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dmlra-summer-institute-call-for-applications.pdf (75 KB)

All application materials, including two letters of reference, should be sent via email to dmlhub@hri.uci.edu on or before Dec. 15, 2010. Notifications of awards will be sent by Feb. 1, 2011.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Digital Media and Learning Research Hub invites advanced graduate students and postdoctoral scholars conducting research in the field of Digital Media and Learning to submit applications for a DML Research Associates Summer Institute to be held between August 15-19, 2011 at University of California, Irvine. This one-week institute is designed to support the development of a cohort of junior scholars working in the emerging field of digital media and learning. Participants will share information about their research, build relationships with researchers at institutions across the country and globally, develop a publication, grant proposal, dissertation or book chapter or other relevant outcome, and have opportunities to initiate mentoring relationships with a small number of scholars working in the field of Digital Media and Learning. The theme for this annual meeting will be “Designing Learning Futures” (see http://dmlcentral.net/conference2011/call-for-proposals). Specific workshop topics and faculty mentors will be tailored to the needs and interests of the participants.

The Digital Media and Learning Research Hub will support up to 12 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars conducting research in the field of Digital Media and Learning around the theme of “Designing Learning Futures." We will provide funding for travel to the meeting, including roundtrip coach airfare, ground transportation, meals and accommodations during the one-week summer institute. Selected participants will be expected to participate in all of the activities associated with the program, including reading and providing feedback on writings and other materials provided by fellow research associates. Participants will also be responsible for completing a final report, including a copy of their completed outcome.

Applications should include a 1-2 page cover letter that outlines your research (or other work), its relevance to the theme of “Designing Learning Futures," the significance of participating in a summer institute for your work and the writing or other outcome you propose to produce over the course of your participation in the program. In addition, please include an up-to-date curriculum vitae and arrange for two letters of reference to be emailed directly by your referees. Applications should be addressed to the following:

DML Research Associates Summer Institute Program Review Committee

Digital Media and Learning Research Hub

UC Humanities Research Institute

4000 Humanities Gateway Building

Irvine, CA 92697-3350

danah boyd's work is eerily timely. 

http://dmlcentral.net/blog/danah-boyd/bullying-has-little-resonance-teenagers

If you want your child to be safe online, you’re going to have to deal with it yourself.

It’s interesting how generations establish boundaries through technology. My father, who is in his 60s, still logs on to the Internet with a dial-up modem and often puts off downloading and opening his e-mail attachments until I visit.  Considering my lengthy absences and his painfully slow connection, viewing a .jpeg or a .gif of a waterskiing chipmunk becomes a 3-week-long ordeal.  I’d like to paint myself as more advanced, but I’d be lying. I do have a smart phone that I almost don’t know how to use.  And in most cases I prefer talking rather than texting.

As a result, though I’m only 27, I’m considered a technological geriatric by most of my freshman and sophomore students.  They are appalled that I do not tweet. They openly mock my first generation mp3 player.  Toss together this adult, early-onslaught, technological decrepitude and the fact that today’s adolescents allegedly use high-tech, information and communications gadgets almost more than they sleep (Strasberger, Jordan, & Donnerstein, 2010, p. 756), and you’ve got an Internet/youth climate that looks a lot like the Wild West, meets the Lord of the Flies, on tons of caffeine.  As writer Nancy Gibbs states, “[…] when it comes to technology, [children] hold the higher ground” (Gibbs, 2010, p. 1) – and that sentiment applies to their usage and your supervision attempts. 

If it is true that information and communications technology are more real than the real world for most adolescents, and more foreign than Mars to many adult moderators, then the sensible subsequent question must be: How do we shrink the distance between earth and Mars?   The unsurprising answer to this, as with most socially relevant issues, is, of course: to educate! 

