When Punishing Young People for Using Tech Widens the Social Divide

Many initiatives attempt to initiate young people to programming to increase the diversity of the tech industry. But current ways of disciplining technology uses in school are diminishing their impact — and hide their transformative potential.

From the fear that social media create isolation and bullying to the fear that video games are a a main cause of gun violence, when it comes to young people using technologies, the headlines mostly convey panic. At best, we recognise that there are good and bad technology for young people to use: Minecraft’s creative mode is good, its survival mode is bad. Learning to program in Scratch is virtuous, using social media isn’t. Our research suggest, however, that we should be more attentive to the potential benefits of all technology use— or risk entrenching inequalities while trying to do good.

How does that happen and what can we do about it?

First, perceptions of risks vary with social status. Matt Rafalow in his research about digital play in schools shows how at a school serving working-class Latino youth, students are told their digital expressions are irrelevant to learning; at a school with mostly middle-class Asian American youth, students’ digital expressions are seen as threats to their ability to succeed academically; and at a private school with mainly wealthy white youth, students’ digital skills are positioned as essential to school success.

So more privileged kids learn to frame their digital skills positively, as an asset for college and their future jobs, and are a lot more aware of what they should not show online. Less privileged students, at best, simply don’t mention extra-curricular digital skills. At worse, they might have their name associated with online material negatively perceived.

Moreover, the non-sanctioned digital skills less privileged students develop are not seen as learning opportunities, at the contrary of their more privileged counterparts. The Connected Learning Research Network, of which Matt is part, has conducted extensive research regarding informal learning with technologies. That requires scaffolding. And this scaffolding doesn’t seem to occur in schools as much as it should. Libraries though have many great digital outreach programs for youth!

Another major issue with strict policy on technology use at school is accessibility. I often share this example drawn from my PhD research: a blind teenager I interviewed had been forbidden to use his smartphone to do an audio recording of a lesson (the quality of the recording was better on the phone than the computer), because the screen was supposedly distracting for the classmates and there was a strict policy about putting smartphones away during class. But he was also forbidden to use it with the screen turned-off, which he could navigate with gestures and audio-feedback, because teachers can’t see what he does.

General education teachers in France were clearly very distrustful of disabled teens using any form of personal technologies even if that meant improved learning conditions. On the other hand, they welcomed technologies presented as means of surveilling teens and their movements, such as the Apple Watch. Even though they can pretty much be used like a smartphone.

So what should we do about it? We really should try going beyond our clichés about technologies and look at productive ways we can help young people self-regulate, and this is what we’ve been working towards.

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