Monday, October 4, 2010

Children and the Internet

By Sonia Livingstone


While it may be true, as some pop-culture guru’s claim, that 90% of all children between the ages of 8 and 12 in Great Britain use the internet as their “first portal of information,” there are far too many variables in that equation. Sonia Livingstone, in her book titled Children and the Internet, does not try to take an objective stance on the issues at hand but rather weighs the pro’s and con’s by comparing and contrasting the empirical, the explanatory, and the ideological.


Many of these factoids have been over-hyped as the primary cause of not only what ails every modern child in out techno-heavy and techno-savvy society, but also what projects this latest generation one step further up the evolutionary ladder in mankind’s ability to master and continually re-master the skills of global communication.


On the one end of the spectrum, health and wellness scientists attempt to analyze the physical, psychological, behavioral and social affective domains of the internet on children, testing and treating toddlers to teenagers. A compendium of their findings could be labeled “From A to Z: 101 Approaches to the Study and Treatment of Media’s Maladies and Medicines from Autism to Zoloft.” At the opposite end of the spectrum, the network nightly news covers a human-interest story of a 9-year-old kid cracking computer code on a cure for world hunger or finding his twin brother on Facebook from whom he’d been separated since birth.


Furthermore, there are multiple “portals of information” to be explored and multiple perspectives to be examined, as well as multiple phenomena occurring simultaneously and changing rapidly to be compared and contrasted.


And finally, because every single examiner has a set of different criteria and diagnostic tools, the fact is that there is no sufficient independent evidence to predict the long-term outcomes of any of these claims!


Livingstone is a professor of Social Psychology and head of the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics, and Political Science. She has committed a great deal of her research to children’s internet use. Through several books and hundred’s of academic articles she has illustrated media influence on a younger audience and has offered various thoughts on digital safety. She is recognized for a variety of methodological approaches and has conducted projects including both quantitative and qualitative research methods. “Her earliest work was recognized for the innovative way in which she combined critical and social psychological theoretical frameworks and employed qualitative interview research methodologies, traditions that she still identifies with today.” (Wikipedia)


How does Livingstone continue her innovative methods in Children and the Internet? I believe Henry Jenkins of MIT best summarizes the intention of Livingstone’s book: “Sonia Livingstone is equally at home with statistical and ethnographic insights as she digs deep into the paradoxes and contradictions surrounding young people's online lives. She punctures myths and tips over sacred cows here, but in the process, she's modeling a process of healthy skepticism about the claims being made on all sides about what it means to grow up digital. Throughout, Children and the Internet offers us a guide to how we might seize the potentials and avoid the risks of this new and uncharted cultural terrain.” (Henry Jenkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)


So what can we do to try and get a handle on the paradoxical effect on the bodies and minds, thoughts and emotions of the Digital Media Age on children? To be or not to be “plugged in”… does it cause children to be “zoned out” or “on task”? Does it kill their brain cells or activate their synapses? Does it threaten their privacy or enhance their social communication? As said by David Buckingham, Institute of Education, University of London, “Looking beyond exaggerated hype and panic, Sonia Livingstone offers a balanced and comprehensive assessment of the role of the internet in children's lives. Combining rigorous quantitative and qualitative research with a critical awareness of broader theoretical questions, this is a definitive work that takes the debate to a new level.”


For example, Facebook, a social networking site that has spread like wildfire, continually challenges the difference between private and public information. “Online spaces of intimacy continue to change with proliferation of mobile and interactive devices, blurring the offline and online in flexible and complex ways.” (Livingstone, 108) Statistically 58% of UK children aged 8-17 make their Facebook profile only visible to friends, and 12-17 year-olds found that 66% keep their profile wholly or partially private. (Livingstone, 110). Why is this important? Because children and young adults must be aware of what they are revealing about their personal life and who might take advantage of it. Tragically, some might take advantage of private information and exploit various individuals.


The Washington Post article entitled: Cyberviciousness and a student's suicide: the fault is always in ourselves, describes a most recent tragedy involving social networking and the death of a student.


If there is any doubt about the pervasiveness of moral confusion and illogic in our society, one need only sample responses to the suicide of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers University student and a promising violinist, who committed suicide after his roommate and a female acquaintance, also a Rutgers freshmen, used a hidden webcam to record him having sex with a man and streamed the images online. An interrogatory headline in USA Today says it all: “Has Social Networking Gone Too Far?” A subhead declares, “Student's suicide after he was shown having sex on illicit webcast puts focus on civility and privacy.” This tragedy is not about “social networking.” It is about immoral and amoral cruelty, spiked with anti-gay bias, and about a culture that prefers to assign responsibility to tools rather than the young people who used them for evil. (The Washington Post, 10.2.2010)


I agree with Susan Jacoby, author of the article, that “This tragedy is not about social networking” however I do believe this an important wake up call for children, teenagers, young adults, and especially parents, that each individual knows the risks at hand while having both an online and offline “life” and when to separate the two, when to combine, and what information is appropriate and safe to divulge. You would be hard pressed not to admit that access to the influx of today’s digital media and the ability to mass-produce information with a single click did not contribute to the demise of Tyler Clementi. I would hope that this unfortunate death would lead our society to seek a better understanding of private and public knowledge and how to properly educate our children to use social networking and other digital devices in a humble and conscience matter. The author of Internet Inquiry notes that public and private not be considered a dichotomy but “rather a continuum.” (Markham, Baym, 80) Livingstone notes:


Now the challenge is to theorize people’s, including children’s, engagement with the internet more thoroughly, asking, for example, not who lacks access to the internet but whether it really matters; not simply noting who participates in online forums but identifying whether and how this contributes to civic participation; not simply worrying about the risks children encounter online but asking what is meant by online risk and how it relates to offline risk; not simply asking whether children have the skills to engage with the internet but whether these enable them to engage with their society in all its manifestations – local and global, public and private, serious and playful, enchanting and dangerous. (Livingstone, 3)


Livingstone provides a broad narrative of children’s internet use and the ever-changing environments of the digital frontier. Things are moving very fast and we don’t yet know how to define the digital generation nor can we determine what it could be. In the mean time, know your children both online and off!


Book Review by

Amy J Jones


Livingston, Sonia. Children and the Internet. Cambridge, UK. Polity Press, 2009


Annette N. Markham. Nancy K. Baym. Internet Inquiry.

California, USA. SAGE Publications, 2009

Wikipedia. 2010

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