High Tech or High Risk: Moral Panics about Girls Online

In the following blog entry, I will discuss Cassell and Cramer’s (2008) chapter High Tech or High Risk: Moral Panics about Girls Online from the Digital Young, Innovation and the Unexpected volume in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's series on Digital Media and Learning.

According to Cassell & Chambers (2008), moral panics about girls’ use of communication technologies are not new.  Their discussion draws parallels between today’s moral panic about girls’ use of internet, particularly, their use of online social networking sites, and the moral panics of the past, concerning girls’ use of the telegraph and the telephone. They use these parallels and various statistics to argue that girls online are not as at risk as claimed and that the panic rhetoric about girls online has more to do with adults’ fears about the agency of young girls and their loss of control over them than it has to do with risks of online predators. In the chapter, they also discuss the various opportunities available to girls online and how moral panic is obscuring these and more statistically significant threats to girls.

I believe that Cassell and Chambers (2008) make a very convincing argument. By compiling various data sources they show that ‘the percentage of single offender crimes against girls where the offender is an adult and a stranger has decreased since 1994 – concurrent with the rise of internet use’ (2008, p.54). It is worth mentioning that they do not go so far as to deny that risks exist. They do however show that the risks that the media-driven moral panics would have us believe exist are disproportionate to those that actually exist.

As a woman myself, I found their discussion about the history of moral panics in relation to women’s use of communication technologies fascinating, particularly the discussion on women’s ‘deviant’ use of the telephone. They explain that the telephone was originally marketed as a time saver for commercial use and then later, for residential use and that according to Frissen (as cited in Cassell & Chambers, 2008), it took telephone companies over twenty years to advertise and market the sociability of the telephone even though they were aware that it was being ‘miused’ in this way by women. Cassell and Chambers discussion on the relationship between the production and consumption of telephone technology is a clear case of the ‘circuit of culture’ (Williams as cited in Dezuanni, 2010) at work .  

So too is the media’s representation of both the perpetrators and victims of online crimes. According to Stanley Cohen’s definition of a moral panic (as cited in Cassell & Chambers, 2008), it is the media that produces a stylized and stereotypical representation of the deviants, which in this case, is the stranger adult male. The media continues to portray this stereotype despite the fact that statistics cited in the article suggest that the majority of the one in seven solicitations that young people reported in the latest Youth Internet Safety Survey (YISS) do not come from the stereotype of the older male Internet predator but from family, friends and peers. The use of this statistic was convincing, however I was more dubious about their argument that the victim is not the stereotypical teen girl even though they acknowledge that thegirls aged 14 – 17 experience the highest rate of online solicitation. They base their argument on the fact that soliciations for girls aged between 14 and 17 had dropped by 11 percent. It just goes to show that statistics can be used to support almost any argument. It was interesting to note that even the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which funded the YISS, have buried findings about reduced stranger solicitation amongst findings of increased exposure to sexual material and harassment. According to Sonia Livingtone &  Haddon’s EU Kids Online: Final Report , this is not a one-off example of a funding source influencing the research agenda. This is such a shame because as the report suggests “research agenda does not always align with policy needs, with studies focusing on the identification of problems but less often designed to evaluate particular policy solutions” (p.32)

Cassell and Chambers use the example of the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) as an example of a governmental response to the widespread fear about the potential harm the Internet poses to young people. The DOPA, if enacted, would mean that schools and libraries would be required to prohibit or restrict young people’s access to social networking sites and chat rooms in order to protect minors from online predators, even though according to danah boyd in  Discussion: My Space and Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), most teenagers who report solicitations from adults on the social networking site My Space report deleting them without question.

According to the above-mentioned Wikipedia article, the American Library Association (ALA) opposes the DOPA and believes that education is the best way to protect young people. I agree. If young people are prevented from accessing social networking sites they are also prevented from exercising key skills online. Cassell and Chambers (2008) state that online participation is a key way for young people, to engage in developmentally important activities such as constructing networks of peers, exploring alternative versions of identity and behaving in sexual ways.

As educators, I agree with Dezuanni (2010), that we should respond to media panics by thinking about the consequences of not dealing with the technology concerned. In this instance, by not helping young girls to navigate online social networking sites, aren’t we putting them at more risk? In Discussion: My Space and Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), Henry Jenkins argues that the role of educational institutions should be to help those young people understand the risks and develop strategies to deal with them. 

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)’s Cyber(smart:) program provides some very good resources that can be used to educate young people about online safety. Cassell and Chambers would approve of the choice the creators of their Wise up to IT series of videos have made to include both a boy and a girl talking about their experiences with online predators. However, they may not be as pleased with the choice of character the creators of their Online Dos and Donts animation have made, as she seems to perpetuate the image of the naïve young girl in need of protection from cybercrimes and the technology itself that they discuss in their chapter.

It is encouraging to read however that despite all of the panic, Cassell and Chambers remain hopeful that that we will come to realize that girls are more likely to be empowered by the Internet than damaged by it.  I know that this has certainly been the case for me.

By Shannon