Justine Cassell: Disempowering Girls as Users of Technology
Filed at 9:22 am on November 28, 2006 • Leave a comment
Girls’ use of technology threatens the established social order. That’s the real reason behind the fear of girls using social networking sites.
Throughout US history, each time women have become the most frequent users of a popular and brand new communication technology, narratives emerge in the mass media and eventually in the popular psyche about the dangers awaiting women who use technology alone.
The story is a familiar one . . . to us, and to our grandparents. Vulnerable (usually young) women, unaware of the dangers of a new technology, fall victim to harassment and assault from sexual predators lurking on the wire. This same exact story was told about the telegraph and the telephone, and today it is being told about the Internet and social networking sites like MySpace.
If the vulnerability of young women were backed up by statistics about their victimization, that would be one thing. But the statistics tell the opposite story - looking across all crimes perpetuated against young people online and offline, the rate of violent victimization of youth has dramatically declined since 1994. Parental fears around girls using communication technologies are undoubtedly related to fears of losing control over girls’ behavior. But, I believe there’s a second reason as well, which is specifically related to the relationship between girls and technology.
I believe these moral panics gain hold in part because people are fearful of women becoming empowered as technology users and producers.
There are, of course, equivalent moral panics about boys and technology (boys taking cues from violent video games and planning attacks on classmates, for instance); these panics tend to paint boys as aggressors and victimizers rather than victims. The stories about boys focus on their power and the damage they can cause to society. The stories about girls focus on their weakness and the damage that society can cause to them.
Both kinds of stories are equally noxious; however, the ultimate result may be empowerment of boys with respect to technology, and disempowerment of girls - discouraging them from using technology.
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