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Fear and Hope

The Politics of Childhood and Mobile Media

Damien Spry

This chapter addresses the politics of childhood, youth, and mobile media, providing an overview of some of the issues found in research, public discourse, and policy discussions and then focusing on the national contexts of Australia and Japan.¹ I examine political discourse relating to the use of mobile media by children and young people, and public policy that regulates and/or promotes their mobile media use, considering the ways that particular sociocultural constructions of childhood and youth are deployed and reproduced. I seek to make explicit the ways that children and young people are discursively constructed in public debates about mobile media use, and how these conceptions are translated in public discourse and policy. I also call attention to the relative marginalization of children's voices in the political discourses about them and their capacities as mobile media users, and I consider the potential for children and young people to participate in, subvert, or render insignificant, these political and policy interventions.

In the second half of this chapter, I discuss a number of cases from Japan and Australia where significant public debate emerged on children's mobile media use. The national contexts of Japan and Australia are instructive; they represent two relatively wealthy and technologically advanced societies with explicit public agendas regarding connectivity and access, yet with very different cultural heritages and significant differences in the demographics of their respective populations. The cases I discuss bring into sharp relief some commonalities in the politics of youth mobile media in these different contexts. However, these examples also raise questions about how the politics of mobile media may be grounded by national and local cultures. Ideas about childhood certainly do vary greatly across cultures (and have varied historically). Use of mobile media also varies. The faster areas of growth in mobile media use are in what are sometimes referred to as “developing” or “emergent” markets, including much of Africa and parts of Asia-Pacific, especially China and India (International Telecommunications Union, 2010). There is an emerging body of work on mobile phones as tools for development (e.g., Jagen & Heeks, 2008; Waverman, Meschi, & Fuss, 2005), in post-conflict countries (e.g., Best, Smyth, Etherton, & Wornyo, 2010), and by migrant workers (e.g., Panagokoras & Horst, 2006). Yet the studies of children and young people as mobile media users have hitherto been restricted largely to examples from Europe, North America, and the wealthier countries of the Pacific Rim. There is a critical need for more research, and for more interaction between research and policymaking. But with this in mind, it is important to note that the argument offered here has an essential caveat: while the approach I have taken may be applied globally (with some variation), we cannot assume that the conclusions would be identical in every regional, national, or local context.

As recent studies have demonstrated (Matsuda, 2010; NSW Commission for Children and Young People, 2009; Spry, 2010), it has become unremarkable for Japanese and Australian elementary schoolchildren to possess mobile phones. Nowadays, between 60% and 85% of 11- to 16-year-old children have a mobile phone, and the average age at which children first gain possession of a mobile phone is getting younger. In the early years of the commercialization of the mobile phone, this would have been unthinkable: mobile phones were largely reserved for taxi companies, police and emergency services, and entrepreneurial elites. Then, the “bricks” that the Gordon Geckos of Wall Street held in such high regard were too large, too heavy, and too expensive for children; even if they were not, mobile phones were considered unnecessary. It was not until technological improvements leading to smaller and cheaper handsets, and realization among telecommunications companies that a profitable younger market existed, that the age of mobile phone users dropped significantly. Young mobile users enjoyed the increased capacity for peer communication, and creatively turned the mobile phone into a device for new, youth-focused forms of expression and sociality. That, coupled with the increasing demands of work, commuting, and schooling which made families begin to find it difficult to stay in proximate contact with each other, led the mobile phone to become an important tool for managing relations within families and peer groups. Having a mobile phone, for many current elementary school students,² has swiftly moved from the unthinkable to the unremarkable; it is now bordering on the essential (Matsuda, 2009, 2010).

Nevertheless, concerns that have been associated with youth mobile media use since the 1990s persist in popular and political discourses. Such concerns include: the way mobile phones now function as markers of social status and the growing necessity of mobile phones for social inclusion among youth and children; the intrusion of mobile phones into school life and education; and the association of mobile phone possession, display, and use with aspects of adulthood, such as participation in the economy and in the adult worlds of love, sex, and violence. Meanwhile, the evident popularity and ubiquity of mobile phone use by children and young people have left adults (including policymakers) with a burning question: how to take advantage of the possibilities of mobile media while managing their uses so as to minimize harm to young people? Another important question is less commonly posed: how can we include children and young people in policy discussions that relate to them? The growing body of research on children, youth, and mobile media can help adults understand young people's experiences, at the same time informing policy discussions aimed at promoting socially beneficial uses while discouraging more problematic behaviors associated with mobile media use. Unfortunately, the extent to which public policy has been informed by the research thus far appears minimal, as archetypal attitudes about children and media use predominate.

Research on Children and Young People's Mobile Phone Use

In the early days of mobile media studies, the idea of preadolescent children as mobile media users was of marginal interest. As young people began to take up the mobile phone in greater numbers – first teenagers in the late 1990s, and then elementary school-age children in the 2000s – researchers began to take interest. Youth mobile media use began to be associated with new cultural forms of expression. In an early example, texting via short message service (SMS) became an issue, as specific linguistic practices were identified and analyzed. The increasing use of mobile phones by children also raised other areas of concern. The fear of physical harm due to exposure to electromagnetic radiation, the risk of inexperienced users accumulating large telephone bills, and anxieties about addiction or other antisocial behavior were added to unease about the impact of new communicative forms (such as SMS) on traditional standards of literacy. Initially, there was considerably less enthusiasm about the possibilities for mobile media as an educational device than there was concern about its potential for disruption and even danger. Other studies looked at the important role mobile communication had in facilitating, and transforming, youth sociality. Later studies, from the mid-2000s, included the social and political relations within families as an important aspect of youth mobile media use.

All these aspects of mobile media use by children and young people have become important themes in the field of youth mobile media studies. Rich Ling (1999a, 1999b, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c; Ling & Helmerson, 2000) introduced many of these themes in the early years of the 2000s. Since then, the field of mobile media studies has grown steadily. The first significant edited collection on mobile media studies appeared in 2002 (Brown, Green, & Harper, 2002). Since 2005, the published literature on mobile media studies has grown at a greater pace (see Castells, Fernández-Ardèvol, Qiu, & Sey, 2007; Goggin, 2006; Harper, Palen, & Taylor, 2005; Ito, Okabe, & Matsuda, 2005; Katz, 2008; Ling, 2005, 2008). Recently, a number of notable publications emphasized mobile cultures in the Asia-Pacific region, including the countries covered in this analysis: Australia and Japan (see Goggin, 2008; Goggin & Hjorth, 2009; Hemelryk, Dindorfer Anderson, & Spry, 2010; Hjorth, 2009). Books and publications on mobile media that appeared during this period included studies that examined their uses by children and young people.

