The larger questions of diversity and tolerance (or lack thereof) remain unaddressed in far too much of the cyberbullying discourse. Perhaps one reason is that addressing the why of bullying draws attention away from the controllable behaviors of young people and shifts attention toward an adult society that teaches and socializes young people to be racist, homophobic, sexist, and ableist in the first place. Additionally, cyberbullying is largely constructed as an individualized problem (often constructed as an individual pathology), rather than as symptomatic of larger social, cultural, and collective issues that extend beyond individuals. Cyberbullying is constructed as a problem of the young (never mind that Megan Meier’s bully was an adult); however, a 2014 Pew study found that 40 percent of adult Internet users have experienced some form of online harassment (Duggan 2014). The problem is significantly greater for women, who disproportionately experience gender-based online harassment (Chemaly 2014; Duggan 2014), which is becoming an “established norm” (Hunt 2016). These numbers are strikingly similar to the numbers of young people who report being bullied online. Notably, Pew used the word “harassment” in its survey of adults. Although Pew may have done so because of the legal definition of harassment, it also highlights the juvenile connotations of the word “bully,” a word that further signifies a “youth” problem.
As long as cyberbullying remains an individualized “youth problem,” it can be subjected to collective control and management, and young people can be simultaneously blamed and protected within legal discourse. But the moment the problem becomes a larger societal problem, the blame must be (at least partially) placed on adults’ racist, sexist, ableist, and homophobic attitudes—attitudes that cannot be controlled through criminalization. Young people have become scapegoats onto whom larger social anxieties are displaced and whose behaviors society places under control and surveillance. Cyberbullying discourses distract us from larger racist, sexist, and homophobic discourses that cannot be so easily disciplined and reify harm-driven expectations of youth and technology.
The Problem with Sexting
Sexting—broadly defined as digitally producing, distributing, and/or consuming sexually suggestive, nude, or explicit images of oneself or one’s peers—is an appropriate conclusion to a discussion of panics and policies.22 Not only is sexting the subject of the most recent panic to gain national attention, but it combines all three aforementioned anxieties: it incites fears of pornography (particularly of underage female teens), of predators (who coerce young people to engage in activities to produce images), and of bullying (in which peers distribute images without permission in order to shame or harass an individual). As with the previously discussed panics, there are valid risks and legitimate harms that can accompany sexting. There are incidences in which young people are coerced into producing sexual images against their will and are blackmailed, harassed, or abused. These instances are never justifiable and often constitute physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse as defined by the law and breach psychological and emotional understandings of autonomy. However, the purpose of this section is to consider the practices of older teens who willingly produce and share sexually suggestive and explicit images with a (would-be) romantic partner. The former examples are inexcusable and often criminal, but the latter warrant a deeper understanding of youth agency, sexuality, privacy, and consent.
As with the Communications Decency Act, the porn panic, the Deleting Online Predators Act, and the predator panic, we are again witnessing data being used as scare tactics. Depending where you look, there are numbers reporting that 20 percent of teens have sent or received a sext (Knorr 2010). However, other studies have found a mere 7 percent of teens have sent or received a sexually explicit photo and only 1 percent of those potentially violated child pornography laws (Mitchell, Finkelhor, Jones, and Wolak 2012). These numbers are a far cry from the “sexting ring scandals” the media present as commonplace and that have contributed to a moral panic (Bryner 2012; Fields 2014; Rosin 2014; Searcey 2009). Contrary to the picture the media present, the majority of teens are not producing and sharing random sexual images, but are doing so in the context of trusting relationships (Hasinoff 2015; Mitchell, Finkelhor, Jones, and Wolak 2012). The discrepancy between reality and panic is attributable in part to vague definitions of what constitutes sexting, discrepancies between adult and teen norms, and teens’ reluctance to disclose private sexual practices with adult researchers.
In the second of the epigraphs at the beginning of this chapter, Major Donald Lowe, the investigator of the Louisa County sexting scandal,23 describes teen girls as culprits who had “victimized themselves” via sexting. The public distribution (via Instagram) of sexts from teens at the school caught national attention with the headline “Police bust Virginia sexting ring involving more than 100 teens” (Fields 2014). The headline presented the story as though the teens had been involved in some sort of organized crime ring. The girls were shamed through public reactions, including online comments that included gendered epithets such as “slut,” “ho,” and “tramp.” Other reactions called for legal prosecution; it was suggested that the teens should be charged with the production, possession, and distribution of child pornography. The quotation from Major Lowe draws attention to our need to rethink discourses of youth when laws that are intended to protect minors are also used to prosecute and harm them. With sexting there is not always a clear victim or offender, and in many cases the “victims” may not identify as such if their practices were consensual and deliberate and when the images were not circulated outside of the intended context.
