes of media participation. Digital media are part of a convergence between interactive media (most notably gaming), online networks, and existing media forms. Navigating this media ecology involves a palette of literacies that are being defined through practice but require more scholarly scrutiny before they can be fully incorporated pervasively into educational initiatives. Media literacy involves not only ways of understanding, interpreting, and critiquing media, but also the means for creative and social expression, online search and navigation, and a host of new technical skills. The potential gap in literacies and participation skills creates new challenges for educators who struggle to bridge media engagement inside and outside the classroom.

  The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning, published by the MIT Press, aims to close these gaps and provide innovative ways of thinking about and using new forms of knowledge production, communication, and creative expression.

  Foreword

  Today, some things about teens and their digital and connected lives are given. We expect that teens will be active on social media, performing the aspirational self, sharing their lives with peers, and commenting on the latest episode in a pop culture universe that plays out like a reality TV show. While the platforms continue to change, teens’ enthusiasm for constructing their own identities and aspirations, sharing their lives, and connecting with peers via digital media remains steadfast. But we have also come to expect something else, as Jacqueline Vickery meticulously details in this wonderful book—we have come to “expect harm.”

  The very fact that we expect that teens will inflict pain on each other, will only be interested in viewing content that adults find objectionable (and that sometimes is), and will suffer immeasurably from their engagement with digital media says a lot about the world that adults have both imagined and, unfortunately, realized for young people. The “risk discourse,” as we learn in this book, is a regime of institutionalized power and a flourishing industry that shapes distinct policy formations, school-based approaches to digital media and learning, parenting practices, and a media industry that turns teens’ adoption of technology into primetime scripts of despair, doom, and even death. If we are to believe what we are repeatedly told by the risk industry, young people are a generation at risk and need the adults in their lives—parents, teachers, mentors, and politicians—to protect them from themselves and the harm that awaits them in the digital media world.

  But Vickery pulls a jujitsu maneuver in this fascinating inquiry into the digital media lives of teens. Rather than ask “How do the risks that kids encounter through their engagement with digital media promote harm?” she asks “What if we see risk as an opportunity?” It is a brave question and one that resonates throughout this meticulous study of young people’s digital media practices.

  What really stands out about her analysis is the degree to which it is punctuated by the voices and lived experiences of young people who rarely figure in public discourses about teens, technology, and risk. Think about it. Whose voices and life experiences inform policy decisions related to teens, technology, and risk? As you read this book it is clear that youth labeled “at risk” or “disadvantaged” are seldom if ever genuinely considered in the policy prescriptions advocating risk avoidance and protection.

  In a carefully woven ethnography and cultural critique, Vickery focuses her knack for detailed research and nuanced analysis on the lives of our most vulnerable youth. This, quite frankly, is a revelation. It is also a breakthrough perspective that has much to offer those who consider her ideas and provocations. What happens when we think about risk, harm, and opportunity from the perspective of young people often marginalized by society? How does the risk discourse suddenly shift and compel us to rethink the very terms, norms, and expectations that power the risk industry? In Vickery’s account the lives and voices of these young people ring loud and clear. We learn about their aspirations and their frustrations. We see how their social and media ecologies have been transformed by the adoption of social and mobile media. Even though disparities in the digital world persist, we also see how young people bring ingenuity and aspirations to their digital media practices. In this book we see how educational and digital disparities as well as restrictive policies related to digital media continue to matter, but in ways that educators and policy makers seldom think about.

  As she maneuvers expertly around a conventional wisdom that is often guided by sensational headlines and adult-driven fears rather than empirical evidence and youth-driven experiences, Vickery asks us to think about the unintended consequences of the risk discourse on non-dominant youth. Much of the risk discourse, by default, imagines privileged youth. As a result, educators, policy makers, and media industries seldom think about the implications of the “risk equals harm” perspective for young people on the margins. And yet, as Vickery reminds us, these young people stand the most to lose in current formulations of risk.

  This book is a provocation that challenges our very notion of youth and digital media culture and, consequently what is really at stake as young people struggle to find dignity and opportunity in the world. While reading this book you are likely to ask yourself questions that have either remained dormant or simply not been articulated for far too long: What are the unintended consequences of “protecting” young people from participation in the digital world? How do discourses of risk and the risk avoidance regime reproduce social and educational inequalities? How can schools empower young people to leverage technology as agents of change rather than exist as passive victims of the technologies they use?

  Our schools are built almost entirely on the idea of technologies as risk. This explains why our schools block social media, offer technology courses that are more vocational than educational, and do very little to support learning opportunities that promote higher-order digital literacy and civic agency. It explains why our schools invest in curricula that restrict young people’s engagement with technology instead of curricula that would empower their engagement with the digital world. It is hard to believe, but more than twenty years after the Internet first came into our classrooms we still look at the technology through a lens of suspicion and stress rather than trust and courage.

  The risk discourse is a pervasive narrative and gives shape to a regime of power, influence, and control that is dispersed across many fields, including schools, the policy-making apparatus, and media and pop culture. The risk discourse from this view emerges as controlling, class-biased, and likely injurious to many of the children and teens it purports to protect. The risk industry is dangerous because it encourages us to worry about some things (i.e., addiction, porn, harm) and not other things (i.e., digital literacy, equity, and opportunity). After reading this book you are likely to think that the risk industry is an enterprise that, in the end, may be doing more harm than good. We learn from Vickery that the real risk, indeed the ultimate risk, is the reproduction of social, economic, and digital inequality. A generation of young people are coming of age in schools and a society that, in the name of protecting them, may actually be limiting their prospects for developing the skills, competences, and networks that are the true currencies of opportunity in a knowledge-driven culture and economy. What do we really block when we block childr
en’s and teens’ access to networked media? What harm do we inflict when we build institutions that fail to build young people’s confidence and competence in the digital world? Answers to these questions represent the most profound and enduring risks to our children, and by extension, our ability to create what Vickery envisions: a safer, healthier, more equitable digital future.

  If you are a parent, an educator, a media maker, or a policy maker, you would do well to heed Vickery’s call to think about these questions and about the harm that the risk industry is causing our kids and our culture. Harm-driven expectations do not just inspire fear. These expectations also provoke the design of spaces, practices, and policies that rob young people of their agency and disables their capacity to develop vital skills for a world gone digital. By contrast, Vickery explains how “opportunity-driven expectations” and the discursive possibilities that they inspire can provoke the design of spaces, practices, and policies that enable young people to develop the agency and skills that will serve them well in the digital age.

  After you have read this book, the very framework that you use to think about teens, technology, and risk will likely be transformed. You are almost certain to ask how our schools, families, communities, and civic sphere would be different if digital media were to be treated as a “technology of opportunity” rather than a “technology of risk.” You will ask yourself “What are we overlooking in terms of risk and opportunity?” More important, this book also compels you to ask “Who are we overlooking?” This is the question that our institutions—schools, families, policy, and pop culture—must begin to ask and courageously address if we are to ever establish a social framework for thinking in more nuanced ways about what is at stake for young people and about the ongoing struggle to create more equitable forms of agency and participation in our world.