No Respect: Devaluing the Consequentiality of Online Communities
Global Kids’ recent featured interview in the RezEd podcast series on education and virtual worlds focused on the results of the most significant study to date on youth and online safety. The results of the study, and how they were rejected by the very players who called for the study, provided me with some valuable insights regarding the challenges to using online communities for education and civic engagement.
First, some background from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, who directed the Task Force:
“The Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) is a group of Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics, and technology companies that have joined together to identify effective tools and technologies to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth. It was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace in January 2008.”
When the results were presented to the Attorney General in December, 2008, what did they find? Anne Collier, Editor of NetFamilyNews and member of the Task Force, reported on the RezEd podcast that after pulling all online safety research data into one place, they summarized it as follows: “The online risks that the vast majority of young people face is cyber bullying and harassment. It is not predators. In fact, … only a tiny fraction of online youth are a at risk of predation as a result of online activity….”
One can imagine law enforcement officials delighted to learn that youth under their protection were safer than previously realized. However, rather than be received as good news, “what that research found was disappointing to the Attorneys General because, actually… these are not findings that fit into the package, the report, [they] were looking for.” And, in fact, rather than simply ignore the findings “they are now using their platforms to try to discredit the research that the report summarizes.”
The response of the Attorneys General reminded me of a question posed to me in November, 2007, at the “What Are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds?” conference, held at the University of Southern California. During the Q & A, a member of the audience asked, “Is what they’re learning in virtual worlds making an impact [in the real world] because the virtual world isn’t real?” I was taken aback by her presumption that what transpired in virtual worlds was not “real” and responded that the relationships formed in virtual worlds are real because the emotional bonds formed are real.
What connects the response of the Attorneys General and that audience member, what unites their perspective, and how it differs from and is in conflict with my own, has now become clear to me. One perspective views virtual spaces where people gather - from social networks like Facebook and Myspace to Virtual Worlds and games like Second Life and World of Warcraft - as pale imitations of the real (re: physical) world. From this framework, the virtual can only aspire to be like the real which it simulates, but can never actually achieve it. It’s like the world in the movie The Matrix, in which humanity lives their lives within a giant computer simulation, unaware their physical bodies are actually giant batteries powering the machine. Even if the real world turns out to be a nuclear wasteland, it is still seen as preferable to the artificial, less authentic simulation.
In the end, from this perspective, all that matters is how the virtual connects back to the real world, whether for the better, through inspiring offline civic engagement, or the worse, such as sexual predatory behavior. This is why some people focus their concerns on youth “addicted” to online spaces, arguing it separates them from real relationships. This is why Attorneys Generals are focused on sexual predators.
My perspective differs. I don’t view the virtual world as aspiring to the same expectations we have for the real world. I don’t view Facebook as a simulation of the relationships I have offline, or Second Life as the workplace I experience in my office. I treat these spaces as valuable in and off themselves, for what happens within them, not just in their relationship to what happens outside them.
This reminds me of the talk I gave last year at the Second Life Community Conference, about what I termed “the ludic life.” In short, I was interested in how many people devalue what happens in virtual worlds because of their presumptions about game-like, or ludic, activities. Virtual activities and relationships that look like games or play are devalued as trivial. Now, I am seeing how virtual spaces viewed as secondary to the real are devalued as inconsequential.
It is as if each perspective framed a separate lens in the same pair of glasses, blinding the wearer to the consequence of online communities. It prevents them from seeing that rather than isolate teens, games are very social. As reported on an earlier RezEd Podcast by Amanda Lenhart, the Senior Research Specialist on the Pew Internet in America Life Project’s survey Teens, Video Games and Civics, “The majority of teens, most of the time, are playing games with other people, with friends. That could be friends online, but could also be friends who are sitting next to you in the same room.” It also makes them threatened by a report that says what is important about youth and online safety is not how it connects offline (sexual predators) but what happens within the online space (cyber bullying and harassment).
By the end of the first Matrix film, and, in fact, by the end of the trilogy, the heroes do not set as their goal the destruction of the simulation. Rather, they recognize that the simulation can live alongside the real world, and perhaps, at times, be superior (e.g. you can fly in the simulation and not struggle with starvation). Making peace with the computers, humanity comes to terms with life within the Matrix, recognizing they live in a simulation of reality that has become more real than the real it once mirrored. In other words, all reality has become a simulation - all that remains is to decide what they want to do with it.
And perhaps this is what poses the greatest threat to those who devalue the consequences of time spent within virtual spaces, that in an age of simulation nothing is inherently authentic, that reality is what we collectively determine it to be.
First, some background from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, who directed the Task Force:
“The Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) is a group of Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics, and technology companies that have joined together to identify effective tools and technologies to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth. It was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace in January 2008.”
