Applying a 'digital ethics of care' philosophy to understand adolescents' sense of responsibility on social media.
Author: O’Reilly, Michelle, et al
O’Reilly, Michelle, et al. “Applying a ‘Digital Ethics of Care’ Philosophy to Understand Adolescents’ Sense of Responsibility on Social Media.” Pastoral Care in Education, vol. 39, no. 2, June 2021, pp. 91–107. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2020.1774635.
Through empirical work we conceptualize a framework of an ethics of care philosophy with digital media, coining the notion, a 'digital ethics of care'. Increasing focus on the potential of social media to harm the mental well-being of adolescents has led to greater emphasis on their conduct online. Entrenched with adolescent conduct in digital spaces are moral theories of development as young people grapple with responsibility toward others from behind screens. Utilising thematic analysis on focus group data from 11–18-year-olds we applied a digital ethics of care understanding. We identified that adolescents found social media to play an important role in facilitating their caring relationships, they took responsibility for their own online behaviour and believed that when others failed in their moral reasoning online it led to negative consequences. Repositioning moral theory for congruence with a new digital society has valuable potential for the protection of adolescent mental health.
Digital media are now almost ubiquitous in adolescent lives in the Global North. Research has consistently shown that adolescents' use of social media has increased, and they spend significant periods of their day engaged with various devices (Alsehaima & Alanazi, [ 3]), including in the educational environment. The increased use of digital technologies and associated social and other medias influence the ways in which peer relations are constructed, developed and built in and out of school. Initially, scholars differentiated 'real' lives from 'virtual' lives, but this rhetoric has shifted, with recognition that adolescents' lives are blended on and offline. Thus, the 'two lives' perspective has been mostly challenged by the 'one life' view (Ohler, [32]), notwithstanding the sense that individuals have multiple intersecting lives and complex identities across a range of contexts with arguably all played out on and offline. Within this one life, adolescents are developing their identities and peer relationships through digital technology as they grapple with autonomy, and their communication, friendships, education and leisure are reconfigured by this engagement with social media (Ito et al., [17]).
Commonly, the rhetoric about adolescent social media use is framed as having negative impact, especially in terms of their mental health and wellbeing. These positions frame young people as a vulnerable population and adults are encouraged to take a protectionist position to care for their best interests. However, it has been argued that this position underestimates the autonomy, responsibility, competence and agency of adolescents (Livingstone et al., [24]). Livingstone et al argued therefore that an alternative position is that adolescents can be competent and creative and have the capability of building their digital literacy in ways that empower them, allowing them to mitigate risk and protect themselves from harm. In this way they argued that adults often underestimate the abilities of adolescents and fail to appreciate some of the positive impacts that engaging with social mediamay have. This perspective is supported by research that demonstrated that adolescents can and do use social media in positive ways to protect their mental health and manage stress (Boyd, [ 4]; O'Reilly et al., [30]; Valkenburg & Peter, [46]).
A core concern for adolescent social media use does however relate to risk and harm. Importantly, risks do not always equate to harm, and harm itself does not always have to be problematic or long-lasting (Livingstone, [23]). Risk is an especially important aspect of adolescent life. Adolescents must learn how to manage risk as it is through this behaviour that they achieve their identity as part of a cultural group (Green, [12]). It is during the developmental period of adolescence that risk-taking becomes more prominent and this age group takes more risks than any other (Steinberg, [40]). This is necessary as they begin to experiment and explore in ways that increase their freedom and growth toward adulthood (Pickhardt, [35]). Risk-taking is therefore central as adolescents learn to self-regulate (Steinberg et al., [41]) and navigate through the challenges to reach independence (Romer et al., [36]).
The kinds of risks that adolescents are taking online and via social media are potentially different to those offline and the consequences may also be different, although some may simply be an extension of the risks taken in physical spaces. In contextualising risks in digital environments it has been proposed that we should consider the five Cs (see Livingstone & Palmer, [26]; Young Minds, [28]) :1) content, the risks of being exposed to inappropriate content; 2) contact, the risk of be engaging in inappropriate activities initiated by adults; 3) conduct, the risk associated with negative peer-to-peer interaction; 4) communication, the risk of misleading communication and 5) commercialism, the risk of being exploited by those seeking commercial gain.
