In this chapter I map out the ways harm-driven expectations about media and technology shape the policies, discourses, and contours of everyday practices at Freeway High. I also analyze the school’s approach to incorporating media literacy as part of the formal curriculum (as opposed to the informal learning that occurs in the after-school spaces, which is the focus of chapters 5 and 7). I argue that the school should expand its definition of digital literacy beyond skills—and beyond basic understandings of information literacy—to also incorporate and value critical digital literacy. Harm-driven expectations approach technology as something that must be controlled and contained. As I will demonstrate, the school focuses on helping students avoid risk, rather than helping them to manage it. What is particularly significant here is not just the import of managing risk but also the missed opportunities to develop nuanced critical digital literacies. Rather than overly worrying about the risks that technology poses, educational institutions should worry about how to also effectively and equitably equip students to manage risks and capitalize on the opportunities of digital media and technology. Likewise, schools must consider how technology can mitigate other risks. This necessitates a shift in what we expect from students and schools—a move away from expectations of harm and misuse toward expectations of responsibility, value, and learning.
Threats of Sexual Risk
It is a normative modern value in the United States to protect young people from premature exposure to sexual content and information (Heins 2001). Within collective popular imagination, young people are discursively constructed as being sexually innocent and pure, and so exposure to sexual content—or even acknowledging young people’s potential sexuality—is often deemed inappropriate and damaging (Heins 2001; Odem 1995). From such a perspective, filtering access to sexual information on the Internet is an appropriate strategy for protecting and reifying young people’s perceived sexual innocence. However, this rhetoric is complicated when students begin to develop their own sexuality and sexual identities. By high school, the majority of students have begun to explore and negotiate their own sexuality—including their desires, identities, values, and practices. What are the consequences of denying pubescent adolescents access to sexual information online? Yes, schools have a responsibility to protect students, but at the same time they also have an obligation to teach students about sexual health and consensual practices. Harm-driven expectations construct protection from sexuality as a normative value that trumps students’ acknowledgment of their own sexualities and their right to access educational sexual resources. Risk discourse presumes that access to sexual information is a threat and is therefore harmful, when in actuality access to sexual education is a form of protection that empowers young people to make healthy and safe decisions.
The state of Texas implements an abstinence-only approach to sex education—an approach that has been highly criticized by parents, students, physicians, and federal lawmakers (Bridges 2008; Kohler, Manhart, and Laggerty 2008; Trenholm et al. 2007). It has been criticized on moral and ethical grounds, and also because of its continued ineffectiveness (ibid.). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 52 percent of Texas high school students are sexually active, versus 47 percent nationally. Consequently, abstinence-only education seems to do little to deter Texas high school students from engaging in sexual activities (HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention education … 2012). What is troubling is not necessarily that teens are sexually active, but rather the risky behaviors associated with their sexual practices. Texas ranks third in the nation in rate of teen pregnancy1 and has the nation’s highest teen birth rate2 (Bridges 2008). Further, Texas has the third highest number of people living with HIV, and young people accounted for 20 percent of new HIV cases in Texas in 2006 (ibid.). Additionally, young people in Texas—especially young women—are at a high risk for contracting sexually transmitted infections, the majority of all chlamydia and gonorrhea infections affect young women (Texas HIV/STD surveillance report, 2014). There are many more harrowing statistics about the sexual risks Texas teens face. The point here is that many teens in Texas are not practicing safe sex. In view of the lack of education in public schools this should not be too surprising, but it should be alarming.
Teen sex is a complicated issue, and many factors such as economics, education, geography, religious affiliations, and ethnicity affect access to sexual health resources, yet we must also take into consideration the lack of comprehensive sex-education courses in public schools in Texas. By law, Texas sex-education courses may not include information about contraceptives or condoms, and must teach that sex outside of marriage is shameful and financially, physically, and psychologically harmful (Culp-Ressler 2013). This approach has not been supported by research or science and fails to educate and empower young people to make safe sexual decisions. Further, it promotes a heteronormative understanding of sexuality that completely overlooks the sexual desires, identities, and practices of queer youth. Texas is one of seven states that prohibit positive portrayals of homosexuality in schools (Ford 2014). The state-mandated educational materials go so far as to state that homosexuality is “not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense” (Texas Health and Safety Code). In practice such language is rarely used; however, it is indicative of the overall approach to controlling teens’ access to comprehensive knowledge and education regarding sex and sexuality.
