Abstract
In examining the way the digital world has shaped our lives, Carries James, the author of Disconnected: Youth, New Media and the Ethics Gap, portrays how youth can experience connectivity over the Internet. Through connectivity and qualitative research with youth, James analyzes how the various aspects of digital life affect the way youth see themselves in today’s digital society: “The picture is incomplete if we don’t also understand how the negative potentials and realities are experienced, are made sense of and influence the moral and ethical dispositions of young people” (p. 3). James’ stance on ethical issues of youth participation stages to create the terms “disconnects” and “blind spots” in order to examine the issues in how youth directly connect with the digital world.
Within her research, she uses the idea of “disconnects,” relying on a sense that youth display an absence of ethics in their participation online. The use of ethical “blind spots” is demonstrated in the growing preoccupation with self that contributes to the pervasive individuality of youth in today’s Internet age. James connects with these young individuals who describe their digital experiences, showing there is a lack of morality and ethics in their digital world. This book implores us to focus on this greater issue in connection to privacy, property, and participation. The reader explores the deeper disconnection of youth during the digital age.
James evaluates the case for individualistic ideals when she brings up the topic of privacy. There is the widespread public assumption that privacy has been abandoned on the Internet. James asserts that “the prevalent belief that privacy is forsaken online can contribute to failures to consider the moral and ethical consequences of using digital tools to access others’ private lives” (p. 45). This belief is abetted by the phenomena such as Internet password protection for virtually every website, dozens of ways to verify accounts through passcodes, and the notion that we never leave our personal identity in public at the risk of identity loss. James offers a positive outlook between youth’s personal risk grounded in sensitivity toward privacy in a digital world. Although privacy seems lost, choices can be made about online privacy through social, even moral matters.
Youth have broadened the sense of how privacy is managed on a need to know everything basis, dealing directly, for example, with social networks. James is successful in making readers realize that privacy is a two-way street. “Ideally,” she opines, “our alertness to the privacy and digital footprints of others should happen alongside the concern for our own privacy. But does it?” (p. 29). Privacy is not dependent solely on the user’s choice of imagery in the digital world, but on how youth and our conduct can and will become visibly effective upon others within public networks.
The same premise can be discussed in James’ next chapter, which describes how online content is readily accessed, remixed, and recycled. Youth display growing concern for giving credit while simultaneously choosing to act with apathy, creating a divide between the greater understanding of how self-action can affect multiple parties: “their thinking represents a troubling disconnect between their actions and a larger trend that, by their own admission, may harm people they do care about” (p. 64). James makes the case that the online community, especially parents and teachers of youth, need to begin to understand how the effect of appropriation and property theft is becoming a prevalent issue for youth users on the Internet. Following this, the issue of participation and how youth users engage within the network is brought to the attention of the reader.
The Internet connects us to social networks, without us fully understanding the intentions or consequences of these connections: “Digital qualities such as anonymity and the distance between ourselves and others online can be seized in ways that (intentionally or not) taint the moral and ethical character of online communities, thus diminishing the promise of the Internet” (p. 83). A serious matter prevailing on the Internet today, James gives youth credit for having moral sensitivity when it comes to sharing information over the Internet. The issue surrounding Internet privacy should not just be demographically driven but is an important topic for all users of the Internet. This conversation around participation allows for understanding on how youth make choices in how they participate within a digital world and within the greater scope of stewardship among Internet users.
James’ work should be recommended to parents who are curious of their own participation with their children and the digital world. Adults have missed what James describes as the “mentorship gap”: “Although parents and educators may be well-intentioned in their emphasis on personal safety, their overattention to such concerns leaves little room for discussions about ethics and social responsibility on the Web” (p. 107). This mentorship gap explores the increased disposition for lack of consciousness with Internet presence by addressing ethical blind spots and disconnects.
As part of a series compiled by The MIT Press that explores digital media and learning, this book emphasizes youth engagement surrounding new media. This book is beneficial to scholars of New Media because it allows one to see through qualitative research how youth explore connectivity to the digital world. The pathways in which youth decide to engage and interact with the digital age remain important to address when looking toward approaching the field with constructive methods on integration of intent within the Internet. As James concludes, the pull toward individualized thinking is abundant when addressing privacy, the moral blind spots thrive when looking at property, and there are constant misfires of connectivity when relating to participation. This book serves as an informed guideline to assist in understanding conscious connection in our sometimes-disconnected digital age.