Children in the Online World

Risk, Regulation, Rights

Elisabeth Staksrud

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317167822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

What is online risk? How can we best protect children from it? Who should be responsible for this protection? Is all protection good? Can Internet users trust the industry? These and other fundamental questions are discussed in this book. Beginning with the premise that the political and democratic processes in a society are affected by the way in which that society defines and perceives risks, Children in the Online World offers insights into the contemporary regulation of online risk for children (including teens), examining the questions of whether such regulation is legitimate and whether it does in fact result in the sacrifice of certain fundamental human rights. The book draws on representative studies with European children concerning their actual online risk experiences as well as an extensive review of regulatory rationales in the European Union, to contend that the institutions of the western European welfare states charged with protecting children have changed fundamentally, at the cost of the level of security that they provide. In consequence, children at once have more rights with regard to their personal decision making as digital consumers, yet fewer democratic rights to participation and protection as 'digital citizens'. A theoretically informed, yet empirically grounded study of the relationship between core democratic values and the duty to protect young people in the media-sphere, Children in the Online World will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences with interests in new technologies, risk and the sociology of childhood and youth.

Book: The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Chapter 1
Introduction

This book is about children and online risk. It aims to conceptualize and explain the contemporary public discourse, concerns and systemic regulations related to children’s¹ use of the Internet, and to analyse the implications these concerns and regulations have for children’s rights on a fundamental level. This is done from a social scientific approach within the research framework of media and communication studies.

What follows is built on the understanding that how these risks are defined and perceived in a democratic society, how they are classified in terms of potential harm and likelihood of impact and how the public discourse is staged will all have an impact on the political and democratic processes in that society. Seeing risks as an immediate threat to one’s children will inevitably generate cries for political action; action that traditionally manifests itself in some form of regulation aimed at reducing or removing the perceived threat. And, regulation within a democratic society will (or at least should) elicit the need for a transparency in the proceeding and surrounding political processes, an involvement of the public through public hearings and debates, media scrutiny and a clarification of the legitimacy of the regulation versus the perceived risk.²

Often, in the Western welfare states of Europe, the protection of their citizens from potential harm has come in the form of restriction and institutionalization. Children, for instance, have been subjected to standardized educational and healthcare schemes. And protection from harm is good by definition. However, both good intentions and protection might embed unintended consequences and hidden agendas. For instance, historically, societal surveillance of the family and potential breach of privacy have been justified to the greater moral cause of child protection, and thus have been viewed as potential tools for panoptical³ practices (Prout 2008, pp. 25–26). As discussed by Oswell (1999, p. 47) ‘substantial research in governmentality studies has argued that the “child”, particularly with respect to the family and private life more generally, has become a central mechanism through which individuals and populations are now regulated’. And, as discussed by Meyer (2007, p. 100). ‘Legitimization and moralizing are inextricably linked dimensions of childhood rhetoric; hence childhood rhetoric is always moral rhetoric and anything can be justified via children as children make the case necessarily good and right’. This can be done as the public image and imagery of children (imagery that is about children, but not for them) creates public narratives, often polarized, about the state of childhood (see for instance Holland 2004; Holland 2008). In the democratic states of Western Europe, where issues of human rights such as free speech and the right to information and participation is embedded in the political and legislative frameworks, the protection of children is the one argument commonly accepted as valid for the restriction of media content, access and output. Discussions related to media risk and potential harm for children often relates to morally sensitive issues like pornography, hate speech and the depiction of violence. Children can easily become the useful excuse when attempting to restrict the central democratic values of free speech, access to information and privacy. These are the same issues that effectively test the current state of societal freedom. In the words of sociologist Ulrich Beck:

Anyone who would like to know how free a country and its people are should not look only at the constitution and should leave debates in parliament and governmental programs aside. Instead, attention should be paid to how people behave with respect to excesses of freedom (pornography, criminality by ‘foreigners’, violence among young people); if they react with composure, then freedom is in good hands. (Beck 2001d, p. 165)