If teens are not receiving medically effective and scientifically accurate information about sexual health at school, where then do they turn for information? Research indicates that almost 80 percent of US teens report talking to a parent about at least one aspect of sexual education, including how to say No (Martinez, Abma, and Casey 2010). Research also reveals that these conversations do not necessarily include accurate information about contraception and safe sexual practices (Eisenberg et al. 2004). Teens also report that peers and the media are popular sources of sexual information (Brown, Steele, and Walsh-Childers 2011). Data indicate that teens frequently turn to the media, including advertisements, television, magazines, and the Internet, for information about birth control and protection against infection. Not surprisingly, the Internet has become a more frequent source of information for young people regarding sexual health; 89 percent of young people cited the Internet as a top source of sexual health information in 2011 (Boyar, Levine, and Zensisus 2011). By contrast, only 20 percent of respondents in a different study cited formal education in schools as a primary source of sexual health information (Brown 2008).
Balancing Protection and Access
What does all of this have to do with Internet filters at Freeway High? What these numbers—and far too many other statistics like them—demonstrate is that many teens are sexually active in high school, yet they are at risk of unwanted pregnancies and infections due at least in part to a lack of education and safety strategies. What is actually risky in these scenarios is unsafe teen sexual practices, not access to sexual health information. The presumed risk of accessing unwanted or harmful sexual content online often goes unchallenged outside of debates about First Amendment rights. Since the passage of CIPA, it has become largely acceptable to deny students access to sexual content on school computers. We should challenge the normative assumption that access to sexual content is inherently harmful. What we ought to be discussing are ways schools can intervene and promote safer sexual practices.
The school’s firewall does not block all sexual health information (some sites—such as the Center for Disease Control and WebMD—are allowed), but plenty of other sites are blocked because of explicit sexual content. This is particularly true of user-generated message boards and other peer-based sites where students search for sexual information that transcends basic health questions. Because many students at Freeway High come from low-income households and face precarious living situations, they do not have consistent high-quality access to the Internet outside of school; a significant portion of the student body relies o
n the school’s free Wi-Fi and public computers for access to the Internet. If school is the primary source of Internet access and schools block access to sex-ed content, then some students face significant challenges in accessing information and support regarding questions of sexual identity and health.
It should go without saying that there is inappropriate sexual information online; however, search engines have their own filters that can be activated to block the explicit sexual content without filtering sexual content to the same restrictive degree as the school’s firewall. It is possible that a student would deliberately seek out obscene content at school, but it is also reasonable that the majority of students seeking information would be driven by healthy sexual curiosity and a need for information. District-approved sites such as WebMD and the site of the Centers for Disease Control provide medically accurate and important information about sexual health but do not include information about social norms of sexuality or offer a generationally specific understanding of emerging sexuality. Teens often seek answers about sexual desires and norms in private (Kanuga and Rosenfeld 2004), and could feasibly access such information on a school computer after school (in semi-private) if the filters did not block access to these kinds of websites. In her ethnographic research about queer youth in rural America, Mary Gray (2009) found that queer teens turned to the Internet to not only seek out health information but also to express and learn about their sexual desires and queer identities. These kinds of information seeking practices connected queer teens to supportive online communities that were often not available in their offline lives. The kinds of information, questions, and communities that teens seek extend beyond health information, but also include learning about and participating in a shared discourse of generationally specific sexual identification, practices, language, values, and norms.
Rather than banning sexual content at school, administrators could establish a set of rules and address violations—such as accessing pornography—on a case-by-case basis. For example, according to the education scholar Mark Prensky (2008, p. 44), schools “can address the ‘inappropriate use’ issue, particularly in the higher grades, with one simple rule: If something comes on the screen that a student knows shouldn’t be there, he or she has two seconds to shut off the computer—or lose all privileges.” This rule shifts harm-driven expectations away from outright control and instead places responsibly on the student to make smart decisions and earn privileges through a dialog of trust. This approach echoes Jada’s (16 years old, black) own frustrations with and understanding of the filter rules at school:
Q:
Do you find the school blocks things that would be helpful?
Jada:
Sometimes, yes. It’s frustrating.
Q:
Things that aren’t distracting or bad, but just things you need to look up are blocked?
Jada:
Yeah. It upsets me a lot.
Q:
Why does it upset you?
Jada:
I think we’re just older—it’s one thing for middle school to block stuff, but we’re in high school. You’re still going to have people who try to look up stuff that’s inappropriate, but we’re older. Just punish that one person’s privileges.