For all those moms and dads out there who are thinking, “Thank god, something else their teacher gets to deal with.”  Think again.  Though some schools make provisions for educating students (and thus teachers) on the topic of Internet safety, other institutions opt to merely block certain websites.  This is problematic because “some districts mistakenly believe that if student’s can’t use [sic] technologies on campus, then teachers don’t have to teach them about their risks and problems” (Butler, 2010, p. 57).  Furthermore, regardless of whether or not there are initiatives in place that provide for online safety education in the classroom in your district, would you want to leave such an important topic up to a contemporary of my father (who thinks the Internet is magic), lead exclusively by an non-standard educational guide? 

Perhaps the lag in universally incorporating these techniques in curricula is due in part to the neutralizing of traditional Internet threats.  Researchers Justine Cassell and Meg Cramer (2008) assert that the number of on-line sexual predators is declining even in spite of the overall increase in Internet usage (p. 54).  However, the mere reduction of this prominent online danger does not negate the possibility of new online safety issues.

  As evidenced in the recent media uproar regarding cyberbullying and its emotional consequences, new Internet safety issues are not being executed by adult predators, but rather by children themselves.  Knowing what children know about the Internet and knowing how children can act towards one another, it seems safe to say that being antagonized by a cyberbully would be much like a professional hit.  What is more worrisome is the finding of researchers Stacy Kite, Robert Gable, and Lawrence Filippelli (2010) that only 44% of children would tell an adult if they were a victim of cyberbullying (p. 163).  While cyberbullying may seem like much less of an offense than sexual victimization, it has been associated with the suicides of several teenagers in recent months.  So it seems that as information and communicative technologies evolve, so will their complementing risks.

It is my opinion that statewide curricular guidelines should be in place for all students to learn sound Internet safety.  However, until equal access is provided and requirements are established for base-line instructor knowledge, a parent cannot be entirely certain that their child’s needs are being met.  If your child’s school does not provide Internet-safety instruction, ask for it.  If your child’s school does provide Internet-safety instruction, check on it.  In either case, bone up on Internet safety yourself and talk with your child, teen, or adolescent to ensure they know their rights.  It might take a little work, but at the very least it will keep you from ending up too much like my dad.

-Knab

Our son and daughter are nine months old and three years old, respectively.

Managing our children’s mediated lives is simple now, but my wife and I occasionally discuss how we will deal with it in the future. For example, we have seen enough texting ten-year-olds veer toward traffic as they walk home from school that we plan to withhold fully featured phones—at least until after elementary school. However, we also recognize that fully supervising children’s engagement with technology is not be a simple matter.

Perhaps less immediate and visible as oncoming traffic, but just as troubling, are threats to our children’s safety through media and technology. On the Internet in particular, our children are threatened by privacy violations, bullies, and sexual predators. Moreover, children may not be aware of these threats. In a study published recently in The Clearing House, researchers surveyed 588 middle school students and found troubling shortcomings in their awareness of online threats. For example, children were generally unaware of how online predators can use information they post. More concerning, most children responded that they wouldn’t tell a parent—or another adult—if they were contacted by a stranger or threatened online.

But are our fears of bullying and online sexual predation justified? In their chapter of the book Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected, Justine Cassell and Meg Cramer argue, no. Cassell and Cramer point out that most violent crimes against children are not committed by strangers, and that anonymous online dangers are rare by comparison. Moral panic over the dangers of the Internet, they argue, is no different from responses to similar innovations in the past, and it may only obscure more serious, real-world dangers. Moreover, the Internet may facilitate developmentally healthy activities, such as experimenting with identity and sexuality, in a venue safer than the real world.

From a parental perspective, however, Cassell and Cramer may miss the point. My wife and I have no more moral panic about the Internet than about the real world. We want our children to benefit from media and technology, but we recognize that we may need new skills, knowledge, and strategies to ensure that they only benefit. We are not responding to some new, menacing conduit for evil, but we are trying to adapt to new and powerful influences on our day-to-day lives; we’re trying to plan for a vague future. I cannot invoke the crude archetype of the violent and protective father to intimidate my daughter’s suitors when they knock at virtual doors, but enforcing a reasonable curfew on a hyper-date is also more difficult.