Most discussions on children, their safety, perceived innocence and welfare have the ability to generate strong feelings and often a heated public discourse. This is especially true if one should happen to question one of the established cultural narratives of what a child is and should be: someone vulnerable, innocent and in need of protection. The conflicting notions of what children are also create normative challenges. With this comes the understanding that there might be tensions between research, policy and practice, not only in scope and priorities, but also in understanding. As observed by Taylor-Gooby and Zinn on the general increase and prevalence of risk research in the social sciences:

Much of the impetus (and certainly of research funding) for work in relation to risk has stemmed from the involvement of government and business in attempts to introduce new technologies or new forms of management in areas where risks are involved. Research thus confronts the puzzles and frustrations that arise when people do not respond to risks and to expert judgments and advise in the ways predicted by theory – whether the theory rests on claims about rational action, on assumptions about the culture of different groups or on other factors. (Taylor-Gooby and Zinn 2006a, p. 10)

Simultaneously, there is no denying that children have the right to be protected, in the best way possible. This includes protection from potentially negative media effects and influences. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 17, stipulates how the important function performed by the mass media is recognized and that children should have access to information and material from a diverse range of national and international sources. At the same time, in the same article (section e) the development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being is encouraged (United Nations 1989).

There is a long history of the struggles of the welfare state in respect to children and media risk (see for instance Critcher 2008; Drotner 1992, 1999a, 1999b, 2001). However, today, with technological developments such as the Internet, the traditional governmental institutions set up to protect children from potential media harm are challenged. The guiding theoretical idea forming this work is that both substantial technological developments and institutional change have occurred in the field of media protection in the Western welfare states of Europe. As media becomes personalized and interactive, decisions regarding access to media content and communication seem to have been transferred from the previous institutionalized censorship and restrictions to parental discretion. In effect, this places the ultimate and practical decision in the hands of parents, educators and the children themselves. This recent dismantling of the state role is what Beck, among others (Beck 1986, 1992, 2007; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001a), theorizes as institutionalized individualization. This theoretical framework is seen as being particularly relevant to the media risk sector, where institutions and individuals now have to act – and react – quickly in order to keep up with the technological advances. In this work the theory of individualization (Beck 1992, 2007; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001a) will be used as the conceptual framework.

Research Questions

With this starting point, the ambition of this book is to reflect, conceptualize and offer explanations to the following three main research questions (RQs):

1. What is online risk?

2. How is online risk regulated?

3. What are the potential implications for children’s rights?

The first question primarily centres on the descriptive level; the second concerns mainly the existing prescriptive level; while the third research question will primarily discuss issues on a normative level.

The research questions and the overall discussion will be shaped by the parameters as laid out by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim in their theoretical framework of individualization (Beck 1992, 2007; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001a). The tenet of this theory is that there has been a shift within the European welfare state towards a macro-sociological phenomenon where individualization is imposed on the individual by modern institutions, while at the same time the institutions previously providing the individual with security and orientation are outsourced.

The theory will be applied to the field of media regulation for the protection of children. In this way, the work will also endeavour to contribute on the theoretical level, by arguing for an extension and elaboration of the individualization theory, to individuals so far ignored by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim: children. For, what better institutions to elucidate those who relieve the individual and provide him/her with security and orientation than those that protect our most precious commodity – our children? This is, of course, not a unique oversight. While comprehensive research in the fields of media, modernity, risk society and institutional individualization exists, it rarely includes children as an integrated group of subjects. Rather, there has been a division and dichotomization between adulthood and childhood, associating them with different qualities (such as rationality, dependency and competence) (Prout 2008, p. 22). In the following chapters, the theoretical disregard of children will be challenged. I will seek to confront the assumption that children are (incompetent) citizens-to-be and the potential victims of risk, insofar as this is all they are perceived to be, and critically question the implications of such. By conceptualizing the ideas of online risk, combined with empirical evidence, I will also critically address the relevance and legitimacy of the current protective regulatory frameworks implemented in Europe.