Laws pertaining to child pornography are intended to protect young people from sexual exploitation. However, as we have seen with many media stories about sexting —and as teens themselves report—sexting can be a part of a consensual and deliberate sexual practice among peers. It is a way for some teens to explore their sexuality, arouse interest and desire, flirt, and express intimacy (Hasinoff 2015). It is inherently problematic that most states acknowledge older teens’ right to make decisions about engaging in sexual activities24 and yet simultaneously condemn youth for recording those very same sexual practices they legally engage in. Certainly it can be a challenge to legally specify intent (Sacco 2012), but laws that automatically criminalize teen sexting are derived from harm-driven expectations that are based on the assumption that sexting innately and inevitably results in harm. Criminalizing sexting can actually do more harm than good. Instead of protecting young people, which is the goal and purpose of the law, criminalization labels a minor as a sex offender. I agree with Hasinoff’s argument that “ensuring that adolescents have the right to sext is the most effective way to protect them from these kinds of unfair prosecutions” (2012, p. 161). The legal right to sext within consensual relationships and within particular circumstances grants teens protection from unnecessary criminalization.
I struggle with restrictive and all-encompassing policies that monolithically construct all minors, from toddlers to high school students, as a singular legal category that ignores developmental, emotional, and cultural differentiations. Policies that aim to restrict minors’ digital access (whether to pornography or to sexting) in the name of preventing harm have to rely on a stereotypical image of the innocent “child”—an image we can normatively agree deserves protection. However, such an image erases the agentive and coming-of-age teenager from our collective understanding of minors. Harm-driven expectations problematically conflate the legal status of a minor with the fluid cultural and discursive constructions of “child,” “youth,” and “adult.” Consequently, such a monolithic approach falsely constructs a uniform understanding of “risk and harm” and “child and youth.” Conflated discursive constructions are produced by and reflective of harm-driven expectations of technology and rely on a reification of (white middle-class) youth as inherently innocent.
With sexting, a minor as both a victim and an offender disrupts our discursive understandings of youth because young people
’s exploration of sexuality cannot be encapsulated by a child/adult or innocent/knowledge binary. Fleur Gabriel (2013, p. 105) writes: “Popular discourses on sexualisation, however, rely more on traditional and Romantic assumptions about childhood and youth in responding to sexualisation debates, seeing them as naturally innocent and therefore rightly lacking sexual knowledge.” Policies that label all sexting practices as deviant, harmful, and pornographic leave no space for the deliberate and consensual ways young people explore their sexuality as part of a healthy developmental process. Gabriel (ibid., p. 106) argues that coming-of-age narratives are problematic discursive constructions of youth because they rely on false binaries between innocence/knowledge and child/adult: “Young people are called to ‘come of age,’ yet I argue that this concept of youth is grounded in a contradictory logic that produces conflicting aims: a desire to preserve the innocence of youth and a simultaneous expectation that they ‘grow up.’” If childhood is about the preservation of innocence (or lack of knowledge and experience), then any exposure to knowledge—or in this case, expression of sexuality that transcends legal definitions of minors—is considered an assault on said innocence. Youth is a transition from childhood to adulthood, and that transition involves a loss of innocence. As a society we normatively agree that children need to “grow up,” yet there is much debate, anxiety, and concern about how and when it is appropriate for youth to “grow up.” “The discourse of ‘coming of age,’” Gabriel further explains (p. 110), “describes something that is supposed to happen given the values and structures of modern society, but which at the same time is prevented from happening by those very structures.” Growing up inevitably leads to a loss of innocence, or rather the acquisition of knowledge and experience, including explorations of one’s own sexuality. This framing de-sensationalizes sexting and instead considers it as an optional aspect of healthy sexual exploration.
Debates that regulate or prohibit all sexting practices are similar to Judge Lowell Reed’s remarks about pornography—should we outright deny young people rights they later inherit as adults? There are major distinctions between (a) adults coercing young people into sexual activities or adults consuming images of minors outside of a context in which the image was intended to be shared and (b) young people willingly producing and sharing images with peers, particularly within the context of a romantic relationship. Hasinoff (2015, p. 140) argues that “erasing consent is particularly problematic when legal and school officials completely ignore malicious behavior and choose to instead punish everyone involved [in sexting] equally.” She argues, and I concur, that we must move toward an explicit model of consent for everyone, and that “scholars, policymakers, technology developers, and users alike should adopt an explicit consent standard for the production, distribution, or possession of private media and information [including sexting]” (ibid., p. 139). This model also deviates from harm-driven expectations by considering the intent, consent, and agency of teens’ practices, rather than presuming an inevitable outcome of harm.
