Worried About the Wrong Things Read online

  S. Craig Watkins

  Acknowledgments

  Above all, I want to thank the high school students who opened up their lives to me and made this book possible. I also want to thank the teachers for opening up their classrooms and the parents and grandparents for opening up their homes. I wish I could thank all of you by name, because you deserve more credit than I publicly can give to you. You are the reason this book is here, and I will forever be grateful for your willingness to share your lives with me and for your commitment to this project. Thank you—we all have much to learn from the experiences and perspectives that you shared.

  Importantly, I want to thank my advisor, Craig Watkins, for developing this project and allowing me the privilege to be a part of it. Thank you for being a dedicated mentor and teaching me how to respectfully research the lives of youth with awareness and care. I owe a big thanks to the entire Digital Edge team as co-collaborators of this research. Your insights were a priceless part of this project. Thank you Alex Cho, Vivian Shaw, Jennifer Noble, Andres Lombana Bermudez, and Adam Williams. Our times together at FHS were some of my most valuable experiences in grad school. And thank you Lauren Weinzimmer for carefully helping code our hundreds of transcripts.

  I had the privilege of incredible mentors and advisors at the University of Texas who indirectly contributed to this project and directly contributed to my approach as a youth ethnographer and scholar. Mary Kearney, thank you for teaching me how to practice and teach my feminist values, which have influenced this book and all of my research. Joe Straubhaar, your ethnography course offered much-needed guidance on how to conduct ethnographic research, how to take effective field notes, and how to code and interpret hours of transcriptions. Laura Stein and Shayla Thiel-Stern you both provided valuable feedback on the earliest iterations of what developed into several chapters of the book.

  Thank you to Henry Jenkins, Julian Sefton-Green, and Alan Albarran for reading drafts of the proposal and offering valuable advice when the manuscript was still in its infancy stage. To my colleagues at the University of North Texas, thank you Jordan Frith for keeping me sane over local libations and offering support along the way. I want to thank my chair, Eugene Martin, for supporting my research and providing time at the end for me to complete the manuscript.

  To members of the CLRN team, thank you for allowing me to participate in your meetings and for your dedication to mentoring junior scholars. I especially want to thank Mimi Ito, Sonia Livingstone, Juliet Schor, and Kris Gutiérrez for feedback on early ideas for these chapters and for overall advice that shaped this project in many ways. Also a big shoutout to Amanda Wortman for supporting the network and being a great Twitter buddy.

  The anonymous reviewers of the manuscript provided me with great advice and made the book much stronger than it otherwise would have been. I wish I could thank them in person for their kind support and careful critiques. They helped me develop as a writer, and I am appreciative of their time and suggestions. Susan Buckley, my editor at MIT, thank you for your enthusiasm for this project from the beginning and for helping me turn it into the book it is.

  Lastly, thank you to my parents, Michael and Deb, for your unwavering support and confidence in all my dreams, and to my supportive family, including my sister Jen and my niece Brooklyn (who can always, without exception, make me smile). To Sharon, Ricky and Allison, and all seven of your amazing kids – thank you for the ongoing encouragement. And to my husband, Joshua, thanks for putting up with far too many all-nighters and stressed-out weekends and obsessive, rambling think-out-loud sessions. You are my perfect partner, even if you can’t make me a salmon dinner. This is finally done, now let’s hop on a plane and go celebrate.

  This book is based on the Digital Edge research project, which was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of the Connected Learning Research Network, based at the University of California at Irvine. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the book are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MacArthur Foundation or the University of California.

  Introduction: A Generation at Risk?

  No one expects a zero-risk childhood, yet society seems loath to specify a level of acceptable risk when it comes to children. One result is that media panics effectively construe all risk as unacceptable.

  Sonia Livingstone (2009, p. 174)

  I want to begin with three stories. The first is from an episode of the television crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU for short). In an episode titled “Crush,” a teenage girl, Kim, takes nude photos of herself with her cell phone. She intends to send them to her boyfriend Stephen, but sends them to her platonic friend Ethan by mistake. After accidentally sending the photos to Ethan, she then sends them to the boyfriend. Stephen snoops through her phone (something he frequently does) and finds the pictures that Kim accidentally sent to Ethan. Stephen assumes she is cheating on him—even after she explains it was a mistake—and proceeds to send the photos to the entire school; he uses a service to disguise his number so it appears that Kim is the one who distributed the photos. Everyone at school is relentlessly mocking and harassing Kim; she is so distraught that she accidentally trips and falls down the stairs at school and ends up in a coma. While she is in the hospital, it is revealed that someone has been physically abusing her for several months, but she refuses to disclose the identity of her abuser. She believes she is to blame for the incident: “This is all my fault, if I hadn’t taken those pictures, none of this would be happening.” After much reluctance—and after a judge convicts her of possessing and distributing child pornography—Kim admits that her boyfriend Stephen has been physically abusing her and that he beat her up after he found the nude photos on her phone.