One 'C' that is especially important for adolescents and for those who work with them is that of conduct, as this is something over which they have growing control. The way in which adolescents conduct themselves in digital and liminal spaces is their responsibility and relates to the moral code and empathy they experience toward others. Digital responsibility can be taught to children and adolescents in ways that encourage positive conduct online, and schools are taking increasing responsibility for digital education and often do this in adolescent-centred ways. In many (but not all) contemporary societies adolescents are now viewed differently as they are constructed has having agency over decisions via rights and they are involved in the construction of their own social worlds (James & Prout, [18]). In this way adolescents are held to account for their behaviour (Jones & Bell, [19]). From this perspective adolescents make decisions about how they present themselves in digital spaces, how they communicate with others, the nature of the words and images they post, and the way they conduct themselves in these public (or semi-public) digitally mediated environments. The ways in which adolescents do this reflects their sense of morality and responsibility, and this is underpinned by their moral development. The individual's morality is reliant on their emotional regulation and their ability to feel empathy (Cimbora & McIntosh, [ 7]) and as children move through adolescence, they become more responsible for their own behaviour (Keenan et al., [20]). This is especially important in the context of social media, as during online interactions, there can be a disconnection between moral thinking and behaviour as much of this occurs behind a screen (Flores & James, [ 9]).
In this paper we argue that we need a more interdisciplinary, fluid and flexible theory of moral digital use than those posed in traditional developmental psychology. Traditional ideologies of developmentalism proposed naturalised prescriptions of the adolescent, yet our understanding of adolescent development is historically and culturally specific, entangled in political agendas about what constitutes a normally developing child (Burman, [ 6]). To avoid these universalised, reductionist, naturalised views of adolescent moral development in the context of digitally mediated social interaction and responsibility we argue that a useful conceptual framework is one grounded in the philosophical position 'the ethics of care'. We therefore propose the concept of a 'digital ethics of care' to recognise and account for the moral dimension of adolescent conduct online, and to develop a new framework for thinking about adolescents' sense of responsibility to their peers.
We argue that the translation, reconfiguration and implementation of the ethics of care philosophy into the digital context of adolescent relations online provides a useful heuristic and guiding theoretical framework for work and research in this area, especially for those working in pastoral care in education. The ethics of care philosophy has been mostly associated with gendered and interprofessional working, especially in relation to healthcare (e.g., Gilligan, [11]), but recent efforts have transcended this caring context from the domain of health to broader social contexts because empathy, care, respect and autonomy are central features of social life, and of educational life. In other words, an ethics of care philosophy recognises the centrality of attentiveness to need, responsibility to respond to need, competence to be able to and the position of moral agents to act (Tronto, [43], [44]). This translation from health to broader social relations has led to the ethics of care arising as a discipline in its own right (Klaver et al., [21]). The ethics of care philosophical position arose as part of a critical narrative against developmental models of moral development as part of feminist accounts of morality (Gilligan, [11]) and in contemporary writing has made some effort to assimilate virtue ethics (Slote, [38]), although it is recognised that care is a practice, rather than a virtue. Nonetheless, care is more than a form of labour, as it is an ideology guiding normative judgement and action, and caring reflects individuals' practices and values (Held, [15]).
The emphasis of an ethics of care framework is on empathy, as this is visible in moral reasoning, whereby caring for others is sustained by the human capacity for empathy and human obligation toward the wellbeing and suffering of others (Slote, [39]). In that sense therefore, the relational ontology of ethics of care is one that positions the moral agent as mutually interconnected, vulnerable and dependent and does not position morality in relation to equality of power and unrestricted freedom (Petterson, [34]). Indeed, all persons, organisations, and communities are interdependent and relational (Held, [15]). Notably, an ethics of care recognises that a person's moral identity is fluid, flexible, developing and iterative and the construction of the moral identity is inherently a social practice accomplished via human relations in social and political contexts and thus situated ethics are relevant to all areas of social life (Parton, [33]).
We propose a digital ethics of care as a new conceptual framework, arguing that this can offer a contemporary practical and intellectual toolkit for a new way of understanding adolescent online relationships, friendships and sense of personal responsibility within digital interactions and actions. This digital ethics of care provides a way of understanding the conflation of adolescent's digital and natural spaces and how this intersects with their relationships that are integrated in on- and offline environments. In this way the digital ethics of care provides an amalgamation of philosophical intellectualism with pragmatic evidence-based practice.
An ethics of care perspective as aligned with digital media is an appropriate moral position to take as it relies on both theory and action. Furthermore, it treats its members as social actors who are active in theorising and delivering morality and care in practice. In terms of social media, this means that it is the adolescents themselves who theorise moral situations and apply them to their friendship practices in digital spaces, using this to guide their conduct online. This is also therefore relevant to their broader social relations and obligations to non-known others. To create the basis of our digital ethics of care conceptual framework therefore, we aim to better appreciate the sense of morality and responsibility that adolescents experience and present when interacting via social media. To achieve this, we explored this from an adolescent-centred perspective by placing young people's voices at the core of our theorising and asked the question 'What sense of moral responsibility do adolescents perceive and experience when interacting via social media?'