Relevant scholarly research to date can be categorized according to a series of themes, three of which are well established: (1) youth sociality, culture, and identity;³ (2) moral panics, risks, and responses;⁴ and (3) mobile childhood, parenthood, and families.⁵ An additional, less established theme concerns the use of mobile media in formal educational environments, for pedagogical purposes. This theme, commonly referred to as “mobile learning,” is likely to gain ground if (or when) mobile media are more fully incorporated into school classrooms. A fifth theme might be called “the future of mobile media use,” and includes research that employs terms like “ubiquity” and “convergence” to describe the changing media environment. This work, often associated with discourses of “digital natives,” or “the net generation,” seeks to identify new forms of media use and new types of users.

Common characterizations of mobile-mediated childhood found in both the literature and in public debates can be either positive or negative. This distinction is an important one for policy analysis: the positive, useful, and unobtrusive functions performed using mobile phones are not subject to much scrutiny by policymakers, while negative concerns and conflicts between forms of mobile media use are more likely to bring about demands for regulatory responses to manage, mitigate, or remove risks. Positive characterizations of mobile phone uses by children include the common observations that mobile phones are important devices for family management at a distance, a phenomenon referred to as, inter alia, remote-control parenting, mobile parenting, or mom-in-a-pocket. The coordination of family life via the mobile phone is a common use of mobile phones, something increasingly important when parents are working and children are engaged in extra-curricular activities. Research has also found that, with some variation, emotional relationships are sustained via mobile phones: communication need not fulfill a practical task in order to be important. In addition, mobile phones are widely regarded as enhancing feelings of security for both children and parents by providing the potential for contact at all times.

On the other hand, there are a number of negative or problematic uses of mobile phones often encountered in the literature and in policy discussions. The kinds of negative impacts of children's use of mobile phones include, variously, risks of mugging, bullying, and happy slapping, the social pressure to have the “right” mobile phone, the potential for teenagers to engage in commercial sexual activity via mobile Internet sites, and mobile phone addiction. In addition, many parents consider the ability for children to be more secretive about whom they are communicating with to be a concern, although of course some children see this independence from parental surveillance as positive. Overall, despite the concerns and risks recognized, both parents and children tend to see mobile phones as having an overall positive impact on their lives.

Without a doubt, a significant body of research has demonstrated that mobile phones are an important factor in many young people's social and cultural lives. For many young people, the mobile phone has become an essential device in peer relationships and a contributing factor in their self-esteem. This raises a number of important issues for research and policy. One is cost management: mobile phones represent significant expense for young consumers, who are often economically dependent on parental sources of income.

In addition, though not well covered by the literature, is evidence of an emerging, intractable conflict between schools and families over the possession and use of mobile phones (Rizzo, 2008). Schools often see mobile phones as a nuisance, an impediment to their educational mission, and even a risk to students' safety. This can be a major concern for parents, who want to be able to contact their children while they are in school. It is also a concern for children, who may share their parents' desire for familial contact, and who of course desire mobile phones for other reasons. The conflict over children's use of mobile phones in school is a matter of increasing importance, as school systems have developed policies to regulate and limit mobile phone use by students. School policies address real problems with the disruptive force of mobile phone use, as well as responding to fears heightened by mobile media panics. The competing interests of schools, which seek to limit the potential for disturbance in the classroom, and those of students and parents, who desire constant contact, has required new policy responses.

Research and regulation on children's mobile media use also raises broader sociological and political questions. Importantly, the definition of childhood itself comes into question. How is “childhood” defined and understood in research and policy discussions regarding mobile media use? What ideas about childhood predominate today? What are the implications of particular social constructions of childhood for mobile media policy? In order to answer these questions, we need to probe more critically into the various ways “childhood” has been conceptualized historically, the archetypical ideas that have endured, and the contemporary risks and anxieties associated with childhood, youth culture, and new media use.

Childhoods Past and Present

In contemplating the ways that childhood is understood in the present, it is advantageous to first examine the past. As British theorists of childhood Chris Jenks, Alison James, and Alan Prout (James, Jenks, & Prout, 1998; Jenks, 1996) have underscored, political philosophers Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke each contributed conceptions of childhood that accorded with their respective conceptions of human nature. These philosophers offer three versions of the child as the pure, essential, and unadulterated form of the human being: untamed (Hobbes), untainted (Rousseau), or untrained (Locke).

For Hobbes, life in its elemental state is uncivilized, unstable, brutish, and animalistic. Hobbesian childhood exists in a state of nature. Children, being as yet unschooled and untamed, needed to be brought, forcefully if need be, into the life of enlightened adulthood. Analogies have been made to colonial discourses of the savage native who needed to be saved (Jenks, 1996), and the wild animal needing to be broken (James et al., 1998). Childhood, in the Hobbesian, evil, devilish use of the term, is a period of life during which the authorities – parents, schools, the church, the law – ought not to spare the rod, lest the child remain spoilt.

Paired against the Hobbesian devilish child is Rousseau's angelic child, who similarly resides in a pure state of nature, but one of prelapsarian blissful innocence rather than the bestial, savage, and sinful world after the fall. Jenks (1996) presents this, in contrast with Hobbes's untamed Bacchic beast, as the Apollonian child, “the heir to sunshine and light, the espouser of poetry and beauty” (p. 73). Rousseau was as intensely enthusiastic about childhood as Hobbes was pessimistic. It is as though the loss of childhood, and of the innocence and pristine freedom associated with it, is to be delayed for as long as possible, and mourned when it arrives. The irony of this, of course, is that like Hobbes's little devils, Rousseau's little angels require the intervention and protection of the adult world, even if it is the adult world that children need to be shielded from. Hobbes's little devils and Rousseau's little angels share also the sense that children are born with a preordained nature, be it native and bestial, or natural and innocent. John Locke had other ideas.