How do parents cope? I don’t know. As parents of very young children, my wife and I can only plan for a vague technological future. We can try to keep pace with the technology, and even use it protectively. But while we research the latest tainted lot of strained peas on our smart phones, our three-year-old prepares her inaugural solo leap into the deep end of a very real pool. Even more likely, while we survey the environment with our massively networked telescope, myriad opportunities to learn about our children and their lives—from them­—are slipping into the past. Used for protection, our tools may inhibit protection.

To control our children’s technological world directly, we would need to know the tools at least as well as our children do, an increasingly daunting task. Raising two digital natives, my wife and I will endeavor to learn about their world, learn the technologies, keep up. But keeping up for the future could alienate us now, and when we need to communicate with our children about what they are doing with technology and why, or whether they are doing things that jeopardize their safety, we’ll be stuck with knowing how they could go about doing it.

Whatever devices and technologies are available a decade from now, if our goal is to surpass our children’s mastery as users, we’ll fail. However, we can make ourselves aware of the general capacities and dangers of the current technology. More importantly, we can develop healthy relationships with our children: We may not know exactly how they do what they do, but maybe we can convince them to tell us what it is and, if we’re very fortunate, why they are doing it.

 - Darren

By Alexandra Scheirer

Parents today have a lot to worry about. One of their biggest concerns seems to be what their kids are doing on the internet. What information are they posting? Who are they talking to? What kind of weirdoes are trying to talk to them? Sometimes it seems as if we have become overly concerned with their internet behaviors and have lost sight of other dangers.  

            I was once contacted by one of these weirdoes on AOL Instant Messenger, otherwise known as AIM. I was 14 at the time.  At first, I thought this person was someone I went to school with and chatted with them for a few minutes. I didn’t want to accidentally “dis” anyone or worse, miss an opportunity to talk to a cute boy.  It wasn’t until this person asked me what I was wearing did I realize this wasn’t one of my classmates. I immediately blocked this person.

            Did I ever tell my parents or a teacher? Heck no. It wasn’t a big deal. If I would have told my mom I know she would have freaked out and made me stop using it. There was no way I wanted to be disconnected from my social life like that. My guess is that many children today think the same way I did. I didn’t want to lose my privileges because I knew my parents wouldn’t understand that blocking the person was an efficient way of keeping myself safe. Parents and teachers need to educate themselves about technology, the internet, and social networking. Until kids feel like their parents know more than they do, they will hesitate to go to them with problems or questions in fear that they will be banned from the internet.  

            It is important to consider this: my parents taught me not to talk to strangers when I was little, but did they specifically teach me not to talk to online strangers? No. I didn’t learn it in school either. But the same principles apply. If you don’t talk to a stranger on the street what difference does it make if they IM you? None. They are still a stranger. Something parents might want to consider is sticking to the basics. Make sure their children know that strangers are strangers and should not be trusted. It is also important to remember sometimes online predators can be banished with the touch of a click of a mouse. For those whose intentions are malicious in real life, those predators are not so easily defended.

            Fact of the matter is, unfortunately, there is no way of knowing where our kids will be in danger. Yes, they are on the internet, yes there are malicious solicitors there, and yes we need to make sure our kids put up a defense. However, we cannot lose site of other real dangers. The internet isn’t the only place where kids might encounter a predator. At a friend’s house, at practice, alone at school. We need not forget to teach our kids to protect themselves out in the real world too. Teach them the principles they need to know. “Stranger-danger” applies everywhere including the internet. But we need to teach them to be aware of people who aren’t strangers too.

            Parents also are not giving kids enough credit. According to a study measuring middle school student’s knowledge of conduct and consequences of social networking behavior, a majority of students indicated they shouldn’t share personal information with or “friend” someone they don’t know (Kite, Gable & Filippelli 2010). While I don’t want to make light of internet dangers, it seems kids know proper behavior.