  Now let’s consider the tragic true story of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old girl battling low self-esteem and depression. She successfully convinced her mother to allow her to have a MySpace account; her mother did so reluctantly and monitored Megan’s activities; she even had the password to the account. In other words, Megan’s parents did everything right—they were in communication with their daughter about her online practices and were actively monitoring her behaviors in order to protect her. In October 2006, Megan was contacted by 16-year-old “Josh Evans” via MySpace. Flattered by his attention, and attracted to the young admirer, Megan’s mother agreed she could add Josh as a friend, and the two began corresponding via MySpace. After winning Megan’s trust and affection, Josh turned on Megan and told her he no longer wanted to be her friend “because of the way she treats her friends.” Josh and others began to post bulletins on MySpace calling Megan “fat” and a “slut.” Upset, Megan called her mother to tell her what was happening. Her mother advised her to get off the computer, but Megan didn’t comply. She then received a message in which Josh told her “the world would be a better place without you.” Megan proceeded to hang herself in her bedroom closet and died in a hospital the next day.

  Six weeks later, a neighbor informed the Meiers that “Josh Evans” was a fake persona created by Lori Drew, the mother of one of Megan’s former friends who lived only four houses away from the Meiers. Drew had created the fake profile to monitor what Megan was saying about her own daughter (a former friend of Megan’s). The Meiers were outraged that an adult had emotionally deceived, manipulated, and abused their daughter. Lori Drew knew Megan well, knew that she struggled with mental illness and was on medication for depression, and yet she still betrayed and taunted Megan, even going so far as to suggest that she kill herself. The FBI spent the next year investigating the Drew family without their knowledge, and not until November 10, 2007 did the story surface in various media outlets (Maag 2007; Pokin 2007).1 The story generated national attention for months and was the impetus for many states to write new online harassment laws (Michels 2008).

  Finally, let’s take a brief look at the lives of two brothers, Marcus and Miguel,2 whom I had the privilege of getting
to know in 2012. The undocumented 14-year-old identical twins had emigrated from Mexico City to Texas with their mother when they were six years old; their father had moved to Texas three years earlier to establish connections and income before the rest of the family joined him. Marcus and Miguel were in their first year of high school at a large, ethnically diverse, low-income, low-performing public high school. At school they appeared quiet and reserved. They were polite and respectful, yet would struggle to make eye contact upon first meeting someone. They were still learning to negotiate the terrain of a large public high school as they worked to construct peer networks. The brothers lived with their parents and two younger brothers in a mobile home on the suburban fringe of town. They did not own mobile phones, but they used their Wi-Fi-enabled Nintendo DS creatively to maintain mobile contact with peers for free via Facebook messenger. The brothers shared an outdated computer that was kept in the family’s living room.

  Although their parents restricted their Internet use to a couple of hours a day, they spent much of their leisure time playing console-based and online video games. Their favorite game at the time that I met them was Minecraft.3 Though they were reserved and shy at school, online they engaged actively and openly in robust social communities. Through computer games, the brothers had forged relationships and friendships with peers across the country. These relationships transcended the gaming spaces and had been carried into Facebook, YouTube, Skype, and online chats. YouTube provided a gaming-based community in which the brothers connected to other gamers and participated in an active networked audience. Although their passions for the game—as well as for peripheral aspects of the gaming community—were largely driven by social interests and the pleasure of connecting with peers in the spaces, their investment in the gaming community also allowed them to “geek out” (Ito et al. 2010).

  What do these three stories have in common? Well, obviously they are all about youth and digital media technology. But beyond that, each of them reveals something about our collective understandings of risk—more specifically the relationships between risk and young people’s use of media technology. The first two stories probably resonate more with your general association of youth and digital media risk: sexual exposure and bullying. In both the television episode and the cyberbullying incident, technology presented a seemingly clear and present danger to the young people, to the young girls specifically. Law & Order: SVU often creates narratives based on actual crimes, “Crush” being merely one of many, many, examples. The series is known for its sensational “ripped from the headlines” approach to re-telling true crime stories and scandals (Barnes 2014; Collins 2009). This trend is also popular in other US television crime dramas, such as CSI and CSI: Cyber. Lifetime original movies and other made-for-TV movies utilize a similar approach of re-telling fictional accounts of crimes based on true events (O’Rourke 2013). All these genres provide multiple examples, season after season, of teens’ being harmed—even killed—as a result of their digital media practices. Research indicates that the “perceived realism” of for-profit entertainment narratives makes it difficult for audiences to differentiate fiction from truth (Collins 2009). The communication scholars Jonathan Cohen and Gabriel Weimann argue that “the highly stylized, stereotyped, and repetitive images portrayed on television have been regarded as an important source of socialization and everyday information” (2000, p. 99). For that reason, some audience members are susceptible to believing that some televised crimes are more prevalent than they actually are.4

