False Gems: Internet Morality

If it’s make believe, what does it matter?

A recent study by psychologist Howard Gardner (he’s the guy who came up with the multiple intelligences theory) reveals that students are rather hypocritical when it comes to their online ethics. Is this a surprise? Perhaps not, but why they are is perhaps more intriguing.

To start, it’s probably best to summarize the results of the study, done at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and similar to studies done at MIT’s Project New Media Literacies and the Pew Internet Project. It finds, predictably, that Americans aged 15-25 have a significant presence on the internet: 97% play computer, web, or video games; 55% have some kind of online profile (FaceBook, MySpace, etc.); and 64% have produced some kind of online content such as music remixes or blogs (that number is 100% for Chisnell’s students).

More, 39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online (artwork, photos, stories), 33% work on websites or blogs for groups, 28% have their own blogs and web pages, and 26% remix content they find online to make their own projects. So far so good? So here is where the conflicts begin.

• Privacy. Photos of students drinking underage are taken by a cell phone, posted on the internet, and then end up in the hands of school administrators. The students are suspended from their school and sports teams.Of course it happens! Yet while most students claim their privacy is important to them, why do they put information online which is—to be inelegant, TMI? At least half the teens in the study keep their online profiles open to the public.
• Authorship. This comes from “cut and paste” of information online without giving credit and even just sharing their own work online. Many online complaints stem from teen work being used by strangers (few complaints of friends ‘shopping their work); yet all but five students in the 300+ teen study admitted to downloading music illegally. The five who did not were connected to musicians or know people who have been caught for illegal downloads.
• Credibility. How or who do we trust online? Most teens show a distrust of strangers and content online, but 80% use Wikipedia as authoritative research, even as their teachers tell them not to.
• Identity. How do students present themselves on the web? Honestly? Most do, the study finds, or if they do not, the changes are low-risk or minor. Even so, most students did not feel any responsibility to represent themselves accurately to their online communities (though those who blogged regularly did think honest identities were important).
• Participation. Similarly, what responsibilities do we have to the online communities? One look at the comments anonymous users make to YouTube videos is enough to represent the answer. (Summary from Education Week, 19 November 2008, 1 )

I think we all (or most of us, anyway) know that FaceBook “friends” are not the same as real friends, that lying to a teacher is different from lying as a character in a video game. But as I’ve written often before, the line between the factual and fictional is always fuzzy. One of my own FaceBook friends is a former student who was honestly and genuinely offended that I had a profile; apparently, I had intruded on what he considered his personal (generational?) space, along with two million others my age (and whose numbers are growing at a 172% rate). I wonder why he made me a “friend,” then?

But that’s the way it works. What is seemingly safer because it distances us personally (the lie to the webpage is different from the lie to the face) is also seemingly safer because we do not see that lie returning to us. Whether it’s downloads, distrust, or drinking, the “fictional” space of the web is a disconnect ethically. It’s the same thing that happens when a student sees me at a store—and freaks out. (I try not to have my feelings hurt.)

There is no hypocrisy then, perhaps, but simply a disconnect, a lack of critical savvy or reflection on what we do. It doesn’t really matter, right? In video games we can play the villain and be safely moral in real life, just as easily as we cheer the villains in literature or film. Just as easily.

Let me end, then, with a dilemma from the study. I invite your comments which issue your response and/or reasons why it’s important or not! I’ll follow up on this entry later!

Assume you have been playing a MRPG like World of Warcraft, a 3D world with tens of thousands of players. You recently joined a club within the game of other player-characters, a group which seems friendly enough, though you know none of them offline. They give you expert game advice, equipment, etc. Buying, selling, and trading equipment is an important part of the game, and there aren’t many rules around it. Sometimes trades go bad. Your new club of characters brags often about going into the Newbie Village and taking advantage of new players by selling them worthless green rocks for very high prices. After finding some of these rocks one day in the game, the group invites you to come along with them to pass them off to the inexperienced players in Newbie Village. Would you go with them to sell the false gems? Would your answer change if you knew that character wealth in the game was also tied to player subscription rates?