According to Locke, children are not born with any innate moral characteristics. They are not even imbued at birth with human reason, but they do carry within them the potential to develop reason and should inevitably do so as they gain experience and turn potential into actual human rational thought. This implies that a major difference between children and adults is that adults have knowledge born of experience whereas children have not yet acquired such knowledge. Adults are therefore placed in a position of intellectual superiority to children: it becomes the responsibility of adults (especially modern-day parents and teachers) to provide opportunities and guidance, through parenting and pedagogy, for children to become rational, moral, adult members of society. Unlike Hobbes, who suggested children were a risk to (or at least at odds with) society, and Rousseau, who saw society as ruinous to childhood, the Lockean view holds that “through education children will become rational, virtuous, contracting members of society, and exercisers of self-control. They will not threaten social order” (James et al., 1998, p. 16).

John Locke sits historically between Hobbes and Rousseau. The three together influenced philosophical and political thought from the early modern period through to the Romantic period and beyond. Together, their ideas about human nature, and about the relationships between the people and those who govern them, have had tremendous impact on Western political thinking. Their contributions to early modern conceptions of the nature of childhood, and of the relationships between children and the authorities that rule their lives, are equally pertinent, and remain so. Whether we regard children as “pure, bestial, innocent, corrupt, charged with potential, [or] tabula rasa” (Jenks, 1996, p. 31), we continue to contemplate them as subjects to parental and pedagogical forms of governance, discipline, training, and protection. We continue, in this way, to conceive of childhood as a period of political subjectification by the individuals and institutions of adulthood that hold sway over children's lives – until, that is, they reach adulthood and, for better (Hobbes) or worse (Rousseau) or either or both (Locke), they become part of society and thus transition from presocial to social beings.

From these three great political philosophers arises a politics of childhood as apolitical, in the sense that children are not expected or able to participate in political society, yet also as politicized, in that they are subject to political authority. Childhood, in this sense, is a period of sociopolitical transition from subject to (partial) agent. How this apparent transition occurs, and the stages through which children become physically and psychologically adult (thereby attaining the right to take responsibility for their own lives at the age of majority), was to become the concern of developmental models of childhood.

The leading figure in the field of developmental psychology, and therefore of the naturally developing child, is Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (Piaget, 2002). Piaget developed a theory of intellectual development through empirical studies of children's use of information from their environment at different ages from infancy onwards. Piaget is best known for his influential theory of stages of development, in which children are thought to progress through a series of qualitatively distinct levels of cognitive, and thus intellectual, development. Piaget's theory followed earlier developmental models that position children as lacking adult capacities – of autonomy, rationality, responsibility; as psychologically and emotionally dependent and vulnerable; and/or as “needy” for particular experiences and opportunities which, if not provided, will undermine the child's proper development (Stainton Rogers, 2004, p. 129). This highly influential formulation of childhood, following the important influence of Piaget, positions children and young people as developing as thinking beings, that is, developing new and different forms of thinking as they pass through developmental stages on their pathway to adulthood. In this model, children are once again regarded as adults-in-the-making, incomplete and insufficiently able to be (fully) responsible for themselves and others, thus requiring care, supervision, and discipline.

Jenks (2004) discusses how the model's appeal and its problems lie in the conceptualization of childhood as “normal” and “natural” (p. 79): we all experience childhood, so the argument goes, and see others (our children, our family and friends) as children and later as adults. Childhood is such a familiar, everyday, and intrinsic aspect of our experience of life that it is easily rendered normal and therefore “natural” in similar ways to which gender, ethnicity, and sexuality were once (and are still) considered in terms such as natural/unnatural. Herein lies the first major criticism of the natural developmental model from the sociological perspective espoused by Jenks and colleagues (James et al., 1998): by normalizing and naturalizing childhood, this period of life is made subject to the normative claims of the developmental psychologists and their adherents in the fields of medicine, parenting, teaching, and policy. Children must be, and must be treated as being, “normal.”

In their critique of the development model of childhood, James, Jenks, and Prout (1998) identify childhood as a project to be managed by adults and undertaken by children under adult supervision. Children must learn the correct ways of intellectually and morally understanding and acting, at the right stages; adults must provide the pedagogic and disciplinary environment in which correct progress can be acknowledged and deficiencies addressed. The resemblances to other presocial models are significant: the emotional, uncontrollable id of the bestial, demonic child is a natural stage to be overcome with moral discipline and socialization; the innocent, pristine angelic child is a temporary state at odds (regrettably for Rousseau) with adult experience; and the tabula rasa is the opening stage of the child's development into, eventually, a rational, complete human being.

These models all share the notion of the child as incomplete – “becoming an adult” rather than “being a person” – and the sense that childhood is a time before we take our place in the world. Social theories of childhood, in comparison, see children as being in the world, in their own right.

The influence of the social developing, or socialized, child is highly significant when considering the politics of childhood. Political theory is often concerned with the ways societies are constructed and governed. In a functional sense, political theory situates individuals within society, each with particular roles to serve depending on the nature of that polity: as a subject to a crown in a monarchy, for example, or as a rights-holding citizen and participant in democracy, or as a member of civil society, or as all of these concurrently in a liberal-democratic constitutional monarchy like Australia or Japan. All must fulfill their role to keep society ticking over as best it can. Politics is also about the role of power: who governs, over whom, in whose interests, and what maintains their rule as legitimate and effective. As such, the ways that society preserves structures containing those that rule and those that are ruled over relates directly to the reproductive models of socialization.

These models of socialization also share common features that, according to Jenks (2004) and James, Jenks, and Prout (1998), are inadequate for a social theory of childhood. For one, they have “little or no time for children” (Jenks, 2004, p. 88), in that they are mostly concerned with the adult world, its structures, functions, and reproductive process. Childhood is a time when pre-adults are fitted, or forced, into this adult world. Second, society is presented as a whole, complete, all-encompassing structure that subsumes the many differentiated and variegated groups within that entity. This macro-scale framing of social worlds and the members within them reduces all subgroups and subcultures to elements of a wider whole.

However, not all social theories of childhood are so inclined. Other social theories of childhood emphasize and investigate children's social worlds from the starting point of the lives of the children themselves, and take as their base unit those social groups that are constituted by children themselves, such as gangs, “urban tribes,” and other youth subcultures (James et al., 1998; Jenks, 2004).