  Outside of the crime genre, we frequently see similar story lines in popular media. Teens sexting or meeting strangers online has become a common and popular trope within narrative media. Megan Meier’s story was even the inspiration for an episode of SVU called “Babes.”5 Undoubtedly her story is tragic; in the decade since her death we have witnessed countless stories of teens taking their own lives after being bullied, often online. Popular media and journalism are quick to feature sensational headlines that blame both youth and technology for such serious problems, without much consideration of the broader context. Headlines such as “Teenager commits suicide after ‘sexting’ nude photo to her boyfriend” (Hastings 2009) and “Nine teenage suicides in the last year were linked to cyber-bullying on social network site Ask.fm” (Broderick 2013) are not hard to find in today’s news and media culture. Within these narratives—both fictional and journalistic—technology is depicted as a risk, and parents are told that they must protect their vulnerable children from the intrinsic threats. Such stories capitalize on and exploit fears about the risks young people face when they are online. These kinds of tragic and fear-driven stories come to dominate our collective imaginations and shape our expectations of harm.

  But how does the story of Marcus and Miguel fit with these other narratives? Certainly their story is about risk too, isn’t it? Perhaps you’re thinking about the risk of gaming addiction, a topic that gets attention in journalism and in popular media. Maybe you’re thinking that the brothers are sacrificing too much sleep to play their games, or you’re concerned that they are isolating themselves from peers or family. Or perhaps you’re anxious about the kinds of strangers the two boys are meeting online. Do we know if they are being smart about hiding their identities and location? Or maybe you’re worried that their video game time is interfering with school and their capacity to focus on homework and other academic obligations. And on the basis of the little you know about Marcus and Miguel, these are not entirely misdirected concerns.

  However, these elements of risk—addiction, isolation, strangers, and distractions—are not the kinds of risk that actually worry me in this story. While all those concerns are valid to a limited degree, for Marcus and Miguel the risks they took were not harmful. Rather, they were beneficial. Marcus and Miguel worked collaboratively on missions in their games, forged friendships, solved problems, attained cultural and social capital, developed digital literacies, produced shared knowledge, and constructed identities around their gaming accomplishments. In a lot of ways, their online identities and friendships served to supplement their limited offline experiences. Although they had friends at school, they struggled to find a niche. For that reason, their online personalities and communities could be interpreted as more authentic expressions of their identities, skillsets, and confidence. Through their involvement in online games and gaming communities, the twins were more socially connected and digitally knowledgeable than they would have been otherwise. Further, for two brothers without much disposable income or mobility options, online gaming was a lot safer than the kinds of social interests they could have been developing. They were not in gangs, and they were not taking drugs, drinking, or getting into trouble. They were safely and happily benefiting from an online world in which they felt accepted, connected, and accomplished. Clearly risk does not equate to the likelihood of harm, a point that will be expanded upon frequently in this book.

  Nonetheless, there is a risk in their story that concerns me more than addiction, strangers, isolation, and distractions, and that is the risk of inequitable opportunities for participation. Notably, the brothers worked around technical barriers in ingenious and creative ways. Despite their ingenuity, they faced many technical and material obstacles that excluded them from participating more fully in the online worlds they loved. Financial constraints and obligations precluded access to up-to-date computers, higher Internet speeds, or mobile phones. School policies banned their favorite social media sites, video tutorials, and games. Familial obligations to take care of their younger brothers prevented them from benefiting from their peers’ shared resources; circumstances necessitated that they spend most of their leisure time at home so their mother could attend English classes at the community center and their father could go to work. While there were many benefits to their gaming experiences and the risks they took, there were also significant limitations that kept them disconnected and prevented them from participating more fully. For example, Miguel learned
a lot about Minecraft from watching amateur YouTube videos, but explained: “I only use [YouTube] to comment and subscribe and stuff. When I get a new computer, I want to make YouTube commentator videos about Minecraft.” Although he spent much of his time immersed in the gaming community, his participation was peripheral (Lave and Wenger 1991). This form of peripheral participation also inhibited him from developing other forms of digital literacies that are cultivated via video production and distribution in networked communities such as YouTube. In other words, while there were many benefits to their participation, the brothers’ participation was marginalized, and they did not have the opportunities for digital literacy development that their more connected peers had.

  Expectations and Lived Experiences

  As the story of Marcus and Miguel demonstrates, today’s mediated society provides innovative opportunities for young people to participate in the creation of their own mediated cultures. Social and technological changes have given rise to new modes of socialization, production, and learning. As with previous technologies—such as the telegraph, film, television, and phones—we have seen a rise in optimistic discourses that promise technologies will make society more democratic, lessen social inequalities, and bring positive social changes (Baym 2010; Carey 1989; McChesney 2013; Peters 1999; Rainie and Wellman 2012). However, alongside these optimistic expectations are concerns about the risks and harms that new technologies bring to our attention. Those concerns also have a historical context in which new modes of communication technologies tend to lead to adult anxieties about how young people engage and participate (boyd 2014; Livingstone 2009; Marwick 2008; Springhall 1998). Computers, the Internet, mobile technologies, computer games, and social media are not exceptions; that is, they are simultaneously considered to be technologies of opportunity, as well as technologies of risk in the lives of young people; they evoke a lot of adult anxiety and attention.