Obscene material could continue to be blocked, while other sexual content could be allowed. If a student violates rules by intentionally accessing obscene material, they could be disciplined, just as they would be for breaking other school rules. This approach protects opportunities for teens to seek out sexual information and acknowledges and safeguards their highly contested First Amendment rights. The court has acknowledged that “minors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection” and that the “state may not prohibit a minor’s right to speech based alone upon a belief that the content is unsuitable (McLaughlin 2012, p. 337). Yet CIPA regulations and the implementation of commercial firewalls bar students from accessing sexual content on school computers or networks that they legally should have the right to access. The filtering of content is predicated on the assumption that sexual content does not merely pose a risk, but is inherently harmful. When I asked students in personal interviews if they would ask a teacher to unblock an informative website that was filtered for sexual reasons, the answer was an unsurprising and resounding No, citing embarrassment as the primary reason. Students’ rights to speech are often undermined in the name of protection, yet students are disempowered from claiming stake to these basic rights.
Providing teens with a space in which to learn about their sexual preferences, identities, and practices can help mitigate the risks associated with sexual behaviors. There is no research indicating that mere access to sexual content increases risk or harm to teens at school, yet there is ample research indicating that lack of education increases sexual risk and harm (McGrath 2004). We need a discursive turn away from protecting youth from sex. Instead we must embrace a discourse that empowers youth to manage risk via greater access to information and education. Access to accurate online sexual content in and of itself is not necessarily harmful, but ignorance about one’s own sexual health and desires is.
Information Overload
The web provides young people with unprecedented access to a seemingly endless amount of information and students need help navigating the overwhelming amount of information they can access. With peer file sharing, user-generated forums, live up-to-date streaming of information in the form of videos, Twitter feeds, blogs, and professionally produced news and op-eds, the web allows students to seek and find answers to a multitude of questions. In fact, it is downright impossible to even attempt to keep up with all of the information constantly being added to the web—nor would it be beneficial. As of 2015, YouTube reported that users uploaded 400 hours of content to the site per minute (Robertson 2015)! As of 2013, there were 41,000 Facebook posts added per second and 3,600 photos added to Instagram in that same amount of time (Woollason 2013). Per minute there were 20,000 Tumblr photos posted, 278,000 tweets sent, and an astonishing 571 new websites created (ibid.). That is a lot of information, more than we can possibly find, read, and absorb.
Experts argue that so much information can be both a positive and a negative thing. On the one hand, some critics are concerned about the harms of what has been dubbed “information overload” (Bawden and Robinson 2009; Freedland 2013; Hemp 2009; Himma 2007). Some experts worry about the potential risks or harms of being exposed to too much information in an “always on” world. If you do a quick Internet search for “information overload” you will find a seemingly unending stream of articles warning adults about the “real danger for children [who] feel like they are drowning in this torrent of information” (Taylor 2012). On the other end of the spectrum, you’ll find claims that young people are “immune to information overload” and that “younger people just don’t feel as weighed down by their digital-centric lives [as adults]” (Murphy 2010). What we are experiencing is a debate about and an expansion of our conception of what constitutes information. In today’s networked society, information includes traditional conceptions of knowledge and opinions that are generated by reliable expert sources. But today’s media ecology also includes user-generated content, social media streams, and up-to-date news about what our peers are doing across multiple platforms at any given moment. In the past, this form of mediated information about peers primarily resided within the realm of social information which was accessed via interpersonal communication, such as making a phone call or writing a letter. But today, factual news and information coexist alongside streams of social information in a way that some experts fear we might not be equipped to handle unless we intentionally develop digital literacies that help us make sense of new modes of information (Rheingold 2012).
The media scholars Jenkins, Ito, and boyd remind us that a shift in the concept and amount of information is not unprecedented; previous generations also experienced a radical shift in access to and production of technology, media, soc
ial lives, and information:
There’s a dangerous tendency to talk about these experiences of media change and information overload as if this had never happened before. We might productively go and look at the turn of the twentieth century, when an explosion of mass media was impacting American life, urban areas were experiencing the introduction of electric lights, signs and billboards cluttered the landscape for the first time. … Progressive-era writers described people as overwhelmed by information, unable to keep pace with the changes. There were so many signs and so much noise and so much to take in. People talked about sensory overload. (2016, p. 100)
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