The question of fears and concerns surrounding the safety of youth through their interaction and participation with various information and media is one that has been in the back of my mind ever since I started taking classes geared towards working with young adults. Below are a few general questions, in no significant order, that have popped up in my mind when I think about the risks and safety issues surrounding youth and their participation with media, followed by my own thoughts/reflection about these questions.
As a librarian, what role do I play in protecting and keeping youth safe when the very nature of my career is to encourage patrons of all ages to seek any information they please without fear of judgment, impediment, or censorship?
All situational and environmental dependent factors aside, such as what type of library one is working in and whether or not that library has rules and regulations in place concerning the approach to safety for youth, is it really my job as a librarian to keep youth safe when it is my job to provide them with information and encouragement to seek it using various avenues for educational or personal purposes? I mean I’m not saying that I don’t care about the safety of youth, but hypothetically speaking, I can’t be true to the core belief system and goals of librarianship and protect youth from potentially dangerous information or situations at the same time. I can be open and honest about what’s out there and educate young adults on how to be safe and aware, but ultimately I can’t protect them.
And should I want to in the first place?
Education is everywhere and people can and do learn from things and situations both directly and indirectly whether they are fully aware of it or not. There are risks and safety issues involved with everything in life and realistically speaking one can never really be safe from anything. So that realization in mind, how should we feel about the notion of protection? As a librarian, am I doing more harm to the learning opportunities of young adults by trying to protect them or am I simply enticing them with forbidden fruit that they will seek out and taste no matter what if they are motivated to do so? Don’t they get enough protection from their parents and teachers? I’m not saying that librarians are necessarily supposed to be the one’s that young adults come to on the sneak for all the juicy stuff, but in a way I am: we are in the business of serving the organization, preservation, and access of information, not in the business of judging it or impeding it’s flow.
Why can’t and don’t we put more trust in the ability of young adults to protect themselves?
They aren’t as stupid and naïve as they look when it comes to being safe and if they are then it means that their educators--whether that be parents, teachers, librarians, friends, or other people in the community--have failed to educate them and that is the fault and responsibility of their educators not them. I keep thinking about the saying “we learn from our mistakes.” Allowing young adults to freely explore learning through the use of various media without censorship opens up the possibility for both positive and negative opportunities—we shouldn’t always focus on and fear the negative aspects lest they stop us from seeing the positive aspects and potential for learning no matter the outcome.
I keep thinking about my own experience with various forms of media as a young adult both in school and out. We had access to the internet on the few computers that we had in the library, but we were never warned about potential dangers posed by the information found on the internet or taught how to be safe while online. The computers did have firewall protection and we couldn’t access instant messaging services or chat rooms, but other than that we were free to access our personal e-mail accounts and anything else that our hearts desired. I was in high school from 1999-2002, long before social media and sites like YouTube and Chat Roulette, but just because sites like this didn’t exist didn’t mean that the web was any less dangerous or tame.
I convinced my parents, for the sake of my education of course, that we needed a computer and we finally got one when I was a junior complete with dial up internet and housed in my room since I would be the only one interested in using it. After all my homework was done and my parents went to bed, I would join the conversations in random Yahoo chat rooms and just chat. Nobody warned me about the potential dangers of chatting or even said I shouldn’t be chatting in the first place. That being said, nobody warned me that I shouldn’t give out personal information online or agree to meet someone offline who I had been chatting to online. It was all common sense. Not that I’m saying I didn’t benefit from the firewall at school or that I couldn't have benefited from some knowledge about the dangers of the internet and chatting and how to protect myself, but I survived and more importantly learned without protection (this is just my experience and I can't speak for every person or situation).
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I think that part of our duty as librarians, especially working with youth, is to make sure that resources about safety are available to everyone, both kids and their parents, and that we do our best to encourage those kinds of conversations. That might not mean we have them ourselves, but keeping the resources available isn't an incredibly difficult thing.
ReplyDeleteTHIS.
ReplyDeleteI too came of age during the time that I like to think of as the Wild Wild West of the internet. My real-life friends and I chatted with all kinds of random strangers. My fourteen-year-old cousin had "cybersex" with random dudes. (Which seemed so raunchy at the time, but was...not.) We all accidentally stumbled onto porn sites and neo-Nazi sites and hacker sites. I actually DID meet up with strangers from the internet, albeit with a friend, and in a very public place. I had my picture on the internet and used my real first name. (I know! They totally could've found some Amanda.)
And, you know, we're all okay. Chanell is right. For a long, long time, teenagers have been navigating the world and its hazards more-or-less on their own. Parents give them guidance, but they aren't around all the time, so teens have to make their own decisions and learn from them. Contrary to what yellow journalists would tell us, the dangers of the internet are pretty minimal (compared to, say, going to the mall or going on a date - things teenagers do all the time). It's a pretty safe place for teens to explore their identities and interests and the - yep, scary - world outside.
At the same time, I think Anna is right. Having, for example, posters or bookmarks with information and safety tips is a great idea. If there's demand for it, hosting an internet safety program or something would be fine too. I don't think it's our place, however, to go around monitoring what kids are doing online and correcting their behavior if we deem it unsafe. If parents are worried, they need to stay with their kids. (I've told parents this before, when they've asked if we could "check up" on their kids. Uh, no. That's your job.)
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ReplyDeleteAgreed Anna.
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