Regulating Technology, Shaping Practices
There is a long history of complex regulations intended to protect youth from perceived harms and risks. For example, many parents choose to monitor what television shows their children can watch or restrict the amount of time they are allowed to watch television. Additionally, industries self-regulate as evidenced by the rating system employed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is intended to prevent or discourage young people from viewing content that the industry has deemed inappropriate. Another example is the Comics Code Authority of the 1950s, wherein comic book publishers self-regulated content that society was likely to consider harmful or inappropriate for young people. At other times it is the government that regulates media technologies. Take, for example, the V-chip, which the US government required to be included in all television sets sold in the United States after 2000. At that time, the federal government also decreed that the industry should create a voluntary rating system that would allow parents to block content on the basis of ratings. The V-chip is an interesting example in which inappropriate content (the perceived risk) was regulated through a joint effort of the federal government, the television industry (the National Association of Broadcasters and the National Cable Television Association), and parents. In all of these examples the regulatory stakeholders—whether government, industry, or parents—have attempted to protect young people from potential risks associated with their media use.
Similarly, information communication technologies (ICTs) are also regulated in different spaces and by various stakeholders. Schools, governments, industries, parents, the market, and peers all shape the ways in which young people use ICTs to interact, communicate, and participate in their own media and learning ecologies. Though regulations are not always shaped by perceptions of risk, there is an undeniable relationship between discourses of risk and policy regulations (Castel 1991; Foucault 1991), which co-exist within a symbiotic relationship—that is, risk shapes policy formation, likewise policy shapes perceptions of risk.
The attorney, scholar, and political activist Lawrence Lessig (2006) demonstrates that there are four constraints that function as modalities of regulation: architecture (or “code” in digital spaces), the market, (social) norms, and law. He uses the example of smoking as a way to illustrate different modes of regulation. At times, laws regulate smoking, such as age restrictions or banning smoking in certain public spaces. Other times norms regulate smoking, such as the etiquette of deciding whether it is appropriate to smoke in someone else’s car or home. The market also regulates individuals’ access to cigarettes, for example, an increase in cigarette prices could determine how often an individual smokes. And lastly, the physical architecture of a cigarette regulates an individual’s decision to smoke. For example if an individual has an adverse reaction to tobacco they are unlikely to smoke. While all of these modalities—law, norms, market, and architecture—regulate behavior in different spaces and at different times, one factor could present a greater regulatory constraint on behavior than another factor. It is also worth noting the extent to which each of these regulatory constraints is affected by the others. For example, changes to the constraint of law (such as banning smoking in restaurants) could also negatively affect society’s attitude toward smokers (change to the constraint of norms). Or, for example, changes to the law could also affect the constraints of the market (such as laws raising tobacco sales tax). Though all these variables are always already interacting, at times certain constraints regulate more intently or transparently than others.
In a similar way, technology is also regulated through the modalities of law, norms, the market, and architecture. In the context of young people’s lives, norms include peer and familial values, cultures, and expectations. Laws at all levels—federal, state, city, school policies, and familial rules—affect what young people can do with technology, when, where, and with whom. The architecture, or code, of digital media technologies, software, and platforms affect how technology is used, in what ways, and by whom. And not to be understated, the market heavily regulates teens’ access to technology hardware, platforms, and software. Embedded within all of these regulatory nodes are discourses of risk that also shape individual access and collective participation. Likewise, these regulatory factors also affect risk by either increasing or reducing the probability of harm. In order to create more equitable opportunities for young people online, and in order to shift risk discourse away from harm-driven expectations to opportunity-driven expectations, we must take a holistic approach that considers the multiple nodes shaping teens’ experiences and practices. Throughout the remaining chapters of this book, I focus on different and competing ways in which young people’s encounters with technology and risk are mediated and negotiated via the law, norms, the market, and architecture.
From a social shaping perspective of technology, the effects of technology are rarely, if ever, wholly “good” or “bad.” Likewise, in the context of risk, I argue the effects of regulation rarely, if ever, entirely reduce or exacerbate risk, but rather the effects of regulation always have the potential to simultaneously reduce and increase risk differently for different populations. For example, enabling GPS tracking on a teen’s phone simultaneously provides parents’ access to their child’s whereabouts (potentially reducing the perception of risk), but also increases the likelihood of a stalker (perhaps an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend) locating the teen (potentially increasing risk and harm). As with most designs, technology can be simultaneously used in beneficial or harmful ways, and can produce both positive and negative effects.
What is of particular significance for the research in this book is to also understand the ways in which young people’s practices in particular are strictly regulated. Unlike adults, who are permitted a great degree of autonomy over their use of technology, young people are not afforded such freedoms. Laws, social norms, policies, educational institutions, controlled and limited finances, parental authority, and familial responsibilities, all mean that young people’s digital media practices are highly regimented. Young people are granted a significantly lesser degree of autonomy and choice over the ways they access and use media. Further, because teens’ practices differ from adult practices, they tend to be misunderstood and invoke anxiety, and are thus highly scrutinized. Such scrutiny can lead to even greater surveillance, control, and regulation. It is within an approach that recognizes the highly regimented ways that adults regulate young people’s practices that I consider how adult expectations of young people’s practices—expectations that are often driven by fear and anxiety—differ from the ways young people themselves understand and value digital media.
