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Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media- A Synthesis from the Good Play Project (James et al, 2008) explores the promises and perils of new digital media vis-a-vis young people’s development of ethical reasoning and practice. While some of the treatise rings true (the part that echoes the work of Henry Jenkins and colleagues), other parts feel facile, judgmental. For example:

“According to a recent report from The Josephson Institute of Ethics (2006), 60% of high school-aged youth admit to having cheated on a school test, almost 30% to having stolen from a store, and 33% to having plagiarized from the Internet for an assignment, providing further evidence that participating in a “cheating culture” may be routine for many youth (Callahan, 2004)” (James et al, 2008, p. 26).

A major issue with this information is its lack of context. What on earth are we comparing this number to? Does this indicate an increase from the “good old days” when the Boomers were kids? [NOTE: Stephanie Coontz (1993/2000) exposed this mythology in The Way We Never Were; evidently, those old days were considerably less good than many convenient narratives contend.] Or are we comparing to the “plastic rainbow days” when some of today’s parents were Care Bears/Rainbow Brite/G.I. Joe-loving kids? Maybe there has been no change in the numbers; maybe the numbers have gone down and there’s actually LESS of a cheating culture! Moreover, who made up this sample? Is this a nationally representative group?

Even if the research methods were beyond reproach, what does this teach us about changing tides in moral reasoning? Have attitudes/opinions shifted (or deteriorated, if you buy this flimsy argument) in our online age, or are these behaviors artifacts of shifting conditions? In the past, stores did not span football fields as do our contemporary “big box” emporiums; therefore, access to unsupervised pilfering was constrained. Additionally, business owners were more likely to be citizens in the town whose livelihoods were more likely to be impacted by petty stealing than today’s distant and monied multi-national corporations. So who’s to say that the “angels of the golden age” would have refrained from pocketing the odd knickknack given contemporary conditions or, equally, that today’s “digital bandits” would have boosted sodas from Mr. McGreevy’s Shoppe?

I’d also like to draw attention to the increase of opportunities both to cheat and to steal. The amount of time that young people spend with tests (both standardized and customized) and consumer opportunities have skyrocketed. Therefore, when you consider the ratio of frequency:opportunity, perhaps contemporary youth cheat and steal LESS than our bobbysoxed predecessors; proportionately, the Beaver and even the Bradys might have engaged in significantly more depravity than Beavis, Butthead, and the cast of Gossip Girl.

Sandra Ball-Rokeach (1998) and Vincent Mosco (2004) caution against technological determinism, invocation of “the digital sublime.” Technology is created by people and, as such, betray cultural biases. Technology is used by people and so our behaviors also betray cultural biases. Tools facilitate behaviors, yes, but modding and multi-purposing demonstrate individuals’ active direction of behavior, literally bending tools to their will. As Jenkins et al (2006) argue in their comparison of the digital divide to the participation gap, tools do NOT deliver capacities. Skills are gained through practice.

The Good Play paper contends that adult mentors must guide young people through this ethical quagmire. I applaud good mentors. But they don’t necessarily have to come in adult packages, nor should they. Young people could also guide adults through some ethical reflection, and the power of peer-to-peer learning should not be underestimated. Here’s a passage that deserves to be problematized by a youth or youthful thinker:

“Our analysis makes reference to an “infringing youth culture” online, meaning an overreaching sense of entitlement with respect to information and property such as music that normalizes illegal downloading and thus may be “infringing” on the rights of musicians and other creators” (James et al, 2008, p. 46)

Inherent in this declaration is acceptance of the current model of private property, which is central to capitalism. In order to “infringe,” one must acknowledge the sanctity of fences on the common, the defensibility of walled gardens. Some suggest that “information wants to be free” and dream of a new way of arranging resources that valorizes open source access. Others argue that private owners still benefit from unchaining their work because it allows for deeper engagement and easier spreadability, which ultimately delivers financial benefit by motivating purchase of the original (in fact, this argument by Jenkins and Green (forthcoming) was cited in the paper (James et al, 2008)!).

So maybe contemporary copyright laws deserve to be re-examined; perhaps their violation should be reframed as “civil disobedience” rather than “illegal activity”; and maybe we need to kick our ethics up a notch, transcending Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (if we choose to acknowledge this system’s legitimacy; see Gilligan’s 1982 In a Different Voice) from 4-Law and Order (“Look to society as a whole for guidelines about behavior. Think of rules as inflexible, unchangeable.”) to 5-Social Contract (“Recognize that rules are social agreements that can be changed when necessary.”) or even to 6-Universal Ethical Principle (“Adhere to a small number of abstract principles that transcend specific, concrete rules. Answer to an inner conscience.”) (Ormrod, 2000).

Regarding judgment, morality, and intercultural exchange, Conquergood (1988) also has a bit to say. While “Health Theatre in a Hmong Refugee Camp: Performance, Communication, and Culture” principally examined his sensitive efforts to understand the community members and work with them to create culturally appropriate intervention tools, he concludes with personal critique:

“Those who participated in this intercultural performance found it deeply moving. However, they were a small, self-selected group who were already the most open-minded. Most of the expatriate guests politely remained in their seats but observed attentively. The most dogmatic agency workers — for example, the Christian nurse who refused to allow any Thai calendars in her ward because they had pictures of the Buddha — did not even attend this event. I should have been more assiduous in attempts to reach the expatriate personnel who were most ethnocentric in their dealings with the Hmong” (p. 199).

It’s important that the people we send — or those who send themselves — as “agents of uplift” neither wreak more harm nor fail to meaningfully assist due to ossified positioning vis-a-vis identity (self vs. Other) and morality (right vs. wrong). Openness (again, that word) is key, the willingness to immerse in the lives of those with whom one seeks to work, and use their input in order to understand the lay of the land. All of this must be balanced properly — overindulgence results in loss of diverse perspectives, which is the value-added of outsider consultation, as well as possible fetishizing of indigenous voice (as in “pursuing a fantasy of ‘authentic’ youth experience, which often translates into a sensationalized portrayal of racialized urban youth (Fleetwood, 2005)” (Soep & Chavez, 2010, p. 56)). Additionally, community members should not be regarded as uniform and/or interchangeable — a single perspective will not necessarily generalize to the group. A holistic portrait must be cobbled together from multiple informants.

In terms of the Good Play agenda, this demands that adults not only mentor (or, as I advocate, share mentorship with) youths, but also engage with youths in their culture(s) and experiences, forming relationships and developing valid, nuanced understandings. It also demands that we resist the urge to focus on a single constituency in a community; unfortunately for those who desire simple, speedy processes, the more complicated, ecological approach is necessary.

Conquergood (1988) saw that, due to sanitation conditions in the refugee camp context, Hmongs’ behaviors had to change, and so he campaigned to change them. But the extent to which sanitation conditions could truly improve was not solely a function of Hmongs’ behaviors; it was also a question of context.  The power-wielders in the refugee camp context might also have been visualized as an “intended audience” whose behaviors vis-a-vis construction and maintenance of the context also needed to change. They could have benefited from a dose of culturally sensitive street theater too, and maybe moved the trash cans. Conquergood resisted the urge to blame the victims overtly; but his intervention blamed the victims implicitly, as it placed the burden of change solely upon their shoulders and failed to challenge the structures that victimized in the first place.

In our dealings with youth, let us not turn a blind eye to the contextual conditions that normatize, glamorize, and/or incentivize unethical behavior. It is not only “the primitives” who have to change; it is all of us.