The past decade has been marked by a flurry of attempts to make sense of what it is that youth are doing online, and the risks they face while doing so. Media reports of online sexual predation, widespread bullying, and difficulties with engaging youth Internet users in the classroom, have added urgency to these efforts. The risks that come with youth Internet use (for example, victimization, abuse, disconnection from standard modes of education) are in sincere need of policy attention. However, such policies can often restrict the very aspects of the Internet which have allowed it to become a vibrant platform for communication.
The ways youth, school administrators, and policymakers come to differently understand Internet practice is of central concern to this research project, which asks the following questions: How do policymakers understand the risks youth Internet users face? How do youth understand their own practices online as risky, problematic, or acceptable? Have policies aimed at mitigating the risks of youth Internet use changed youth Internet practice? This project will be primarily conducted through 60 in-depth interviews with school administrators, policy-makers, and students, and cybersafety focus groups for members from participating school districts. Educational materials, internet safety policies, and media coverage will provide context for interview questions. This data will act as the basis for the development of research reports, which will be shared with school administrators, parents, and internet policy makers. Project results will also contribute to scholarly literatures on the dynamics of Internet use and policy, and to recommendations for Internet policy for youth Internet users.
As part of a now completed dissertation project at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, research on youth Internet safety was conducted in six school districts, representing rural, suburban, and urban areas across New York State. Due to the generous efforts of numerous administrators within each district and the data analysts from the WSWHE BOCES, a series of focus groups, interviews, and online surveys were administered to parents, teachers, administrators and students within each district. The project contributes first to the surveillance/STS literature, by interrogating the mobilization of everyday technologies – not explicitly designed for the purpose of surveillance – as surveillance tools. Further, there has been little emphasis so far on watchers in the surveillance literature thus far, a gap which is addressed in this work through an explicit focus on the pedagogies that position watchers to use everyday technologies as surveillance tools, and how they are trained to make sense of the resulting data. More broadly, this work contributes to STS literature by examining the ways in which technological and neurobiological discourses are mobilized to reinforce and protect existing social constructs – in this case, that of childhood, which is itself largely ignored within STS. From this research, three major conclusions can be drawn: 1. Youth Internet safety issues are local. As described by youth, parents, and administrators, problems involving youth Internet use invariably emerge from local social problems. Participants rarely spoke of Internet strangers being of any real threat, instead voicing concerns over "drama" being carried to, and spilling over from online social networks – which are grounded in the relationships youth have offline. Even in cases where incidents of online abuse or inappropriateness appear to be brought about by anonymous Internet users, others "close" to the social networks often know them personally and can easily identify them. Further, initial analysis suggests that districts with fewer disciplinary problems offline have fewer disciplinary problems online. 2. Youth Internet safety curricula fundamentally fails to be relevant for many students. One student, when asked who uses the term "cyberbullying" said simply: "It's an old lady word." It is not insignificant that the word "cyberbullying" was only rarely used by students, parents and administrators across all of the collected data. This said, the idea of "cyberbullying" is central within youth Internet safety curricula, and also within state and federal policy. Further, as teachers and administrators explained in interviews, it is difficult to educate students on the safe configuration of the social networking technologies they use every day, given the restrictive nature of Internet filters. The majority of youth Internet safety curricula draws on concepts which do not "make sense" to students, and further is seen as overly general and repetitive. As the Director of Information technology at one participating district described: "I can say that I have been to several workshops where they’ve had State Police have just put the fear of God into some of these people, and I think it loses the kids. It’s almost like you have to mentor them rather than intimidate them…When you look at the audience and the kids are snickering, they’re not taking it seriously." 3. The perceived disciplinary jurisdiction of school districts is expanding beyond the school. Parents look to school districts to act as a form of disciplinary middle ground following Internet safety incidents involving students. While school resource officers are available to assist parents and administrators with the process of formal investigations and criminal charges, often parents do not wish to impose such potentially strong penalties upon youth, or simply do not wish to take part in what could become a lengthy and public legal process. In this sense, as online communication makes the social lives of youth beyond the more closely monitored spaces of the home and school more visible, school districts will be increasingly looked towards by parents for assistance with disciplinary issues. According to interviews with administrators, this is already beginning to happen, as parents call in with what they view as Internet safety problems. In closing, it is worth emphasizing that the most common and concerning forms of Internet safety issues faced by youth today – namely those involving "carry-over" and forms of online "drama" – emerge from the local, in-person interactions that students have with one another on a daily basis. As such, it is perhaps the overall culture of a school district which matters more than specific policies or curricula when it comes to Internet safety. Put differently, students who respect each other offline respect each other online. While shifting school- and district-wide cultures is by no means a simple task, increasing engagement with students by parents and administrators through social networks and other forms of Internet media may act as one more step towards fostering safe learning environments both on- and offline.
