Read about Fostering responsible online behavior.
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By Nancy Willard, Director of the Responsible Netizen Center for
Advanced Technology in Education at the University of Oregon
To
address the question of how to help young people use information and
communication technologies in an ethical manner, we must consider how young
people learn to engage in an ethical behavior. Furthermore, we must examine
how information and communication technologies and the emerging cyber
environment may impact their learning and behavior.
How Do Young
People Learn To Engage In An Ethical Behavior?
As young people
grow, their emerging cognitive development enables them to gain increasingly
accurate perceptions of the world around them. Three principal external
influences combine with this emerging cognitive development to affect moral
development and behavior. These factors are:
Recognition That An
Action Has Caused Harm
When a young person engages in
inappropriate action and recognizes that his or her action has caused harm to
another, this leads to an empathic response, which leads to feelings of
remorse.
Social Disapproval
When a young person engages
in inappropriate action and recognizes that others have become aware of and
disapprove of this action, this leads to "loss of face" and feelings of shame.
Punishment By Authority
When a young person engages in
an inappropriate action and this action is detected by a person with authority
over the young person, this leads to punishment imposed by the person in
authority, which can lead to feelings of regret, but also can lead to anger at
the authority.
These three external influences not only affect
behavior in both young people and older people, they also play a major role in
a young person's moral development. During adolescence, young people develop a
sense of their own personal identity. This personal identity incorporates an
internalized personal moral code. In adolescents and adults, our personal
moral code functions as an internal influence for ethical and responsible
behavior. Behavior is influenced both by the external factors, as well as the
internalized moral code.
When we perceive that we have violated our
own personal moral code, we feel guilty -- unless we can rationalize our
actions in some manner. We are all willing, under certain circumstances, to
waiver from our personal moral code. We each have an internalized limit about
how far we are willing to waiver from the ideal set forth in our personal
moral code. This limit protects against unlimited transgressions. The
boundaries of this limit vary according to each person.
There are a
number of factors that appear to influence behavior that waivers from our
personal moral code. We are more likely to waiver when our assessment is that:
There is an extremely limited chance or no chance of
detection and punishment.
The transgression will not cause any perceptible
harm.
The harm may be perceptible, but is small in
comparison with the personal benefit we will gain.
The harm is to a large entity, such as a
corporation, and no specific or known person will suffer any loss.
Many other people engage in such behavior, even
though others may consider the behavior illegal or unethical.
The entity or individual that is -- or could be --
harmed by the action has engaged in unfair or unjust actions.
How Do Information
And Communication Technologies Impact The Ethical Behavior Of Young
People?
Information and communication technologies have a profound
impact on the external influences of behavior.
Technology does not
provide tangible feedback.
When people use technology, there is a
lack of tangible feedback about the consequences of actions on others. People
are distanced from a perception of the harm that their behavior has caused.
This lack of tangible feedback undermines the empathic response, and
thus undermines feelings of remorse. The lack of tangible feedback makes it
easier to rationalize an action.
Technology allows us to become
invisible.
In fact, people are not totally invisible when they use
the Internet. In most cases, they leave "cyberfootprints" wherever they go.
But, despite this reality, the perception of invisibility persists. Some
actions using technology are quite invisible, such as borrowing a friend's
software program and installing it on your own computer. It is also possible
to increase the level of invisibility with the use of technology tools.
Establishing a pseudonymous account enhances invisibility. The fact that many
people may be engaged in a similar activity also leads to a perception of
invisibility because individual actions are such a "drop in the pond" that
they are unlikely to be detected.
Invisibility undermines the
potential impact of both authority and social disapproval. If a transgression
cannot be detected and a person is unlikely to be punished, threats of
punishment are not likely to have any impact whatsoever on behavior.
The issue of the impact of invisibility on human behavior is not new.
Plato raised this very same issue in his story about the Ring of Gyges. In
this story, a shepherd found a magical ring. When the ring's stone was turned
to the inside, the shepherd became invisible. Thus questions were raised: How
will we choose to behave if we are invisible? Will we do whatever we want to
do because we know that nobody can catch and punish us? Will we do something
that could hurt someone because we know that nobody can tell who did this? Or
will we do what we know is right?
It is important to recognize that
young people are using the Internet, and thus are influenced by the lack of
tangible feedback and perceptions of invisibility, at the same time that they
are in the process of developing their internalized personal moral code. We do
not know how this will affect their development and internalization process.
Excerpted from introductory materials for Computer Ethics,
Etiquette, and Safety for 21st Century Students, by Nancy Willard,
published by the International Society for Technology in Education.
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