Consistent with the exploratory scope of our research question, we adopted a qualitative thematic approach to address the research problem. This is especially appropriate for adolescent-centred work whereby adolescent voices are key to informing the research problem and where new ideas and conceptualisations are emerging or being built.
The intersecting theories of an ethics of care philosophy, with adolescent-centeredness was aligned with a macro-social constructionist position. This focus on language reflects a sociological view that children and childhood are constructed and change over time (Greig et al., [13]) and accounts for the ways in which adolescents engage with and potentially transform the rhetoric of social media through their own personal accounts and narratives. Most importantly, this adolescent-centeredness recognises that young people's voices must be heard to inform policy debates that relate to their best interests and wellbeing (Livingstone, [23]). This theoretical foundation is appropriate for work whereby researchers seek to explore young people's views of the social world by focusing on meaning and language (Fraser et al., [10]).
Adolescent participants were recruited via schools in Leicester and London (UK). Adolescents were recruited with the full support of school personnel, initially via headteachers, and then through teachers and parents. Data were collected via focus group methods. Focus groups were favoured as they are a valuable method where opportunities for collaboration, discussion, consultation and sharing of ideas drives the research. This means that participants are provided space to engage with the contributions of others (Willig, [47]). We conducted six focus groups with adolescents aged 11–18 years (N = 54) on school premises in private rooms, with two moderators steering discussions. The sample included 30 males and 24 females (see Table 1 for regional breakdown of gender), who were mostly White British and South Asian. The school compositions represented different socio-demographics representing different socio-economic indices of families. Sampling adequacy was assured via saturation achieved within and across groups (Hancock et al., [14]). The focus group schedule was designed to include broad open questions to ensure dialogue was participant-driven and adolescent-centred. The schedule reflected three key areas, conceptualisations of mental health, experiences of social media and the potential relationship between the two.
A thematic design was adopted as this emphasises language and meaning from the perspective of those central to research (Braun & Clarke, [ 5]). Utilising a conceptual coding-based approach to analysis, the core salient issues were identified through a process of multiple coder approaches. Three coders independently coded all data and via in-depth team discussion, the multiple coding frames were mapped, and conceptual categories agreed. Analytic procedures identified 122 conceptual categories, forming ten large overarching issues at stake for interrogation to collapse into themes and sub-themes. Within those issues, conceptual categories aligned with issues of morality, responsibility and conduct on social media were integrated into three themes for analysis as pertinent to the research question.
The research was governed by ethical procedures and approved via the University of Leicester Research Ethics Committee. Written consent was acquired from all adolescents, and for those aged 15 years and under, from their parents. All quotations represented are anonymous and are identified by their school year group as per the English system.
In terms of relational morality and adolescent perspectives of accountability, responsibility, care and support, three key themes were identified. First, that much of adolescents' social lives are played out online, and therefore social media plays a pertinent role in facilitating interaction and caring relationships. Second, that adolescents believed that they and their peers had a responsibility for their online behaviour and had an important supportive role. Third, was an explicit recognition that when adolescents' fail to implement moral reasoning in the digital space it leads to negative consequences through misconduct in various ways including bullying and trolling which causes psychological harm to others.
Particularity of relations is a core theme in ethics of care. This particularity refers to the reciprocal and mutual nature of the interaction between someone (or a group) who care, and someone (or a group) who are cared for. We found that this reciprocity was echoed in our data surrounding young people's use of social media for interaction and caring.
Adolescents use digital technology for various reasons, but a key purpose for young people is communication, extending social ties and creating networks (Davies & Eynon, [ 8]). In this way the interaction aspect of social media is especially beneficial to the development and maintenance of peer relations (Uhls et al., [45]). Opportunities for self-disclosure can generate trust and peer feedback which can promote positive self-esteem (Valkenburg & Peter, [46]). Friendship is central to adolescence. Adolescent friendships are characterised by intimacy and self-disclosure, and as friendships are strengthened they are a central resource for emotional and social support (Keenan et al., [20]). Through their discussions of social media, adolescents were clear that social mediahad an important function in assuring these networks of support. They reported the awkwardness of beginning social relations with peers and argued that social media broke down some of those barriers, allowing digital relations to become an extension of real-world ones and vice versa.