Peer Culture and Social Norms
As with cyberbullying, what we need is an evolution of norms. Laws are important and have a role in shaping practices, but they are insufficient in and of themselves. An analogy to drunk driving is appropriate. We certainly need laws that regulate drunk driving; however, by nature such laws can only ever be reactive—that is, they punish only after a person drives drunk. Social norms play an important proactive preventative role in changing attitudes about drunk driving. Two successful campaigns have transformed cultural attitudes about driving drunk: the 1988 “Designate a driver” campaign (Harvard Alcohol Project 1988) and the Ad Council’s 1983 “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” campaign (Drunk Driving Prevention 1983). The former offers something proactive for people to do; it shifts from a restrictive approach (i.e., don’t drive drunk) to an affirmative tactic (i.e., designate someone to drive). The latter encourages a culture of peer accountability that extends beyond the realm of the law to encourage an attitude change about the acceptability of drunk driving. The message “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” was frequently incorporated into popular television shows such as Cheers, L.A. Law, and The Cosby Show (Winsten 2010). Incorporating the messages into pop culture is a powerful strategy for changing norms and attitudes. These examples did not rely on scare tactics related to drunk driving (graphic images, harrowing statistics, and so on), but rather shaped new norms about drinking responsibly. Both campaigns have been considered successful in changing cultural attitudes about inebriated driving in the United States and have contributed to a decline in alcohol-related accidents (Harvard Alcohol Project 1988; Winsten 2010). Both rely on social norms, rather than the law, as a mode of regulation. Similarly, we should think about how schools, parents, media, and young people can work together to shift cultural norms and attitudes about sexting, privacy, and consent. And importantly, these strategies must move past archaic gendered stereotypes that shame teenage girls for their sexuality and instead contextualize sexting within larger understandings and norms of consent, agency, privacy, and sexual education.
Conclusion: Implications of Fear-Based Regulation
This chapter has demonstrated how discourses of risk—often fueled by fallacious and exaggerated data—work alongside harm-driven expectations to incite anxiety and justify control. No matter how misleading or overblown the claims about porn, predators, cyberbullying, and sexting are, harm-driven expectations have power. As Stuart Hall aptly articulates (1997, p. 49), “Knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority of ‘the truth’ but has the power to make itself true. All knowledge, once applied in the real world, has real effects, and in that sense at least, ‘becomes true.’ Knowledge, once used to regulate the conduct of others, entails constraint, regulation and the disciplining of practices.” It does not matter if there is conclusive evidence proving the Internet presents an increased risk of harm, because the notion of adolescents at risk and the construction of the Internet as a dangerous space have already been “made true” via discourses of “knowledge.” Moral panics are vehicles for harm-driven expectations and work to produce and mobilize particular discourses of risk and to distract from other risks, harms, and concerns.
This chapter has demonstrated at least some of the implications of constructing the Internet as dangerous and youth at risk—constructions that are used to justify policies of panic. These overly restrictive policies are derived from expectations of harm and ignore the positive opportunities associated with learning to navigate risks. Through an analysis of policies aimed at regulating young people’s online participation over the past twenty years, I have argued that risk discourse protects against some risks at the expense of other competing values and opportunities, privileges particular youth populations, and fails to prepare youth to safely navigate risk and positive opportunities.
The reliance on statistics and “expert” opinions brings certain risks to the forefront of public attention and functions as truth, even when the information is misleading or inaccurate. In and of itself this is not particularly harmful; however, a focus on sensationalized harms diverts attention, research, and resources away from more serious threats to the safety and well-being of youth. Research consistently demonstrates that we cannot blame the Internet for most of the crimes committed against youth, and there is even evidence to suggest that technology makes young people safer. Yet harm-driven expectations provide justification for restrictive policies that exert control and surveillance over young people’s practices, speech, and movements, all the while ignoring broader contextual variables that lead to harm. Discourses of risk—even in the absence of demonstrable harm—are used to sublimate other rights, including freedom of speech, access to educational content, and a recognition and validation of young people’s emerging sexuality, autonomy, and agency. The old adage “safety first” is circulated as a normative value that is never supposed to be questioned. Safety is important, but notions of risk mu
st always be questioned. We must never fail to recognize that risks do not objectively exist “out there,” but are always socially produced through mechanisms of identification, categorization, and propagation by institutions of power. We ought to strive for policies that minimize harms and protect young people’s legal rights, values, and agency.
A second takeaway from this chapter is that policies of panic that ban technology are unlikely to actually protect youth from harm; instead their function is to reify boundaries between child and adult as a way to protect perceptions of childhood innocence. As was noted, conversations that demand public attention are often dictated by the concerns of the privileged. The law professor Mary Anne Franks (2015) rightfully points out that recent concerns about online privacy draw attention to the fact that the poor, people of color, and criminals have historically been subjected to privacy violations daily, and that violations of their privacy have been largely ignored.25 Franks argues that if we as a society really cared about privacy violations—as we claim to every time we feel a social media platform has invaded our privacy—then we would have had these conversations about privacy much sooner. She makes a convincing case that members of the privileged middle-class and predominantly white society do not actually care about privacy as a universally protected right until our own comforts are invaded. In a similar way, panics and restrictive policies about pornography, sexually explicit content, bullying, and sexting also reflect a privileged understanding of risk and are most concerned with protecting privileged populations. Particular marginalized youth populations have always been at risk of violence, sexual exploitation, and predation, yet their stories garner little attention from media or policy, and they struggle to receive the resources they need to alleviate these risks. This same population faces additional risks of hunger, poverty, and incarceration, but their stories—and the proposed solutions—go largely ignored. When their stories are told, it is often through a lens that constructs the victims themselves as a social problem, rather than the systematic injustices or perpetrator. Thus we come to expect that such youth must be controlled, surveilled, and contained rather than protected.
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