            Is teaching kids internet safety important? Of course. What is especially important today it to teach kids to be careful what they post as these traces last forever. But, is every child who goes on the internet in danger of being abducted at any given moment? No. I’m not advocating throwing inhibition and rules to the wind; we need to teach children internet safety. However we must be careful about how we present this information. The internet shouldn’t be made a place for them to fear. If parents and teachers stress that the internet is a risky place where you need to protect yourself, kids might get the wrong idea. Rather than make them fear the internet, we need to stress how to use it to their advantage.  

Works Referenced

Kite, S., Gable, R. & Fillippelli, L. (2010). Assessing Middle‐School Students            Knowledge of Conduct and Consequences and their Behaviors Regarding the Use   of Social Networking Sites,” The Clearing House 83, 148 – 153.

I cannot stand hearing about Internet safety anymore.

Let me explain.

It’s not that I don’t believe that children should be safe online.  But, as with almost all media, the way Internet safety is presented and explained to average American parents, in my mind, is disgraceful.  Parents will believe anything they hear if it centers on their children being in danger, and rightfully so.  But media thrive on these fears.  Research that focuses on these easily sold topics is funded more handsomely.  Unfortunately the average parent has no idea that scare tactics are being used to exploit their lack of Internet knowledge.  However, I cannot say that parents are totally innocent in the matter, but more on that later. 

Looking closely at one recent 2010 study, “Assessing Middle School Students’ Knowledge of Conduct and Consequences and Their Behaviors Regarding the Use of Social Networking Sites,” may help explain my annoyance.  The recent article surveyed 588 7^th and 8^th graders.  The study focused on Internet predators, cyberbullying, social networking sites, and the middle schoolers’ knowledge of the “correct” ways to go about handling these issues.  Jumping right to the authors’ conclusions, as most media sources do, we immediately learn that “Internet predator threats and cyberbullying through the use of social networking sites are major issues.” What parent would not be affected by that conclusion?  This kind of statement is the basis for articles in parenting magazines and debates on CNN.  What is better than research that proves your child is an innocent victim and it is not your fault as the parent?  It is the big, bad Internet’s fault.

But let’s back up.  Let’s actually read the study instead of listening to what media sensationalists have to say about it.  The authors claim that cyberbullying is worse than normal bullying because it is limitless.  In other words, “old bullying,” or normal, unmediated bullying, only took place at school, during recess.  Once the lunch ladies made you go back to class the bullying stopped.  Didn’t you get bullied or bully kids more often than that?  I have to argue that bullying happens all the time.  It can happen in the classroom, at an after-school program, at a friend’s house, or at a relative’s house.  Furthermore, the effects of being bullied are not limited.  Children can retain the cruel words or actions for days, sometimes even extending into their adulthood.  So why should parents panic at the notion of cyberbullying when they do not about old bullying?

The survey found that 83% of the middle schoolers had not been bullied online, 69% realized that putting personal information online is a big deal, 70% knew that it is not safe to add someone they do not know as a friend and 79% would not bully someone through a social network.  These results should prove positive for parents, seeing that students not only knew the correct conduct to be used online, but also apply it.  Yet, if you recall, the authors begin their conclusion with “Internet predator threats and cyberbullying through the use of social networking sites are major issues” even though their data proved that statement wrong.  But if the parenting magazines and CNN debates actually reported the raw, accurate data, how would they ever catch parents’ attention?