When the results were presented to the Attorney General in December, 2008, what did they find? Anne Collier, Editor of NetFamilyNews and member of the Task Force, reported on the RezEd podcast that after pulling all online safety research data into one place, they summarized it as follows: “The online risks that the vast majority of young people face is cyber bullying and harassment. It is not predators. In fact, … only a tiny fraction of online youth are a at risk of predation as a result of online activity….”
One can imagine law enforcement officials delighted to learn that youth under their protection were safer than previously realized. However, rather than be received as good news, “what that research found was disappointing to the Attorneys General because, actually… these are not findings that fit into the package, the report, [they] were looking for.” And, in fact, rather than simply ignore the findings “they are now using their platforms to try to discredit the research that the report summarizes.”
The response of the Attorneys General reminded me of a question posed to me in November, 2007, at the “What Are Kids Learning in Virtual Worlds?” conference, held at the University of Southern California. During the Q & A, a member of the audience asked, “Is what they’re learning in virtual worlds making an impact [in the real world] because the virtual world isn’t real?” I was taken aback by her presumption that what transpired in virtual worlds was not “real” and responded that the relationships formed in virtual worlds are real because the emotional bonds formed are real.
What connects the response of the Attorneys General and that audience member, what unites their perspective, and how it differs from and is in conflict with my own, has now become clear to me. One perspective views virtual spaces where people gather - from social networks like Facebook and Myspace to Virtual Worlds and games like Second Life and World of Warcraft - as pale imitations of the real (re: physical) world. From this framework, the virtual can only aspire to be like the real which it simulates, but can never actually achieve it. It’s like the world in the movie The Matrix, in which humanity lives their lives within a giant computer simulation, unaware their physical bodies are actually giant batteries powering the machine. Even if the real world turns out to be a nuclear wasteland, it is still seen as preferable to the artificial, less authentic simulation.
In the end, from this perspective, all that matters is how the virtual connects back to the real world, whether for the better, through inspiring offline civic engagement, or the worse, such as sexual predatory behavior. This is why some people focus their concerns on youth “addicted” to online spaces, arguing it separates them from real relationships. This is why Attorneys Generals are focused on sexual predators.
My perspective differs. I don’t view the virtual world as aspiring to the same expectations we have for the real world. I don’t view Facebook as a simulation of the relationships I have offline, or Second Life as the workplace I experience in my office. I treat these spaces as valuable in and off themselves, for what happens within them, not just in their relationship to what happens outside them.
This reminds me of the talk I gave last year at the Second Life Community Conference, about what I termed “the ludic life.” In short, I was interested in how many people devalue what happens in virtual worlds because of their presumptions about game-like, or ludic, activities. Virtual activities and relationships that look like games or play are devalued as trivial. Now, I am seeing how virtual spaces viewed as secondary to the real are devalued as inconsequential.
It is as if each perspective framed a separate lens in the same pair of glasses, blinding the wearer to the consequence of online communities. It prevents them from seeing that rather than isolate teens, games are very social. As reported on an earlier RezEd Podcast by Amanda Lenhart, the Senior Research Specialist on the Pew Internet in America Life Project’s survey Teens, Video Games and Civics, “The majority of teens, most of the time, are playing games with other people, with friends. That could be friends online, but could also be friends who are sitting next to you in the same room.” It also makes them threatened by a report that says what is important about youth and online safety is not how it connects offline (sexual predators) but what happens within the online space (cyber bullying and harassment).
By the end of the first Matrix film, and, in fact, by the end of the trilogy, the heroes do not set as their goal the destruction of the simulation. Rather, they recognize that the simulation can live alongside the real world, and perhaps, at times, be superior (e.g. you can fly in the simulation and not struggle with starvation). Making peace with the computers, humanity comes to terms with life within the Matrix, recognizing they live in a simulation of reality that has become more real than the real it once mirrored. In other words, all reality has become a simulation - all that remains is to decide what they want to do with it.
And perhaps this is what poses the greatest threat to those who devalue the consequences of time spent within virtual spaces, that in an age of simulation nothing is inherently authentic, that reality is what we collectively determine it to be.
Views: 2
Comment
-
Comment by Barry Joseph on February 23, 2009 at 4:38pm -
Hear hear! (more choir preaching...) :-)
-
Comment by Jan Herder on February 23, 2009 at 12:28pm -
Hi Barry, interesting thoughts. Of course you are preaching to the choir here--which is the point I suspect. It is the digital divide at work--those who experience on-line communities and those who don't. It is the participants in the paradigm shift bumping up against the fossil fuel thinkers. The issue of on-line safety is best addressed by taking the internet seriously and giving our youth the tools to discern the dangers. We teach them to look both ways before they cross the street, right?
Thanks for sharing,
Jan
© 2012 Created by Global Kids.
You need to be a member of RezEd to add comments!
Join RezEd