« Ellen Seiter: Why Santa Brings Playstation, instead of a PC | Steve Anderson: Future of Digital Education Panel »
Tuesday 28th November 2006 9:22 am
Justine Cassell: Disempowering Girls as Users of Technology
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.
Category: Unexpected
Like this post?
- Email this page using tell-a-friend, or
- Save it with one of these social bookmarking tools:
, or - View author profile for Justine_Cassell.
Comments
Chimera
http://www.chimeraplanet.net
Posted on March 2 2007 3:36 AM
This is a fascinating issue for me. In my experimental, research driven gaming den that I built with the kids and designed to suit their needs - regardless of age, SES, gender or identity - has evolved into an almost all boy activity! There was a time when girls came, but they mostly IMed all night which usually caused problems because they were communicating for the most part with or about the boys in the same room! The younger ones would play girl games and then get bored. After a while, the girls just stopped coming and the boys kept coming more and more. The boys are delightful, too. They sit mesmerized for hours and hours. It amazes me that I have to “nurture” them a little, i.e. offer drinks and food, or else they will literally avoid doing anything other than gaming. It is exciting for them and for me. They want to go all night long. Sometimes, in the past at least, we have. How healthy is that? I don’t know. But I do know that I am grateful for an all boy crowd on those nights! I don’t have to watch them so closely, if you know what I mean! Seriously though, girls deserve some game time. More girl gamers!!
http://ofdesigns.net
Posted on February 8 2008 10:28 PM
On my opinion, girls are not that scared of using social networking sites. At least on hi5 that is.
Tim White
Posted on December 23 2006 5:09 AM
Justine, Thanks for an incisive and powerful response to that tatty old chestnut about the internet as a source of corruption and loosener of morals.
Isn’t it usually the big media corporations who are generating these panics. Could there be an agenda at work here. I mean what is really needed is more policing of the intenet and couldn’ t that be done so much better if we simply had a few monopolies owning and operating it than the anarchism of free expression we have now?
Reminds me somewhat of the moral panic around women reading romantic novels in the 19th century...Who knows maybe girls will even want to start writing their own website? Where will it all end? Votes for women! Ladies in long pants and riding bicycles!