"I think it actually builds friends, cuz the first time you meet someone it's a bit awkward but If you talk to them constantly on social media, then it becomes easier to talk to them in real life" P3-Leiceser Year 11 (15–16 yrs)
Such reciprocal relations, communication and support for one another therefore can be strengthened and promoted through digital technology and this was something that the adolescents advocated and discussed. Specifically, they valued the platform for communicating with peers, and for some this was the primary role of social media in their lives.
"I use social media, but only for like messaging people and stuff like that" P6-Leicester Year 10 (14-15yrs)
"Like I talk to people with like Messenger, WhatsApp, and like YouTube and Tumblr and stuff" P5-Leicester Year 11 (15–16 yrs)
"Communication, its why we're using it, it's how Icommunicate with friends.... Social media is amuch quicker process" P6-Leicester Year 11 (15-16yrs)
The adolescents described a broad range of social media platforms that they used regularly for communication. They reported that social media facilitated their ability to interact with their peers and provided a 'quicker' and more convenient way to do so. Evidently, peer relations were arguably strengthened and developed via these communicative modalities and adolescents frequently engaged with others via messaging functions, such as 'Messenger' and 'WhatsApp'. Furthermore, social media was credited with facilitating extended peer relations, that is, those friendships that might otherwise be separated by geography.
"Social media is a social way of communication with others around the world" P6-Leicester Year 11 (15-16yrs)
"It's away of communicating with people maybe like really good friends you wouldn't see very often" P4-Leicester Year 11 (15-16yrs)
The focus of the narratives from these young people was that communication is a central tool for ensuring positive peer relations. They positioned tools of communication as being especially important to them and showed that social media enabled this. Importantly, though, the adolescents recognised that communication via social media needed to be positive and foster support and caring attitudes to ensure that friendships are cultivated and secured. For example, they considered how positive communication involved sharing and promoting positive mental health in others.
"I think it's [social media] good because you can share your thoughts and opinions with friends" P4-London Year 8 (12-13yrs)
"I made apost and it says ten top tips to keep your mind off everything to share" P6-Leicester Year 11 (15-16yrs)
Here communication is posited not as a neutral, mechanical function of human interaction, but as having a social and supportive purpose. The adolescents oriented to the human capacity for sharing and supporting peers as important characteristics of friendships and illuminated that they utilise social media in ways to achieve this. Indeed, friendships were seen as a core protective factor to their mental wellbeing.
"Friends is alarge impact on your mental health because you kind of use friends as arelease" P2-Leicester Year 13 (17-18yrs)
For these adolescents therefore, their sense of wellbeing was intrinsically tied to their relations and communication with peers, and thus positioned friendships, and social media as a way to maintain them, as a fundamental part of their lives.
A digital ethics of care, crucially, requires that the caring person must see and understand the need for care in the other. We found that interconnected with adolescent peer relations is their sense of responsibility to those peers; those that they conceptualise as friends, as well as others they encounter online. The adolescents demonstrated an awareness that the way in which they and their peers utilise social media can have an impact on the wellbeing of others. Adolescent moral behaviour and sense of responsibility depends on their emotional regulation, and the extent to which they can consider the feelings and impact on others (Cimbora & McIntosh, [ 7]). In digital spaces, the typical social and visual cues that illuminate the impact on others are not necessarily immediately obvious and adolescents must translate and consider the potential impact that their conduct has. Through our focus group discussions, the adolescents negotiated the extent to which they as individuals and their generation more broadly might be accountable for conduct via social media. Indeed, they were able to differentiate the neutrality of a platform, with the motivated, personal, and active actions of the users. In other words, adolescents were able to identify that it is the adolescent behind the screen that is responsible for online conduct and not the mechanism itself.
"I don't think social media's bad, it's just how we use it" P2-London Year 8 (12-13yrs)
Often social media are anthropomorphised as having responsibility in their own right, as though it is social media that are inherently bad. Despite significant criticism in recent years, this technologically determinist approach (Adler, [ 1]; McLuhan, [27]) continues to bear scrutiny as we see the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Yet, it is not the mechanism that is fundamentally problematic, but the social user behind the screen who is making active decisions to behave in certain ways, and this was recognised by the participants 'how we use it'.
It is evident, then, that our adolescent participants recognised that it is not social media that are bad, but the young person behind the screen. This positions an active and responsible agent in control of behaviour behind the screen, which can be used in 'bad' ways or 'good'. This owned responsibility was acknowledged and recognised as essential by the adolescents.