There is yet another construction of childhood, one that might be called post-structural childhood. Children in late modernity live in domestic situations that are characterized by diversity, fluidity, and instability, as well as being sites in which the traditional hierarchies are challenged by children more able to assertively claim roles in family decision-making processes: families grow precarious; children become precocious. Parents, less certain of their authority over their children, more swiftly make concessions to their children's opinions and expressed desires, or – perhaps with less timidity yet with similar consequences – more fully recognize their children's rights within their increasingly open and democratic families. There may be reasons to defer to children's opinions: children may have greater expertise than their parents in the rapidly changing market for technology and consumer goods, for example. It may also simply be that parents and children are more likely to feel that respect ought to be earned and deserved, rather than simply claimed and assumed by parents from children (see Wyness, 2006, p. 55). Late modern families are seen in this contradictory way, as less stable and therefore less supportive of children while also being more liberal, participatory, and accommodating of children's desires.

Yet, in a second contradiction surrounding childhood in late modernity, children may be seen as a source of tradition, stability, and surety in an otherwise destabilized world. Beck (1992) suggests as much when he refers to the relationship between parents and their children as “the last remaining irrevocable unexchangeable primary relationship” (p. 118). Wyness (2006) concurs and adds that being the last such prospect for certainty makes the value attached to such a relationship all the more acute, even desperate: “children's dependence, obedience and their subaltern status become central to adults as they seek to re-centre themselves within a context of moral and social flux” (p. 53). As such, relations between the generations within the family are, in a curious case of late modern self-reflexivity, both the causes of instability and anxiety, and the solution to such feelings of insecurity. Children have become a source of moral anxiety as well as a form of “moral rescue, a means by which adults try and recapture a sense of purpose and belonging” (Wyness, 2006, p. 53).

The consequences of such contradictory concerns within the contemporary family about childhood can be found in public policy and the proto-politics of family. The modernist project continues to dominate in areas of public policy, especially education policy, wherein children are measured against a “normal” childhood and prepared for an adult future, and schools are held accountable for their roles in achieving these fixed, measurable, performance-based goals. This contrasts with the relatively private world of the family, where the goals are less certain, or at least more diverse, and performances are difficult to measure. Another concern is the rise in parental anxiety about the risks associated with (late) modernity. Often these risks are associated with the trappings of modern life. One source of parental anxiety is the fear of violence or misadventure, perhaps at the hands of other children or (more pejoratively) youths during the lengthy commute to schools that are further from the domestic home than in the past. Another evident cause of concern is the exposure to inappropriate or offensive or even damaging material via the various forms of media.

Regarding both of these points – the contrasts between children's private family lives and the policies of public life and education, and the increasing anxiety about the risks children face – the roles of mobile media have become crucial, and the responses to mobile media use have assumed greater importance. Mobile phones, as noted in the literature reviewed above, have become essential tools in the management of (private) family life, yet they are largely frowned upon and their use severely restricted in the (public) sphere of school education. Mobile communication has become a crucial aspect of many young people's social inclusion among their peers, especially among post-elementary or primary school students for whom it offers also the prospect of greater autonomy from parental control. Yet mobile communication also offers the promise (if not always the reality) of parental surveillance of children. Parents regularly claim that their children are permitted to own and are provided with a mobile phone so they will be and feel safer, yet the dangers of cyberbullying, happy slapping, sexting, and the like are all associated with the malevolent potential of mobile media.

Moral Panics and Risks

Since Stanley Cohen's seminal work, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), a number of studies have examined the phenomenon of the “moral panic,” moments when particular behaviors labeled errant, dangerous, or deviant gain overblown attention. Such panics are typically associated with youth subcultures, which are viewed as posing a risk to others and to communities or culture in general. Such panics can also arise when deviant groups or individuals pose apparent risks to children. Cohen's moral panic theory outlines the roles played by institutional authorities (such as police forces) in labeling certain behaviors and subcultural groups as morally dangerous. Through forms of mediated communications, especially the news media, these same authorities then amplify these concerns to a crisis level, which requires urgent, decisive action.

Although the intention appears to be to halt or contain deviant behavior, moral panics, suggest McRobbie and Thornton (1995), can in practice inspire further deviant behavior, in two ways. First, by communicating information about deviant behaviors to a wider population, more potential participants become aware of such behaviors, prompting experimental reproduction of these very same behaviors by those who might otherwise have remained none the wiser. Second, by associating deviant behaviors with subcultural groups, moral panics provide those who self-identify with these subcultural groups with reasons to experiment with or embrace the very behaviors that are being criticized. Along these lines, McRobbie and Thornton (1995) regard moral panics as a potential “culmination and fulfilment of youth cultural agendas in so far as negative news baptises transgression. What better way to turn differences into defiance, lifestyle into social upheaval, leisure into revolt” (p. 268).

Since the introduction of the concept some 40 years ago, moral panics have remained important for theorizing youth media use and representations of children and young people in the media (Buckingham, 2000; Goggin, 2006; Livingstone, 2002, 2009). The theory has recently been redeveloped and updated, as a result of a number of important developments: greater appreciation of the sophistication and complexities of the relationships between media and audiences thanks to studies in media effects; more sophisticated understanding of changes in the types of media and modes of media use thanks to studies in media ecologies; and significant contributions in this area coming from the study of social change and social movements.

Classic moral panics present a coherent, unchallenged account of the risks so called folk devils pose to decent, normal society. McRobbie and Thornton (1995) suggest that the number and variety of media technologies, genres, voices, and audiences make it less and less likely that moral panic narratives will remain unchallenged. For example, young people are more able to challenge the narratives that portray them as immoral, and to provide counterdiscourses that render their subcultural behaviors as legitimate. Young people are able to make use of the proliferation of media and communications to create their own cultural spaces, away from the moralizing gaze of mainstream, adult authorities, often taking advantage of new media platforms to do so.

Additionally, young people can self-identify with so-called folk devils, willfully embracing the role of deviants as an act of rebellion. Moral panics of the past can also provide present rebels with model behaviors and attitudes. By emulating the deviants of the past, young people's transgressions are legitimized through appeals to nostalgia and tradition. Youthful rebellions of the past hold appeal for commercial actors seeking to attract consumers. As rebellion becomes marketable, it becomes part of mainstream media, and thus further legitimized, or at least normalized within mainstream culture. Under these circumstances, behavior that is considered to be deviant and morally risky by some sections of the community has appeal for other sections of the community on the basis of anti-authoritarianism, either directly or because of the commercial appeal of the new and shocking. One person's moral degeneracy is another person's self-identifying, subcultural behavior, and another person's niche market of early adopters.