Existing Research and Research Gaps

Why choose this approach? An answer can be offered by pointing to the common and almost cliché-like claim from historians that in order to understand our present and predict our future, we need to understand our past. In terms of research we also need to build on what we already know. In an area where every little change in technology is treated as something conceptually new and therefore in need of new kinds of regulatory and legislative ideas, there is instead an actual and imperative need for encompassing historically grounded concepts. For the past two decades this has especially been true in relation to the Internet. At the beginning, Internet research was typically concerned with the marvel of the new and its perceived uniqueness. The advent of information and communications technology (ICT) was, in its formative years, generally heralded as a force aiding the breakdown of authoritarian political control (Rodan 1998, p. 63). Scholars, politicians and others praised the Internet as the ‘first truly humane civilization in recorded history’ (Alvin Toffler, quoted in Sussman 1991, p. 279). As recollected by Wellman (2004, p. 124), ‘The Internet was seen as a bright light, shining above everyday concerns. It was a technological marvel, thought to be bringing a new Enlightenment to transform the world’. The inter-communicative aspect of the technology, especially, was seen to greatly enhance the mediation between decision-makers and citizens, ‘allowing democracy of a more participatory nature than at any time since the ancient Greeks’ (Rodan 1998, p. 64). Such optimistic views can be found with the introduction of all ‘new’ media (see for instance Jankowski 2006).

Similarly, a strand of fear can be observed, ranging from issues of unequal access and increasing opportunity divides, increased cultural imperialism, the weakening of democratically elected institutions and governments and weakened interpersonal ties (leading to all sorts of health-related issues). The optimism-worry dichotomy is also very present in the discourse of children’s use of ‘new’ media (Drotner and Livingstone 2008, pp. 2–3), from promises of access to information, participation and literacy, to fear of easier access to harmful and/or undesirable content for children.⁴

Today, children and online risk has become a substantial research field of its own, sparking the interest of not only media scholars, but also, among others, those scholars from the fields of education, pedagogy and social psychology. In Europe, much of this research is government funded, and favours a quantitative approach (Donoso, Ólafsson and Broddason 2009; Haddon and Stald 2009b; Hasebrink, Ólafsson and Štêtja 2009b; Staksrud, Livingstone, Haddon and Ólafsson, 2009).

So how does this work thematically, compared to the works of other scholars and research traditions? Existing works in the field of children and new media (in the meaning ‘new information and communication technologies’ – ICT) comprises research from many traditions and specific topics. The most prevalent of these are (examples):

• User studies, such as the volume and types of media that children use and access, and how this is related to other types of media use and activities (Couldry, Livingstone and Markham 2007; Drotner 2001; Ito et al. 2010; Kaare, Brandtzæg, Heim and Endestad 2007; Lemish 2008; Ling and Haddon 2008; Livingstone 2002b; Livingstone 2008; Livingstone and Bober 2004a, 2006; Livingstone, Bovill and London School of Economics and Political Science 1999; Livingstone and Helsper 2005; Livingstone and Helsper 2007a; Pasquier 2001; Staksrud, Livingstone and Haddon 2007; Suoninen 2001), especially in the context of home and family (Hoover and Schofield Clark 2008; Pasquier, Buzzi, d’Haenens and Sjöberg 1998) and parental mediation (Backett-Milburn and Harden 2004; Downes 1999; Karlsen and Syvertsen 2004; Kirwil, Garmendia, Garitaonadia and Fernandez 2009; Liau, Khoo and Ang 2008; Livingstone and Bober 2004b, 2006; Livingstone and Helsper 2008; Lobe, Segers and Tsaliki 2009a; Macgill 2007; Nikken and Jansz 2006; Nikken, Jansz and Schouwstra 2007; Sarre 2010; Schofield Clark 2008).

• Children’s response to media (Buckingham 1996; Buckingham and Allerton 1996), and how this influences the forming of identity (Buckingham 2008b).