My point is not that all parents should suddenly be subscribing to research journals or never reading another parenting magazine or watching another television program.  (Although in my dream world these would be the norms.)  What I am really pleading for are parents who stop believing everything they consume through the media and just talk to their kids.  I recently heard a story about a father who, when his 14-year-old daughter and her boyfriend, behind her closed bedroom door, suddenly got quiet, he became embarrassed and walked outside.  How must this behavior translate to online norms in that home?  It is normal for teens to experiment with their identity, and the fact that these experiments are now being carried out online should not be surprising.  With every new technology comes new avenues to express one’s self.  Examples can be cited back to the invention of the telegraph.  Parents should not stop talking to their children because they are embarrassed, relying on their school district or for whatever other reasons on which they are blaming their lack of parenting.  Creating an environment for open communication and instilling your believed values and morals in your children early will result in less conflict, whatever the issue or technology.

-Angela

       We brought the internet into the schools -- now what?  That is one of many questions being asked of teachers and administrators more and more frequently.  In particular, parents and educators are worried about online safety.  These concerns tend to focus on two particular threats, adult sexual predators and cyber bullies within the students’ peer group.  While both of these problems do exist, neither exists to the extent to which they are portrayed in the media.  Sexual crimes against teenagers have decreased since the advent of online social networks (Cassell & Cramer, 2008), and a recent survey found that only ten percent of students report having been bullied online (Kite, et. Al., 2010), likely a much smaller number than those who are bullied in person. Sensationalized news outlets use the most extreme examples of this behavior and shine a spotlight on scattered events as if they were the majority of children’s interactions online.

For several years, the standard response to these concerns was for schools to block access to ubiquitous sites like Facebook and Myspace, or even email accounts not sponsored by the school.  While the majority of schools still restrict students’ access to vast areas of the internet, there has recently been more advocacy for and action towards opening up these sites (Butler, 2010).  The reasoning here is typically that schools can provide the forum for students to learn about internet safety in a controlled environment.  While this is a move in the right direction, it is not one that is easy to implement constructively.

As a teacher in a high school where most of my colleagues were over the age of thirty by the time the world wide web became a household technology, the disconnect between students and teachers in the area of technology is apparent.  While more and more schools and districts are mandating that teacher learn about internet use and safety and begin to incorporate these things into their curricula, these measures seem far from adequate.  If the mandates and training programs for teachers are designed primarily to teach kids how to protect themselves from internet predators, then they are encouraging and enhancing a fear of the technology that already may have been brewing and growing from the unfamiliarity with the topic.  No other subject in school is taught from a position of fear, and the internet should be no different.  Educating about internet safety is important, but placing it at the forefront of internet education would be like saying the primary goal of a social studies curriculum should be to keep kids away from strangers with candy. This fear and lack of familiarity of their teachers is also readily apparent to the students.  This can tend to make any teaching efforts in this arena less effective because the teacher will have very little credibility with the student.

The internet is a massively powerful tool for creation and communication.  How, then, can we help students learn about the internet in a safe and constructive way, when neither the teachers nor the students are experts.  Internet researcher danah boyd has, perhaps, the most constructive solution to these questions, applicable to both teachers and parents.  Let the kids teach you, she suggests.  Given the same online tools, kids will find entirely different uses for them than we adults would ever consider.  Learn about their uses and in turn you can provide your own insights into ways you might use these technologies and potential avenues of harm that may come from them.  Only when we view education as a two way street will we be able to teach children to be both safe and productive online.

Citations

Boyd, d. (2009). Living and Learning with Social Media [Video file]. Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology. Retreived from

Butler, D. (2010). Cybersafety in the Classroom, District Administration 46(6), 53 – 57.

Cassell, Justine, and Meg Cramer. High Tech or High Risk: Moral Panics about Girls Online. Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected. Edited by Tara McPherson. The John D. and Catherine T.MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 53–76.

Kite, S., Gable, R. & Fillippelli, L. (2010). Assessing Middle‐School Students Knowledge of Conduct and Consequences and their Behaviors Regarding the Use of Social Networking Sites,” The Clearing House 83, 148 – 153.

-Josh

Bullies are as old as Bif--and even older.