The analytic concept of risk provides some ways of addressing the limitations of moral panic theory. The risk society is one in which the developments of late modernity address concerns that have emerged from modernization, while generating further concerns that require further developments, and the cycle thus continues. All discourses of risk, Van Loon (2002) claims, are embedded in other forms of social discourse and dependent upon these other discourses for legitimacy and authority, in other words, for symbolic power. This is the case regardless of whether the risk being described is dependent upon discourses of scientific, measurable fact (such as environmental risks), economic modeling (such as financial risk), or game theory (such as the risk of international military conflict). Van Loon's (2002) emphasis is on symbolic association in the production of risks, and therefore of symbolic power in the politics of addressing risk. In the following cases of policy debates surrounding children's mobile media use, I examine the discourses of childhood and youth (such as the “devils,” “angels,” and “blank slates” discussed above), considering how the symbolic power of the risks associated with children's mobile phone use is dependent upon these discourses.

Examples from Japan: Facing the Future of Communication

Osaka Prefecture Governor Toru Hashimoto is neither the first nor the last in a long line of Japanese public leaders to call for a total ban of mobile phones from Japanese elementary and junior high schools. But he was the first to threaten, in December 2008, to enforce the ban in all schools under the remit of the Prefectural Board of Education. Osaka city and Sakai, both in Osaka Prefecture, have separate Boards of Education, and Hashimoto san urged both of these to follow his lead. Responding to declining poor educational performances and cyberbullying, pointing to private surveys and media polls that cite parental support for the ban, Governor Hashimoto's plan to rid schools of the dreaded keitai seemed on fertile ground. Concessions would have to be made. Children with two working parents might have to be allowed keitai so they can be monitored. Moreover, Governor Hashimoto admitted, not all children would likely obey the ban. But the essential message remained: the keitai was to be no longer an accepted element of children's lives, let alone an essential one, as Matsuda (2009, 2010) has suggested.

Previously, in early 2008, the prefectural Department of Education had undertaken a study in Hyogo Prefecture in response to similar concerns to those of Governor Hashimoto. Concerns to be addressed included the production of unofficial school websites, bullying and harassment, Internet dating leading to enjo kosai (teenage prostitution),⁶ and so-called “Internet addiction” blamed for lack of sleep, poor scholarly performances, and declines in communicative and social skills (Matsuda, 2009, 2010). In particular, cyberbullying and harassment were cited as being of a particular problem, such as unresolved quarrels or insults traded on keitai; posts on Internet bulletin boards (whether accessed on keitai or on a desktop computer) that escalated into hostility; and forms of harassment that occurred on gakko ura saito(unofficial school websites).⁷ The suicide of a senior high school student in Kobe, the capital of Kobe Prefecture, in September 2007 formed part of the premise and context for the study.

The study centered on a survey of 11,675 students and 10,253 parents, sampled from all public elementary schools, junior high schools, and senior high schools in Hyogo Prefecture (Research Group for Bullying Problems in Society, 2008). The subsequent report emphasized the need to empathize with children, and to teach both media literacy and media ethics as part of the more general approach to teaching ethics and moral reasoning in the curricula. In general terms, the report's authors, including Professor Tomoyuki Okada from Kansei University, recommended approaches to education that emphasize emotional and moral learning, that promoted public (especially parental) trust and confidence in the schools' role in instructing children in morals and manners, and that developed programs relevant according to their “stage of development.” It emphasized programs that introduce and develop skills and values training for elementary school students: “It is very important to give such instruction to elementary school children as some children start to use a mobile phone at this age” (Research Group for Bullying Problems in Society, 2008, p. 17).

The report's recommendations for staged instructions are (my translation):

Much of what is recommended in the report does not differ significantly from what one might expect when generally discussing the responsibilities of ethical and considerate behavior. It does, however, take into account the specificities of mobile mediated communication, including the asynchronous and non-co-present aspects. For example:

The report also suggested that schools work more closely with the parents as part of the school community to assist with this task outside the classroom.

The Hyogo Department of Education that commissioned the study did not adopt the report's recommendations. Instead, it called for a ban on keitai in elementary schools and junior high schools. Where possession of a keitai was unavoidable, the functions of the device were to be limited to voice calls and location-based GPS functioning. In a presentation discussing this in July 2008, Professor Okada described it as being akin to epidemiological approaches that seek to protect those at risk of contagious disease by preventing them from exposure and the subsequent risk of infection. He noted that this contradicted education-based models that had characterized the Japanese government's promotion of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Governor Hashimoto's determined call for a total ban of mobile phones in elementary and junior high schools in Japan was supported publicly at the national political level. Key supporters included the Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura, Education Minister Ryu Shionoya, and the Minister for Internal Affairs and Communication (SUOMO), Kunio Hatoyama. Ironically, Minister Hatoyama's portfolio included development and promotion of the U-Japan policy that endeavored to make information communications technology a full-time, always-on, unobtrusive, and welcomed part of everyone's lives. This priority for full-time connectivity included elementary schoolchildren, as explicitly addressed in the U-Japan online promotional material (see Spry, 2010).

In one particularly telling vignette from the website promoting the U-Japan policy and its vision of the future, SUOMO suggests how generations will be able to maintain social relationships at a distance while going about the busy business of modern family life. This is the story of Ayaka Tanaka and her busy mother. The opening scene shows Mrs. Tanaka, dedicated office worker, trying to organize another hectic schedule of client demands and meetings with colleagues. Seeing that her day may run away from her, she gives thought to that night's meal and wonders if she has enough ingredients at home. A screen appears seemingly at will. This is a “ubiquitous terminal”: Mrs. Tanaka's portal into the U-Japan world of connectivity and convenience. She quickly consults her fridge, which informs her that a number of items have passed their expiration date, and suggests she buy some rolled cabbage. Online food sellers are connected, so the fridge suggests that Mrs. Tanaka order some organically grown cabbage from the Net Market. Thinking to herself that Ayaka will like that, Mrs. Tanaka agrees, and also tells the fridge to order anything else it thinks they need. Later, as the working day develops, Mrs. Tanaka again contacts her home through a ubiquitous terminal and sets her arrival time for 7 p.m. She asks the terminal to check that Ayaka is at her scheduled piano lesson. The piano school has some surprising and troubling news: Ayaka is absent. Mrs. Tanaka urges the terminal to immediately search for her. Ayaka is tracked and swiftly located in the Botanical Gardens, far from where she is supposed to be. Mrs. Tanaka straight away connects with Ayaka, whose face appears on the screen.