• Digital divide issues (Livingstone and Helsper 2007a, 2010; Tondeur, Sinnaeve, van Houtte and van Braak 2011; Tsatsou, Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt and Murru 2009).

• The ‘new’ media’s effect on children (Millwood Hargrave and Livingstone 2009), especially in relation to aggressive behaviour (Anderson, Gentile and Buckley 2007; David-Ferdon and Hertz 2007; Grossman and DeGaetano 1999; Huesmann 2007; Ponte, Bauwens and Mascheroni 2009; Viemerö 1986; Williams and Skoric 2005), and potential blurring between reality and fantasy (Messenger Davies, 2008).

• New media/the Internet as consumption, toys and issues of marketing and advertising (Buckingham 2011; Ekström and Tufte 2007; Fleming 2008; Kenway and Bullen 2008; Kjørstad 2000; Kjørstad, Brusdal and Ånestad 2010; Reid-Walsh 2008; Wasko 2008);

• Internet and digital literacy (Carlsson 2008; Erstad 2005; Erstad and Silseth 2008; Hobbs 2008; Livingstone 2008; Livingstone and Helsper 2005; Macedo and Steinberg 2007; O’Neill and Hagen 2009; Seiter 2005), including informal learning processes (Drotner and Schrøder 2010; Drotner, Siggaard Jensen and Schrøder, 2008; Staksrud 2006) and educational value of (new) media (Buckingham 1982, 1990; Buckingham, McFarlane and Institute for Public Policy Research 2001; Buckingham and Scanlon 2003; Gee 2008; Seiter 2005; Worthen 2007).

Finally, there is a body of research specifically concentrating on the various issues that might cause risk for children when using the Internet or other information and communication technologies (ICT), an area to which I myself belong. This research field consists of scholars coming from a wide range of research traditions, not only media and communications, but also social psychology, children’s studies, medicine, sociology and political science, to mention just a few. Much of the research available focuses on particular, narrowly defined risks such as online bullying (see for instance Agatston, Kowalski and Limber 2007; Beran and Li 2005; Brandtzæg, Staksrud, Hagen and Wold 2009; Calvete, Orue, Estévez, Villardón and Padilla 2010; Dehue, Bolman and Vollink 2008; Erdur-Baker 2010; Fekkes, Pijpers and Verloove-Vanhorick 2005; Finkelhor, Wolak and Mitchell 2010; Görzig 2011; Hinduja and Patchin 2008; Huesmann 2007; Kowalski and Limber 2007b; Lenhart 2007; Li 2007; McKenna and Bargh 2000; Naylor, Cowie, Cossin, de Bettencourt and Lemme 2006; Raskauskas and Stoltz 2007; Staksrud 2011, 27.06; Vandebosch and Van Cleemput 2009; Willard 2007; Williams and Guerra 2007; Wolak, Mitchell and Finkelhor 2007; Worthen 2007; Ybarra, Diener-West and Leaf 2007a; Ybarra, Espelage and Mitchell 2007b; Ybarra and Mitchell 2001; Ybarra and Mitchell 2004); or issues of grooming and child pornography (see for instance Akdeniz 1997; Best 2006; Dunaigre 2001; Finkelhor, Mitchell and Wolak, 2000; Finkelhor et al., 2010; Jackson, Allum and Gaskell 2005; Mouvement Anti-Pédophilie sur Internet (MAPI) 1997; O’Donnell and Milner 2007; Ost 2006; Sheldon and Howitt 2007; Staksrud 2000, accepted; Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitchell 2004). Although I am greatly informed by the above-mentioned studies and others within this field concerning other types of online risk, my aim is to move away from specific risk assessments to a general discussion of the issues of online risk as a broad concept, and how this relates to regulation as well as rights.

My overall discussion will also be informed by my own empirical findings related to different types of online risks experienced by children, and different phases in the risk-management process, as well as findings from the EU Kids ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Individualization
• Part I Risk!
• Part II Regulation!
• Part III Rights?
• References
• Index