In light of the recent events at Rutgers University, where a student actually took his life as a result of intimidation via internet technology, I wish to delicately address cyber-bullying. Without discrediting the severity of that situation, and the gravity of its implications for conduct on the internet, I want to push back on the argument that cyber-bullying is as severe a problem as some have made it seem. In their article, “High Tech or High Risk” (2008), Cassell and Cramer demonstrate that internet victimization is actually on the decline (p. 54). The authors focus on the societal anxiety around young female sexuality that causes hyperbolic expressions of the danger of internet use. I would like to extend this hyperbole to the dangers of internet-use for all teens. I’d like to claim that internet platforms merely become a megaphone for the hostility that already exists (and has existed) for some time.  My claim is that the nature of internet communication lends itself to a crystallized form of cyberbullying that appears more severe than its real-time predecessor.

As a media scholar is apt to do, I draw on Marshall McLuhan’s infamous phrase: "the medium is the message”.  This statement relates to part of a theoretical concept called technological determinism, where the medium in question (in this case, the internet), has a distinctive effect on lived experience. An example of this theory can be seen when one reads a novel versus seeing the film of the same story.  The film contains visual elements and occurs in the context of a specific space and time, and induce a different affect than the book might--which is communicated via different communicative mechanisms.  Thus, the medium has a distinct role in determining the interpretation of the story. These effects play out on a socio-historical level as well. In effect, the way we socially interpret events has a great deal to do with the medium of its presentation--which is normally via a dominant technological format.
    If we can extend this argument to the specific case of cyber-bullying, then we might agree that part of the exaggeration comes from the way in which instances of bullying are presented via internet technologies.   Consider Kite, Gable and Filippelli’s (2010) article about middle school students and social networking sites.  One of the claims in the article is that the cyber-bully is more difficult to handle than the live bully because of the “removal of social cues” (Kite, et al., 2010, p. 159). The authors imply that the removal of face-to-face interaction creates a severity unlike anything ever seen by the school-yard bully.  They even claim that the real-timebully’s “torment of students would end when the final bell rang” (p. 159).  Regardless of technological determinism, this statement is simply not true. Pre-internet-era bullies lived in neighborhoods and would find ways of tormenting kids both in and out of the “bell” boundaries.  Do these authors mean to imply that no bully ever followed a student home or lived in their neighborhood?  In fact, it may be the look of bulling that has changed via the internet.  The reality of bullying is sharper and more crystallized when it appears via chat or via internet social networking site, and its audience is larger.  Because social cues are morphed--not lost-- these crystallized instances are astounding to us.  What was once a nuanced dance between big bully and small waif is now an open-palmed slap for all to witness--and anyone to perform.  Kite, et al. (2010) cite another scholars claim that many kids who have been bullied also bully others (p. 159).  Of course they do!  The medium makes it just that easy.  Still, it is my argument that these occassions are no more frequent that their real-time predecessors (did we call it that-- real-time bulling?!), but that they have a more accessible and clear cut platform.
    Although I could dissect and disagree with many of Kite et al.’s (2010) points in their article, I’d like to end with my critique of their suggestions that “cyber-behavior” need be analyzed (p. 162).  I do agree that the medium of the internet has brought about new forms of expression.  However, bullying itself is not new, nor on the rise.  I do not believe that parents need train with professionals.  The unfortunate thing about the advent of new media is that it often places more screens between parents and children. Though media technology can very closely simulate experiences, they can not replace face-to-face intervention.   It seems that the real issue here is the enduring aggression that exists among humans.  While some of that may be natural, I believe that the worst of it can only be assisted by a parents mediation.  Although cyber-awareness may be good for parents, it seems the best defense is knowing your own child, and knowing when that child is anxious or depressed.  Parents should talk to their children about technology, not through it.

References

  
Cassell, Justine, and Meg Cramer. (2008). T. MacPherson (Ed.) High tech or high risk: Moral panics about girls online. Digital youth, innovation, and the unexpected. The John D. and  Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.53–76.