Youth and Moral Panics: It’s Not About the Technology
When technologies are embedded into our daily lives in deeply private and personal ways—such as technologies we bring into the home—we can anticipate initial anxiety about their purpose and roles. As a society, we are fearful of how they will disrupt our lives in potentially negative ways. Likewise, when media are utilized and valued by young people—a population often constructed as vulnerable—we can also anticipate their practices will be a source of widespread concern. For example, despite the fact that reported Internet crimes are declining, news reports and social fears about youth and the Internet seem to be increasing (Cassell and Cramer 2008; Finkelhor 2011). The reactions to young people’s use of novel technology tend to be fearful and anxiety-driven, which can lead to moral panics.
Baker (2001) defines moral panics as “the efforts of a particular group to exert collective moral control over another group or person. They are characterized by the identification of a ‘problem’ perceived as a threat to a community or subset of a community’s values or interests.” Journalists, educational institutions, policy makers, and other experts have identified young people’s online practices such as cyberbullying, porn, sexting, pedophiles, privacy (or lack thereof), addiction, and distractions as problematic an
d threatening. Consequently, there is a lot of discord and uncertainty about what exactly should be done, how, and by whom, which contributes to a sense of panic.
Discussions of moral panic often begin with Stanley Cohen’s influential 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which focuses on the mods and rockers of the 1960s in the UK.2 According to Cohen, panic arises when society’s response to a perceived threat is disproportionate to realities or actual occurrences of threatening behaviors. News media, alongside expert opinions and institutions, became the vehicles for perpetuating negative narratives that rely on overblown or exaggerated data, stereotypical stock images, and sensational headlines. Through such strategies and representations, repeated fallacies begin to function as a hegemonic truth (Hall et al. 1978). Society then responds with fear and a general sense that somebody should do something; within this approach I would add that harm-driven expectations lead to increased punitive policies, surveillance, and control.
Many scholars have elaborated upon and critiqued Cohen’s original conceptualization of moral panics. For example, Stuart Hall (1978) and his colleagues at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies argue that media serve as primary means for creating moral panics, but only because they reflect pre-existing relations of hegemonic domination. In other words, moral panics become a vehicle for dominant ideology. Integral to both Cohen’s and Hall’s conceptualization is the argument that media contribute to the creation of moral panics. However, reducing moral-panic conceptualizations to disproportionate reactions by media becomes problematic since measuring irrational fears and reactions is not a productive methodology. That is, at what point do fears and responses transcend from reasonable observations and analysis to irrational reactions?
Cultural studies scholars such as Angela McRobbie, Stuart Hall, and Dick Hebdige have noted the ways in which panics are often gendered, classed, and racialized. The “folk devils” are often ethnic minorities, females, the poor, queer, and/or youth, in other words, populations whose practices and values often differ from mainstream white, middle-class, straight, cisgender, male, adult hegemonic society. Moral panics present youth as scapegoats for broader and more complicated economic, political, and social problems. For example, as will be further discussed in the next chapter, continually and aggressively constructing youth at risk within cyber predator discourse subjects young people to surveillance and regulation. The discourse presents the at-risk youth as the social problem to be solved, rather than the perverse adult pedophile who is the actual threat and problem. Moral-panic discourses divert attention away from deviant adult behaviors—behaviors which are difficult to control—and instead exert control over the bodies and lives of young people.
Such panics about young people’s media practices have a long history dating back to the introduction of the paperback novel, to comic books, radio, television, film, the landline telephone, beepers, and video games—all of which have invoked fear and concern about young people’s uses and practices (Springhall 1998). The rise of digital and mobile media is once again drawing attention to—and causing panic about—the potential risks of young people’s mediated practices. Research demonstrates that social anxieties concerning adolescents’ behavior are strikingly similar throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Pearson (1983) notes that moral panics often involve a nostalgic look back at a “golden age” of social control in which discipline seemingly functioned as a deterrent for delinquent or risky behaviors; however this was simply not the case. In their discussion of Pearson (1983), McRobbie and Thorton (1995, pp. 561–562) note that across time “the same anxieties appear with startling regularity; these involve the immorality of young people, the absence of parental control, the problem of too much free time leading to crime, and the threat which deviant behavior poses to national identity and labour discipline.” The focus of panic and the face of deviance have changed with time, yet the social anxieties and fears have tended to remain strikingly consistent. The dissemination and domestication of computers and the Internet have given rise to new channels for moral panics.
