“…when no one is hearing them swear” — youth safety and the pedagogy of surveillance

Abstract

In this piece I examine the production and proliferation of adult surveillance practices online through internet safety discourses. Specifically, through an analysis of youth internet safety curricula provided to adults, along with interviews with parents, law enforcement officers and school officials, I describe the mechanisms by which adults are positioned as agents of surveillance relative to social networks and youth internet practice. As I argue, youth internet safety discourses represent what can be conceptualized as a pedagogy of surveillance—reconfiguring both adult and youth conceptions of online practice in ways which establish "trusted adults" as final arbiters of risk and appropriateness, while casting suspicion on the everyday social practices of youth. Through the pedagogy of surveillance provided by youth internet safety materials, parents and guardians are encouraged to conceptualize social networking sites and other information technologies used by youth as surveillance tools, rather than as social spaces. Additionally, these materials provide adults with a particular conceptual frame through which to make sense of youth sociality online, commonly interpreting everyday communication and actions from the standpoint of an imagined “21stCentury” employer.