Abstract
This book positions ‘the digital’ as an integral component of everyday life and posits that it influences how society addresses cyber-safety, digital inclusion and digital citizenship as they pertain to youth in Australia. In 250 pages, the authors outline the view that greater collaboration between youth and adults, policy makers and researchers is required in order to understand youth’s experiences. It is argued that this can create a narrative that can benefit young people’s lived realities and dismantle the prevailing control paradigm that can unlock the positive potential of the digital for them. The book draws on considerable material and references but stops short of making recommendations at the very point where the research could have made a contribution and defined directions on youth online engagement. The conclusions drawn utilise primary research on digital inclusion, online chat forums to assess digital citizenship and the use of creative story-writing to assess risk and online safety. For the reader, the latter approach is disappointing: it deviates from directly addressing online engagement, relying instead on the writing of fiction and the interpretation of this by the authors. Although this does not detract from the book at an overarching level, a consistent approach addressing specific research queries would arguably have provided more relevant and direct responses that are not subject to interpretation within some sections.
The book commences with a discussion of the control environment that is defined by adults in which younger people function, and how this impacts digital engagement. The authors posit that this is developed to mitigate the ‘worst case’ outcomes and protect youth. This section explores the notion of control and risk. The argument is that young people are at risk by nature of their transition between younger and older ages, with digital media in Australia and other countries potentially able to ‘radicalise’ them. It also includes reference to a Foucauldian lens in relation to the notion of digital control, offering a cross-section of perspectives. A key point the authors make is that digital resilience can be changed by altering how engagement occurs with younger people and that this should transpire through a more open intergenerational dialogue. The premise is put forward that younger people should be able and encouraged to take some controlled digital risks within safe limits while being afforded protection.
A chapter on cyber-safety follows, arguing that the control paradigm is shaped by a protectionist discourse that reflects vested interests from multiple stakeholders, including government, the private sector, research and those from the non-profit sector. It is posited that younger people are subject to a powerful control paradigm that regulates the way that they imagine, express and react to online risks and that this could be preventing them from developing a nuanced understanding of the ways that they can leverage the digital for their benefit, and that policy makers should engage with younger audiences. The authors attempt to reinforce this through the use of fictional stories written by 12- to 18-year-old focus group participants on the topic of digital engagement. While the other sections of the book utilise direct-experience feedback, the use of ‘creative stories’ does not feel appropriate here: the authors provide their interpretation of the stories written. This includes conclusions that paint a predominantly negative picture, indicating that ‘hope’ offered by the digital is eclipsed by potentially negative and harmful effects and a simplified moral universe. The authors put forward that young people may ultimately be held back from fully exploiting the digital for benefit due to a lack of translation of cyber safety education into safety practices and that they internalise the control paradigm. This conclusion appears to be at odds with the observed behaviour of youth reported in the plethora of research on the everyday digital behaviour of younger people, including for the purposes of schoolwork, research, e-commerce, video calls or indeed the results coming out from ongoing studies by agencies such as Ofcom. The authors posit that young people navigate between control paradigms and their lived experiences, while not accepting wholesale the dictates of the control paradigm, or rejecting them. They conclude that cyber-safety education has successfully altered young people’s awareness of the risks to online behaviour but has not resulted in more sophisticated safety practices and more effective ways to interface with digital media. They assert that the control paradigm may be inflating young people’s concerns and preventing them from developing a nuanced understanding of the ways they can leverage the digital for benefit, and that this requires relevant messaging. No elaboration exists, however, on how policy makers or others should alter their messages or narratives, or what ‘relevant’ actually means, despite the research undertaken yielding results that could have been utilised following their analysis.
The chapter on digital inclusion provides insightful and relevant information. It draws upon data and sources mapping out Australia’s evolution in broadband connectivity. Reference is made to the use of the ‘ADII’, a measure to define digital inclusion in Australia across regions. The chapter explores digital access in schools and how the Government’s access scheme became a vehicle for the control paradigm, citing examples where schools failed to enhance access through cultural change. This links the issue of access with the notion of control and how schools approached connectivity including the navigation around challenges. The authors believe that the opportunity exists for young people to thrive in the present and harness the potential of the digital to renew a common world, but little guidance is provided on how this can be achieved. Rather than suggesting new indicators or measures for digital inclusion, the authors explore digital capacities as a means of addressing the perceived limitations of current definitions and measures. This leaves the reader pondering how the stated goal of fostering young people’s ability to survive and thrive in the everyday digital could occur.
Digital citizenship is explored in the final section from various perspectives in Western Democracy. The authors adopt a holistic definition of citizenship in which they explore digital citizenship, depicting youth as utilising digital skills to create and engage in communities and that the combination of the dynamic attributes of digital coupled with the characteristics of younger people create new and vibrant forms of civic and political engagement. The argument is made that often prevailing political regimes treat younger digital citizens strategically without fostering their participation as active members of society. Digital citizenship is depicted as being intertwined with digital safety and an effort to break with the control paradigm in Australia but the approach is rooted in ‘safety-first’, obviating attainment of the full potential afforded by the digital. Young subjects interviewed indicated they were digitally enabled to a greater degree than their parents or adults and excluded these adults as a result from the notion of digital-citizenship as a result. The chapter does not define, however, how ‘new forms of citizenship’ can be enacted when working with young people, or how the digital can occur.
At an overarching level, this book successfully weaves together a number of themes related to youth, digital inclusion, cybersecurity and citizenship in Australia but with wider relevance. Some generalisations and its plausibility appear to be more random than strategic and contrast the more methodical research methods undertaken, such as the citing of a 2017 news article on the contribution of smartphones to ‘the destruction of a generation: “(it) went viral, stoking a large-scale moral panic and inspiring much consternation and hand-wringing by parents and other adult actors”’ (p.228). The authors also indicate that the young should be introduced to the old world without negating the opportunities their newness offers the old world, but no elaboration is provided on how this can occur. The authors also query whether it is possible to dissemble the operations of the control paradigm to translate into concrete changes at the level of young people’s digital everyday through coordinated and concerted efforts. They highlight that youth navigate around the control paradigm to engage digitally as required. It could be argued however that, youth will continue engaging online for education, socially, for political reasons, research and self-exploration regardless of any attempted intervention, engagement, or effort to influence them, as shown by considerable research and mainstream media references. This is likely to occur despite conclusions by the authors that this group may lack the nuance to maximise the upside that a digital society can bring. Overall, this book provides interesting and insightful reference points within which many digital notions are explored as they relate to youth. It could have been strengthened, however, through extension into recommendations and conclusions given the considerable research undertaken directly with youth to address their digital activities.