A surprised Ayaka answers, and a conversation begins tersely. (Ayaka: It's you, mommy!? What's wrong? Mrs. Tanaka: What do you mean, “What's wrong?” You're supposed to be at your piano lesson!) But rapidly it becomes clear there is no cause for alarm. (Ayaka: But today's the school field trip to the Botanical Gardens. Mrs. Tanaka: Oh, is that today?! I'm sorry. I'll make you a special dessert tonight. Be careful on your way home. Ayaka: Yes, mommy.) Ending the conversation, Mrs. Tanaka returns to her work. This, according to the Japanese government, is the future under U-Japan. It is a place where mothers can monitor and contact their children any time and from anywhere.

In responses to children's mobile media use in Japan, a series of contradictions is readily apparent. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine a more diametrically opposed set of policy positions. Moreover, these apparently contradictory responses arise from within a shared political discursive space. In one case, from one set of data and analysis, we find the Hyogo Board of Education's research findings. And in another case, contradictory responses have emerged from a single ministerial portfolio. That conflicts arise in politics is news to no one; that diametrically opposed conclusions are reached from the same data, or from the same political office, is perhaps a little more curious. How might one account for such contradictory responses?

James et al. (1998) caution that presociological views are not to be dismissed, if only because some persist in the public imagination: “they are models which continue to inform everyday actions and practices alongside more sophisticated sociological theorizing about childhood” (p. 21). These views of children and the young include the Hobbesian “evil child” born into sin and therefore uncontrollable, needing, through processes of surveillance and discipline, to be domesticated or civilized (nature requiring taming), and, mirroring Hobbes, Rousseau's naturally good child, innocent and as yet unblemished by worldly experience.

In this light, the contradictory pronouncements of the proponents of public policy seem more understandable, even logical, and perhaps inevitable. For if children with mobile phones are potentially and actually becoming more distant from adult authorities and institutions, they become vulnerable and at risk to a public and adult world. These angels require protection, meaning surveillance and discipline. Also, when children with mobile phones are seen as escaping the bonds of parental and institutional discipline, they are seemingly revealed as potential dangers to themselves and other children.

The mobile phone is seen as contributing to the problem but it is also how these concerns are addressed. The mobile phone leashes children to the parents. It makes them, potentially, contactable and under surveillance (with its dual meanings of care and control), and this is very reassuring. For parents, this is one way of keeping their angels close within the private realm of the family. For public policymakers, this poses a problem. For if families can use the mobile as a management tool (Matsuda, 2009, 2010), schools may find it more difficult to do so. For schools, the mobile phone is a private possession of the students, who use the device for private uses.

But schools are not private in the sense of being spaces for individuals or families. They are communal spaces. Collective rules apply equally to all, or at least they are intended to. But children are also protected from a larger public world in school – the world of adult life. As such, for educational policymakers, the mobile phone presents the means for the individual and family to invade its space, and provides the means for students to escape the bonds of its space and its rules, bringing in the wider, more unruly, and less “childlike” world of violence (including harassment) and sex. This is not to suggest that policymakers are claiming schools have previously been free of sex and violence, merely that mobile phones exacerbate the problem. Denied the reassurances of constant contact provided to families, educational policymakers can be forgiven for seeing mostly risks to pedagogical aims and the educational environment. Put another way, the school and particularly the classroom are contested spaces, and school time is contested time. As this time and space is challenged and violated via the communicative capacities of mobile media use, a new mediated environment emerges, one in which the child becomes not only a teacher's student and a colleague of classmates, but also a child of parents, a victim or perpetrator of bullying, a consumer of popular culture, and so on.

The contradictory responses to children's mobile phone use – banning on one hand, moral education on the other – are pointed to in one of Qvortrup's (1993) general contradictions of childhood: “Adults agree that children must be educated to freedom and democracy, but society's provision is given mostly in terms of control, discipline and management” (p. 9). If we take freedom and democracy to include responsibilities to one another as citizens, then the media moral literacy program suggested by the Hyogo research team exemplifies the first half of this contradiction, while the call for, and monitoring of, Governor Hashimoto's ban on mobile media possession exemplifies the other half. The uses of mobile media by children and young people in Japan continue to provoke contradictory political responses, and these contradictions can be read as expressions of political attitudes toward both childhood and technology. I now turn to the similarities and specificities of two Australian case studies on children's use of mobile media.

Examples from Australia: Threats and Opportunities

Outside Melbourne, in the southern Australian state of Victoria, lies Werribee. In June 2006, a girl, aged 17, met two boys as agreed at the Werribee Station. Taken to a nearby park, she was faced by up to 14 boys aged 15 to 17. There she was abused, sexually assaulted by two of the boys, and humiliated. One of the boys filmed the incident using a digital camera on a mobile phone. This footage was later combined with footage showing some of the boys making chlorine bombs, throwing eggs at taxi drivers, and dropping flares on a homeless man, as well as footage of them fighting at local parties and media clippings of other incidents the boys claimed to have been involved in. DVDs of this home movie were sold in nearby schools for $5 each.

The consequences of the filming and distribution of the assault were highlighted by Elaine Crowe, President of Parents Victoria: “Technology can worsen bullying behaviour because it makes it more public. Victims are humiliated not just by the personal humiliation, but also when incidents are broadcast on the Internet or DVD” (cited in Miletic, 2006, at paragraph 32), adding that she considered those who viewed the footage also “morally culpable” (paragraph 33).

Twelve boys were arrested and charged with a range of offenses. Eight of them pleaded guilty to charges of sexual penetration by intimidation, assault, and producing child pornography and were convicted on November 5, 2007. Three others were later found guilty of the same charges on February 12, 2008. The judge noted that the making and distributing of a DVD of the assault had compounded the offense by adding to the significant physical and emotional trauma suffered by the victim during the incident (O'Keefe, 2007).

None of the boys received a custodial sentence. They were placed on youth supervision orders or on probation. The judge noted their guilty pleas, their remorse at the hurt caused, and their willingness to participate in a sex offenders program. In circumstances described as difficult at best, Alan, the father of the young victim, later agreed to talk about his response to the boys' sentences. “We feel it matches the young persons' needs at this time of their life,” he said. Adding, with regards to the young sex offenders program, “It's a very intensive program, it has a high success rate of reducing adolescent sexual crime. It's education-based, it really helps young males connect better with their understanding of their masculinity and that's what they need more than anything as far as our family is concerned” (Smith, 2007, p. 9).