Kite, S., Gable, R. & Fillippelli, L. (2010). Assessing middle‐school students knowledge of conduct and consequences and their behaviors regarding the use of social networking sites, The Clearing House 83, 148 – 153.

A lot of research exists in the scholarly bubble of thought about the dangers of Internet usage by adolescents; specifically when it comes to discussing sexual predators, rapes, or murders. The issue is not a minimal one, however, according to Cassell (2008), as educators, parents, and guardians, we are focusing on the wrong thing, especially since sexual predator-ship online is on the decline. We need to be aware of the benefits of online usage by teenagers, and take the time to acknowledge that the Internet acts as a window of information for our children, and is not just simply the bad guy, right?

I’m not so sure I agree.

I have a little sister who is 14. She is Arab American. Unfortunately, the last thing on her mind is what the political canvas holds, or how she can land her next job. Although Cassell’s (2008) optimism is hope provoking, the reality of the situation is that little girls are less interested in the importance of discovering their own personal identities through social networking website quizzes or learning about new technology (p. 71), and are more interested in networking, discovering, and meeting boys.

Which brings me to why I stated her nationality immediately after stating her age. Culturally and religiously, girls my sister’s age are not to have boyfriends. Growing up, I had many guy friends in Egypt, however there was always an unspoken understanding that there is a line that you don’t cross. Now that we have been living in the United States for 14 years, it’s impossible to enforce the same type of mentality in my sister’s mind given that all of the advertising, television shows, and music she is exposed to tells her otherwise. Dealt an unforgiving situation, she finds herself struggling to juggle her cultural identity with her westernized identity, constantly slipping and falling along the way, due to emotions, hormones, and messy identity crises.

Kite et al (2010) cite Jenkins and Boyd (2006) who state, “One of the biggest risks of these digital technologies is not the ways that they allow teens to escape adult control, but rather the permanent traces left behind of their transgressive conduct.” My sister found herself in a compromising situation when a picture of her was tagged and posted with a boy to Facebook, and not only did our mother see it, but half of her Egyptian Facebook friends had seen it as well, given the 7 hour time difference between us and them. The picture was culturally inappropriate, and our mom struggled to understand the situation my sister was in, and the reality of the fact that what was posted was just not acceptable culturally. It’s a conundrum because it was a parental decision to move to the United States, so how can the child be blamed for becoming who she is based on her surrounding environment?

Gibbs (2010) states, “Our children will outwit us if they want; for when it comes to technology, they hold the higher ground.” It is not a surprise that this boy picture morphed into a Romeo and Juliet situation, and my sister told my mom that she really wanted to be with this boy. And even though my mother tried to gently explain to my sister that this was not possible given our religious beliefs, she still found a way to communicate with the boy, even though she had her cell phone taken away. Cassell (2008) discusses “dangers” of telephone usage by young girls (p. 63) that were highlighted when the telephone became a residential object. I can’t say that I disagree with him because it doesn’t matter what form of media you use, whether its Facebook or MySpace, or your cell phone, or whatever they come up with next. When you are young, you are volatile, and everything is magnified a million times over. So, no matter what form of media is used, the risk of abuse is always there, since moderation is not a mentally established concept at that age.

Butler (2010) states, “The best way to teach students the proper use of the Internet is to employ the same sort of Web technologies being addressed, such as social networking websites.” At the end of the day, children will do exactly what they want to do, and it’s all relative. Culturally, the last thing my mother is worried about is online predators. For her, she is trying to maintain a level of cultural and religious understanding with my sister, and she is finding difficulty achieving that balance, since her efforts are outweighed by my sister’s experience of everyday American society.

I’m not sure what the solution is here. As an Arab American, it is a bit different for me since I spent some years in Egypt, and so I understand my family values more than my sister.  Is there a way to convey the message? I honestly don’t think so. The truth is, the majority of the information she is bombarded with contradicts the values that my mother is trying to instill. The only thing that can be done at this point is to deal with the situation as it is, and not as how it should have been.

Mona Shater