In 2008, New Media Literacies worked with Global Kids to take the activities in our Learning Library to promote new media literacy acquisition and adapt them to GK's style of global issue education in the afterschool setting. We also co-authored Our Space, the digital and media ethics casebook with Harvard's GoodPlay Project which will come out later this year. This work includes learning modules that address the special ethical issues that arise in the online worldcited below .
The Focus Dialogues, associated research and report produced by:
Rafi Santo, Carrie James, Katie Davis, Shira Lee Katz, Linda Burch, and Barry Joseph
Global Kids, Inc. / The GoodPlay Project at Harvard University's Project Zero / Common Sense Media /
Today's youth inhabit new digital social spaces foreign to most adults. These spaces offer unpre-cedented opportunities for connection, creativity, and community. At the same time they present challenges that are often either invisible to adults or exaggerated beyond reason.
It can be difficult for parents, educators, and other adults to talk about these challenges with young people, especially if they feel intimidated by youth who navigate sites like Facebook or master video games effortlessly.
The following report aims to document what we learned through the Focus Dialogues, the first cross-generational online conversation on digital media and ethics. It will highlight how adults and youth think about ethical issues online through the use of direct quotes and information from the Dialogues and provide context around what we believe is the first step towards addressing issues relating to ethics in the digital age.
Why Dialogue?
The Dialogues, held online in April 2009, were prompted by three organizations: Global Kids, Common Sense Media, and Harvard University's GoodPlay Project. The project was born out of a sense of curiosity and experimentation. Can youth and adults have open and honest conversation in an online setting? What are the perceptions and tensions across generations when it comes to how we act on the Internet? Is it possible to reach common ground when it comes to digital ethics?
The organizations brought over 250 parents, teachers, and teens together for a three-week online conversation. Every day, participants responded to scenarios and questions presented, and shared thoughts and situations from their own lives. Posting over 2,500 messages
over the course of the Dialogues, participants shared a wealth of perspectives. The findings summarized here are being disseminated in hopes that they might inform research, curricular development, and parenting in a space so often hard to navigate.
Media scholar Henry Jenkins is known to say, "Kids don't need us watching over their shoulders; they need us to have their backs."
This report is shared in that spirit, as one more resource supporting parents and educators in their roles as caring adults in the lives of young people trying to navigate a new digital world.
What's the Disconnect? In the Focus Dialogues, we found certain patterns of thinking about online life that prevail among digitally engaged youth, and these patterns are different from those displayed by adults. The dialogues suggest that:
Teens are most likely to engage in individualistic and consequence thinking (concern for the self, and for consequences to the self of different courses of action online) across a range of topics (e.g., sharing information online, illegal downloading, cyberbullying, etc.).
Teens are somewhat likely to engage in moral thinking (concern for others one knows offline or with whom one interacts online).
Teens are least likely to engage in ethical thinking (thinking in abstract, disinterested terms about the effects of one's actions on the online community at large), though the dialogues did see some incredibly nuanced thinking in this area.
Other research, such as The GoodPlay Project's study of digital youth and national surveys conducted by Common Sense Media, suggests the existence of these patterns as well.
Overall, adults exhibited strong and consistent patterns of moral and ethical thinking about digital dilemmas. These age-related findings may not be surprising, but they clarify that adults need to help youth think about online life in moral and ethical ways - and to act as moral and ethical digital citizens. As youth participate more and more, and at younger ages, in networked publics, their ability to grasp the moral and ethical potentials of their participation is critical - for their own futures, for that of their friends and peers, and for the communities in which they are citizens.
The Focus Dialogues revealed that both youth and adults are willing to engage in reflection and dialogue about moral and ethical issues that are raised in online spaces. We believe that projects like this one highlight a key first step in providing youth with experiences that scaffold self-critical, moral, and ethical ways of thinking about their online behavior. More broadly, we hope that the Dialogues high-light the importance of genuine exchange across age groups about ethics in the digital age, a process critical to fostering a generation of digital citizens.
ADULT VOICE
"One should conduct themselves in the same way - with respect and kindness - in the online world as they do in the face-to-face world. I think the online world has enriched my life because it allows me additional access to information and people I wouldn't normally have! To some extent, it is my responsibility to consider that information and those viewpoints as I live life on a daily basis, and teach as well."
TEEN VOICE
"I think the online world is one of the most important inventions of man. It has helped people on many different levels of life. But also there are cons. People are preyed upon if they don't know what they are doing. There is the yin, and there is the yang."
Ethics in the Digital Age The online world is no less a social space than a playground or class-room. All of the potential messiness of social interaction that exists offline emerges online as well, with the addition of new and possibly distinct ethical challenges.
In an effort to understand these new challenges, Harvard University's GoodPlay Project has engaged in research to uncover ethical issues online. They have outlined five areas of interest:
Identity The ways people handle and perceive self-expression and identity exploration online. Privacy How, where and with whom we share personal information online. Credibility How we establish trustworthiness of both people and information online, and establish our own personal credibility.
Authorship and Ownership The ways we perceive intellectual property and practices such as downloading/remixing content.
Participation The meaning of responsible conduct and citizenship in online communities.
These five themes shaped the Focus Dialogues. In the pages that follow, we'll more fully introduce these ideas and the perspectives that youth and adults expressed about them.
TEEN VOICE
"People are different online because they want to be. Why continue to be yourself when you can turn yourself into somebody you would rather be? It's like how everybody always chooses the prettiest or best picture of themselves to put as their profile pic. We don't have to be ourselves online; we have the freedom to be who we want others to believe we are."
ADULT VOICE
"I think it's important that people be themselves all the time, everywhere. It doesn't benefit anyone to try to be something or someone you are not."
About Global Kids, Inc. Founded
in 1989, Global Kids' mission is to educate and inspire urban youth to becomesuccessful students, global citizens and community leaders by engaging
them inacademically rigorous, content-rich learning experiences.
We educate youth aboutcritical international and domestic issues and
promote their engagement in civic life andthe democratic
process. Through our Online Leadership Program we provide teens withopportunities to address community needs, raise awareness about global
issues, anddevelop 21st-century skills through the use of new
media. You can read about this work atwww.globalkids.org
and olp.globalkids.org.
About The GoodPlay Project at Harvard's
Project Zero Supported
by the MacArthur Foundation, the GoodPlay Project is an initiative focused on the
ethical contours of young people's digital lives. Led by Howard Gardner, we are
exploringfive issues we believe to be ethically charged in
the new digital media: Identity, privacy,ownership/authorship,
credibility, and participation. In our research, we study the ethicalstances of digital youth with respect to these issues. We also create
curriculum to scaffoldgreater ethical thinking online. To download the
white paper on digital ethics that framed the Focus Dialogues, visit:
tinyurl.com/GoodPlayReport About Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the media and entertainment lives
of kids and families. We exist because media and entertainment profoundly
impact the social,emotional, and physical development of our nation's children. As a
non-partisan, not-for-profit organization, we provide trustworthy information and tools, as
well as an independentforum, so that families can have a choice and a voice about the media
they consume.Common Sense Media also works with educators and policymakers to build
programs that empower kids to become good digital citizens. Visit www.commonsensemedia.org
for parentmedia tips, media reviews, and educational resources for classroom use.
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