Other incidents of filmed violence reported in the Australian press around this time often referred to the Werribee events, the common factors in the reported assaults being youth, violence (often, but not always sexual), and the use of mobile phones as recording equipment. In one incident, two girls were recorded assaulting a third girl (it is not clear by whom). In another, three young men first harassed a taxi driver, then, when an observer sought to intervene, turned on him, assaulting him while a fourth member of the group captured the attack at close range on his mobile phone video camera. Media reports noted police concerns that recording the events had particular attraction for the perpetrators: “There's a trend, particularly with young people, towards finding pleasure in the video recording of such incidents,” noted Detective Senior Constable Bodsworth (quoted in Russell, 2007, p. 2). “The disturbing part is that they go on to post the video footage of the incident so others can gain pleasure or some shock value from it [. . .] The callousness of recording (the incident) while another person is on the ground being beaten is appalling” (p. 2).

These events, and their coverage in the media, articulate a set of key concerns about young people as mobile media users. The first of these is risk: the young mobile phone user, in this sense, is a potential risk to the safety or well-being of others. The suggestion here is not that mobile phones themselves lead to more violence, but that the act of recording the bad behavior and later sharing it with others becomes part of the motivation for that behavior. In this case, the mobile phone is not a device that keeps young people safer or more secure, despite this being a significant parental motivation for getting mobile phones for their children. Echoes of Ulrich Beck's risk society are invoked in this representation of the mobile phone as exemplar of the way the trappings of modern life have become the very things producing insecurity and reducing safety.

When the mobile phone appears to be used in ways that victimize others and increase vulnerability – for example, exposing children to sex and violence – anxieties and moral panic predominate. Labeling these cases instances of moral panic is not to suggest that these actions are not actually happening or do not result in real harm to individuals. Even if the true scope of the problem is overstated by media reports, the cases themselves deserve attention in terms of their implications for young people's use of mobile media. As Goggin (2006) has noted, “bullying via the instrument of the cell phone remains almost exclusively something that is associated with children and young people” (p. 118).

The events in Werribee brought to the surface some of the deepest fears regarding youth mobile phone use: untamed youth as devils, innocent children at risk, and the role of media in the corruption of young people. In another, very different, example, the place of new and mobile media in children's education evoked a similarly passionate response in public debate.

On July 25, 2008, Diedre Coleman's 9X English class at Presbyterian Ladies' College, a private high school not far from the center of Australia's largest city, took the concept of the open book exam a step further than usual. Cognizant that books are not the only media from which information can be obtained, Coleman extended the concept to become an “open interactive technology” exam. The students prepared by considering sources of information and evaluating their appropriateness. Once in the exam, the students were given 40 minutes with which to complete the task. They were able to access any Internet site, any social networking site, were able to “phone a friend” or use iPods and mp3 players, and they could use headphones to access information or to block out noise from other students. The students were told to expect movement and noise from the others, although noise was to be kept to a minimum and they were not allowed to talk to one another. Once seated and prepared, they received their assignment, as follows: You are to write a sonnet. The subject of the sonnet is teenage love.

After they completed the assignment, the students were asked to reflect on the exercise and offer some remarks for the school's internal evaluation. Some of the responses include the following (quotations from personal communication, Presbyterian Ladies' College, March 10, 2009):⁸

When this experiment was reported in the daily broadsheet newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald (Patty, 2008), the responses on the accompanying blog were, expectedly, almost all diametrically opposed along lines that are now familiar. One group responded by bemoaning the exercise as an expression of the decline in educational standards – new media use associated here with the decline of literacy – and hence a decline in cultural standards and further evidence that modern education was not adequately preparing students for the future as productive citizens. Some examples of this sort of response included:

Others saw the process as open to abuse, either through cheating or by unfair advantages for those with access to expert knowledge:

On the other hand, some were supportive of the task, noting that it reflected the skills and knowledge required outside of formal educational institutional environments:

Others, adding their support, also took umbrage with the notion that this task was not developing learning skills:

These contrasting responses to the “Phone-a-Friend” news story are characteristic of the public discussion and political attitudes toward young people and media. They are also characteristic of another typical tendency – namely, the absence of, or dismissal of, children's voices in the debates that concern them. This is particularly evident in the responses of those who bemoaned the supposed decline in cultural standards they feared would result from this form of educational practice. The students themselves, as is demonstrated in their responses, took a more circumspect and pragmatic approach. Similarly, Alan, the father of the Werribee assault survivor, presented a pragmatic, tempered, and humane case for proportionality, if not moderation, regarding the boys' punishment, in contrast to many public calls for much harsher sentencing. He reserved his criticism for those who had been insufficient, in his view, in their responsibility for the welfare of his daughter.

Giving voices to children in these public debates about the politics of mobile media is not straightforward or easy. In the Werribee case, the girl's right to privacy and protection from further harm makes it difficult to expect her to respond, and in any case it is likely that her concerns would differ from policymakers'. The opinions of students surveyed in Hyogo (and their families) could have been taken further into account but were easily dismissed by policymakers. The students from PLC seemed to contribute to public debates and internal school feedback about the assessment task they participated in, but again, their contributions seemed to be ignored by policymakers.

Comparing Japan and Australia: Commonalities and Contexts

The examples in this chapter were not selected because they provided material for cross-cultural comparison but because they illustrate a range of instances in which mobile media use by children and young people has been politicized. Still, taken together, the examples from Japan and Australia demonstrate some significant similarities and some notable differences. One of the most compelling similarities is how important mobile phones have become for the management of family life in both Australia and Japan. This is evident in the examples shown here and also in comparable literature and research (such as Matsuda, 2008, 2009, 2010; New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People, 2009). Mobile phones have become firmly entrenched as essential devices for family communication and coordination. (This is demonstrated in the representation of family life in the example from SUOMO's promotion of U-Japan: seeking a positive aspect of children's access to mobile communications to showcase its policy, the Japanese government chooses the mother–child relationship.) Research in similarly affluent societies supports this finding (Devitt & Roker, 2009; Rakow & Navarro, 1993; Rizzo, 2008).