The Friend Factor
In her 1977 book The Damned and the Beautiful, Paula Fass examines the relationship between youth and social change in 1920s America and the ways young people were paradoxically perceived to be an optimistic guide for the future, as well as a threat to traditional values and ways of American life. She claims the emergence of a modern American youth culture instigated change, but likewise was a result of broader societal changes. The transformation resulted in adult anxieties and contributed to the perception of a growing generational gap. As related to current moral panics about youth, I want to demonstrate some of the similarities between moral panics about youth cultures of the 1920s and today—specifically the changing role of peer groups.
In the 1920s, schools in urban industrialized society began to play an increasingly important function in developing and shaping peer culture, one which challenged the traditional socialization role of the family. Schools provided homogenous age-segregated environments in which young people spent an increasing amount of their time. Youth began to develop their own language and slang, peer groups contributed to conspicuous patterns of behavior, youth developed their own communication networks, and increasingly managed an identity that was distinct from adult cultures. In fact, Fass writes (1977, p. 375), youth “knew that they lived in a changing world that demanded new understanding, new conventions, and constant readjustments. And they conceived of their behavior and attitudes as positive response to these conditions. … Acutely aware of being observed and criticized, the young would often artfully accentuate certain qualities to which they knew adults would react.” In other words, youth behaviors should be understood as deliberate responses to broader social changes (particularly economic changes and changes within the family structure), rather than solely the cause of social change. As youth cultures changed, there was an increasing generation gap between youth and adult expectations, values, and behaviors—gaps that triggered adult alarm. As peer cultures became a more influential socializing aspect in young people’s lives, families and adults inevitably lost a degree of control.
This is similar to what we are experiencing with today’s “digital generation.”3 Society and technology are simultaneously and symbiotically changing, and, much as in the 1920s, young people are at the forefront of these changes. Digital technologies afford youth increased opportunities to develop peer languages, cultures, and communication networks that are separate from adult cultures and norms. Some adults are slower to embrace new technologies, as evidenced by young people’s earlier adoption of digital media, as well as the education system’s reluctance to incorporate new media technologies into the classroom. For today’s youth, new technologies are par for the course, yet they invoke anxiety from adults and institutions who do not always understand how young people are engaging with one another via media.
Technology does not cause these cultural and generational changes—young people created communicative networks and unique communities before technologies for doing so existed—but technology does facilitate and intensify young people’s ability to stay connected with their peers. As the telephone, the Internet, and the mobile phone have entered the domestic space, they have further challenged boundaries between what is conceived of as public and private (boyd 2007, 2008; de Souza e Silva and Frith 2012). Digital media disrupt spatial and temporal boundaries and allow teens to be simultaneously positioned as members of peer communities, as well as members of the family within the same space. To a certain extent, modern youth have always occupied both public (i.e., peer) and private (i.e., familial) roles, but new technologies, such as mobile phones and the Internet, serve to further collapse these social roles even when young people are not physically in the presence of their peers or family members. This is a concept mobile media scholar Richard Ling (2010) refers to as co-presence. The landline phone certainly facilitates co-presence as well, yet the mobile phone int
ensifies and individualizes the experience. Text messaging plays a large role in this as it provides rapid communication that does not require the full attention of the sender or the receiver and is sent directly to an individual, rather than an entire household (i.e., mobile phones enable person-to-person communication rather than the place-to-place communication of the landline phone). Perhaps Livingstone (2009, p. 11) says it best: “the combination of young people, positioned betwixt and between public and private spheres, and the media, with their unique power to penetrate private spaces and to construct publics … is resulting in some ambiguous, exciting yet explosive renegotiations of self and other, private and public.” This is easily observable as many young people socially navigate constant contact with peers and family members even in the absence of shared physical space. Instead, peers and family members may share a virtual space that renders the role of peers more visible to adults and family members—what boyd (2010) refers to as “collapsed contexts” (e.g., when a teen’s friend shares their picture on a social media site that a parent also accesses).
Young people caused anxiety in the 1920s as a result of broader social changes that intensified the role of peers in teens’ social lives. We see similar changes today as the role of peer cultures become increasingly integral to the daily rhythms of teens’ lives. Ultimately, technology may render young people’s social, sexual, and political behaviors more visible, but technology is not driving these behaviors, nor are they necessarily that different from previous generations’ practices. However, moral-panic discourses about teens in the digital world would have us believe they are more sexual and deviant than earlier generations, hence harm-driven expectations that continually focus on regulating sexting, provocative selfies, porn, and predators. Yet such discourse ignores the social and sexual norms of contemporary peer cultures, often by literally denying youth a voice in their own stories (Mazzarella and Pecora 2007). “Every new generation,” Fass writes (1977, p. 325), “seems to rediscover sex. When it is an individual adventure, it is amusing, but when it is a group experience, it looks alarming.” Moral-panic discourses elevate youth peer practices to an alarming group experience so as to attempt to control them.
Worried About the Wrong Things Page 6