Student perspectives towards school responses to cyber-risk and safety: the presumption of the prudent digital citizen

ABSTRACT

While previous research identifies skepticism and some animosity among students towards school-based cyber-safety programs, drawing from focus group discussions with Canadian teens, this paper contributes to unpacking reasons for both support for ‘what works’ and antagonism for what is perceived to be lacking. Our findings reveal support for repeated messages, including those eliciting fear, especially for younger students. Criticisms most often centered on the questionable relatability of the messages, and the need for more practical information (e.g., privacy management). Criticisms are largely concentrated among female teens. Among our participants, the concentration of cyber-safety messages is being received in junior high school, with less emphasis by the time students reach high school. We argue that by high school students are expected to have successfully internalized the directives for online safety received in earlier grades, and have acquired, to a greater or lesser extent, a sense of prudentialism and self-control.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyber-risk
• school
• cyberbullying
• sexting
• focus groups

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michael Adorjan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary, and Fellow with the Centre for Criminology, University of Hong Kong. His research and teaching focus on youth crime and cyber-risk, fear of crime, and perceptions of police. His research appears in British Journal of Criminology, Theoretical Criminology, The Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and The Prison Journal.

Rosemary Ricciardelli is a Professor and the Coordinator of Criminology in the Department of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She is an Associate Director of the Canadian Institute for Public Safety Research and Treatment (CIPSRT), where she leads the community and institutional corrections research sector, and a Senior Research Fellow with Correctional Services Canada. Her research appears in British Journal of Criminology, Sex Roles, Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Canadian Review of Sociology and Theoretical Criminology.

ORCID

Michael Adorjan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1900-2087

Rosemary Ricciardelli http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0905-8968

Notes

1 Due to time and budgetary constraints, the present study does not aim to triangulate findings with further interviews with educators nor parents. We are presently undergoing such a project in the same jurisdictions where we interviewed teens for our previous project. Preliminary data suggests that at least among some school boards the various approaches teachers take to technology in the classroom, including cyber-safety talks, relies upon direction from the particular school's administration (i.e., in the absence of board-level direction), and individual teacher discretion.

2 For further methodological details please see Authors (2019a Forthcoming).

3 Although we were unable to locate the original link to this video, it is still available for viewing on YouTube, under the title ‘Once you post it, you loose [sic] control over it’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmijKUwAswY

4 Our participants also discussed their experiences with messages about sexting being concentrated in middle school (i.e., junior high school). By high school these messages were less proactively presented than reactive; i.e., talks in response to incidents of non-consensual redistribution of nudes (see Authors, 2019b Forthcoming).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: Grant # 430-2015-00157.