Certain themes in the representation of youth mobile use are also evident in these case studies. First, commonly held fears about the impact of mobile media on children's lives include those related to exposure to sex and violence. There are, however, different sets of mobile media that are associated with these behaviors: enjo kosai is not unique to Japan (similar practices have been reported in South Korea and the global cities of East Asia [see Spry, 2008]), but it is not as much a concern in Australia, where “sexting” – the sending of sexually explicit messages and photographs via mobile devices – is the main activity prompting public distress and political responses (New South Wales Government, 2009). Likewise, the attempts to profit from the filming and distribution of the sexual humiliation in the Kings of Werribee example does not have an equivalent in the Japanese examples chosen, although that does not rule out the possibility of its occurrence. The acts of cyberbullying cited in the Hyogo research do seem roughly analogous to concerns raised in the Australian context, as do the concerns that mobile phones are a distraction from the “proper,” more traditional and accepted forms of educational practice.

A notable difference between Australia and Japan is the public call for bans on school-aged children owning or possessing mobile phones by several leading Japanese politicians. Similar calls have not been made in Australia, at least not to the same extent. This may be a product of the different political cultures. Australia is a liberal democracy with strong anti-authoritarian tendencies, and Australians are much less likely to accept direct government intervention in a matter they would regard as a private concern. Many Australians would view any such intervention as overreach by an intrusive state. Japan, on the other hand, has a history of state intervention in the schooling and moral education of Japanese children, going back to the Meiji restoration and including the reforms of the post-World War II era. The Japanese citizenry would be more familiar with (and possibly more accepting of) state calls for “improved moral health,” such as those implicit in the mobile phone bans. This important difference between Australia and Japan underscores the importance of local and national cultures in the politics of youth mobile media use.

Overall, there were important similarities in the representation of children as immature or risky media users. It appears that the moral panics identified by David Buckingham (2000) and Sonia Livingstone (2002, 2009) with regards to youth media use in the United Kingdom are evident also in Japan and Australia. (Regarding Australia's similarity to the UK context, see Goggin, 2006.)

Back to the Futures: Conclusions and Questions

What becomes apparent in a variety of ways in Australia and Japan is that mobile media present challenges for techno-dystopians, who see new media as the source of new risks and moral hazards, and opportunities for techno-optimists, who see new media as having brighter, more creative and democratic prospects. It also brings into sharp relief the role of ongoing normative notions of children, raising questions about how the key institutions of the family and schooling negotiate children's mobile media use. Public discussion of children as mobile media users remains strongly informed by past constructions of childhood, from Hobbes through to Piaget, which present children as only partially formed human “becomings,” not as complete human beings.

A common refrain is that children are the future. This cliché turns children into possessions, and burdens them with hopes for, and fears of, the future, including the future of communications technology use. Children become the symbols of what humans are turning into; their use of media called in evidence of the way things are to become. Entire generations are marked out as either indicators of social decline – “the dumbest generation,” according to Bauerlein (2009) – or as pointers to a brighter, techno-utopian tomorrow via the technologically savvy “digital generation” (Tapscott, 2009). And while there are a number of sophisticated approaches to children as creative and engaged (if imperfect) media users (Buckingham, 2000; Livingstone, 2002, 2009; Montgomery, 2007), there unfortunately seems to be little room for nuanced understandings of these issues in public debate.

Moreover, seeing children as the future can deny children their present, limiting their capacity to participate in public discussion and political decisions that affect the future of media. There are a few exceptions to this exclusion. The students from PLC, as I mentioned, were able to participate in the online debate, and in the internal review, about the “open technology exam,” but it was unclear how seriously their views were taken. Compared with the views of professional teachers and departmental staff, and of course parents, the views of children are easily dismissed. In another case (New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People, 2009), school-children were invited to participate in research investigating their views and experiences with mobile media. I was a researcher on this project, and this chapter is in part a result of my participation. The experience was instructive: conducting research with school students requires the permission of a number of gatekeepers, including university ethics committees, government departments, high school principals, teachers, parents, and, lastly, the students themselves. The research was instructive and offers one of the few examples of the directly expressed views of young mobile media users in educational contexts (New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People, 2009). Rich Ling (2001, 2005, 2008), Larissa Hjorth (2009), and Misa Matsuda (2008, 2009, 2010), inter alia, have also done important research with young mobile media users, usually in social or family contexts. Still, research is developed, funded, designed, carried out, reported on, and eventually offered for the consideration of adults in authority (see Spry, 2012). These research efforts suggest that there are ways to include the voices of children in public debates about their lives, yet also highlight how rare and difficult it is for these voices to be heard.

NOTES

1 I use the term mobile media to highlight the uses of the mobile phone that extend beyond telephony to include SMS (short message service) messaging, emailing, accessing the World Wide Web, digital photography, and so on (see Goggin, 2006; Ling, 2005). I use the term mobile phone interchangeably with its equivalents from North America (cell phone) and Japan (keitai).

2 Elementary school, as it is known in the United States of America and Japan, is referred to as “primary school” in Australia. Both systems roughly cover ages 5 through 12. I use the terms interchangeably, dependent on the country in question.

3 See Green (2003); Johnson (2003); Goggin (2006); Grinter and Eldridge (2001); Ling (2005, 2008); Matsuda (2005); Taylor and Harper (2002, 2003); Weilemann and Larsson (2002); Wynn and Katz (2000); Yoon (2006); and Hemelryk Donald and Spry (2007).

4 See Goggin (2006, 2010); Habuchi (2005); Dindorfer Anderson (2010); Hemelryk Donald and Spry (2007); Spry (2010); and Castells et al. (2007).

5 See Matsuda (2008, 2009); Rakow and Navarro (1993); Geser (2004); Davie, Panting and Charlton (2004); Rizzo (2008); Ribak (2009); Christensen (2009); and Devitt and Roker (2009).

6 Enjo kosai is a practice wherein young Japanese girls, usually in high school or younger, arrange meetings with (typically) older men and participate in social activities like dinner or karaoke up to and including sexual acts, in exchange for money or gifts of expensive designer goods like jewelry, clothes, or perfume (see Spry, 2008, 2010). Aside from the concerns about minors engaging in sexual acts, reports of violence raise further concerns. According to the National Police Agency, in 2008 “the number of people who became crime victims after using dating sites [ . . . ] included 328 high school students, 211 junior high school students and two elementary school students. Of those under 18, 714 people, or 98.6 percent, accessed dating sites via cell phones” (“Net profile sites new threat to kids,” 2009). The same report notes that online sexual predation may be moving from dating sites to social networking sites.

7 These sites typically include photos and commentary on colleagues, friends, and staff members of the school of those students who set up and contribute to the site.

8 The names of the students have been withheld. These quoted responses, as well as the information about the exercise, were provided via email by Presbyterian Ladies' College.

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