"At the age we are now as kind of older teenagers, it feels like you, on social media, you have acertain kind of responsibility as to what you do and what you think about and what you see. P3-Leicester Year 13 (17-18yrs)
Notably, the adolescents were able to see that they were active persons in the creation of content, posting of comments, and general behaviour via social media. They noted, that as they got older they had a 'certain kind of responsibility' to others and how they behave online. They reported that they had a personal responsibility in terms of what they did on social media and what they chose to see via those platforms. Importantly, they also took their own safety seriously, arguing that they had a responsibility to safeguard their online self.
"My account is private, Ialways have all my accounts on private" P5-Leicester Year 11 (15-16yrs)
Indeed, they showed an awareness of the importance of personal responsibility and setting boundaries, reporting that social media has a certain permanence that needs to be accounted for.
"Setting boundaries and stuff like that; making people aware that the things that they're posting are not right and they're going to come back and bite them in the end. Because everything that's on social media stays on the Internet" P4-London Year 9 (13-14yrs)
This sense of responsibility online was viewed as especially important, as adolescents recognised that that not all young people behave in responsible, supportive and caring ways when interacting via social media. Through this narrative of responsibility, the adolescents pointed to the need to care for one another and pointed to the consequences of failing to do so.
"There's so many people on there that don't really care about other people, they think they're funny and like take the mick out of people and make them feel quite bad" P4-Leicester Year 10 (14-15yrs)
A digital ethics of care calls for anyone who considers themselves a moral or caring person to see the need to care – an action – as an obligation within the bounds of two criteria. First, that there needs to be some meaningful relationship (or potential for one) between people or groups. Second, the obligation to be prepared to care for the 'proximate stranger' (Nodding, [29]). Our data found that the implications for a lack of digital ethics of care meant our participants believed that a lack of personal responsibility leads to misconduct that we interpret as an absence of a digital ethics of care.
The consequences of adolescents failing to take responsibility for their conduct and behaviour via social media was perceived as being especially important for their social worlds. The adolescents were clear in their discussions that there are a wide range of ways in which young people fail to care for one another in digital spaces, and this poor conduct has a negative impact on the mental health of those in receipt of such behaviour. Through these narratives, the adolescents spoke of different ways in which this inappropriate conduct could play out in the digital space, from minor inconveniences or thoughtlessness, to severe intended misconduct. In so doing they noted the agency and responsibility of those engaging in such activity.
Simple thoughtlessness and disregarding social manners about time for communicating was positioned as a common problem. The adolescents reported frequent occasions whereby they would receive notifications from peers via the smartphone at inappropriate times of the night, but ultimately felt compelled to check and respond.
"You know, when you get amessage you just want to open it, and Ithink alot of people, like, Imean, late at night and it keeps me awake at night.... So then I'm tired the nextday" P5-Leicester Year 11 (15-16yrs)
"I had an experience of that with WhatsApp where lots of people were messaging at the time I'd go to sleep at about 10 o'clock at night and then Ifelt the need, even when there was no-one messaging me, just to keep checking, and it did affect my sleep" P2-Leicester Year 11 (15-16yrs)
An interesting picture emerges here in terms of care and responsibility to others. On one hand, the adolescents sending the messages at inappropriate times have a responsibility over their sending, and yet on the other, those receiving the messages could take responsibility to turn off the phone or remove it from the bedroom. Here the adolescents recognised that they were actively checking their phone, and this was their own social action, with negative consequences as it did 'affect my sleep' and kept them 'awake at night', resulting in being 'tired the next day'. This is especially concerning given the evidence that poor sleep negatively impacts mental health (Alfarno et al., [ 2]).
Mostly when discussing inappropriate conduct online, and considering the negative consequences of social media use, the adolescents positioned it within the realm of third parties and removed their personal usage from the narratives. In so doing, they recognised the potential negative issues that young people of their generation generally face because others are behaving in irresponsible ways. For example, they used generic pronouns to indicate the broad concerns they had about conduct.
"Too many people on there [social media platforms] don't know what they're on about and just use social media to make people feel bad about themselves." P5-Leicester Year 10 (14-15yrs)
"There's other people that just like rant and rant and rant, and it's just like, those negative things that even if it's not got any like relation to you, just brings you down" P8-Leicester Year 13 (17-18yrs)
The sense of agency is implied here as the adolescents' report cause and effect, that is a young person is behind the consequences that are reported. In other words, those unspecified third-party others 'make people feel bad' suggesting that the person behind the screen is behaving in ways that lead to negative consequences. For some, the generalised narratives about the behaviour of certain unspecified third-parties were more specific in terms of the negative and inappropriate conduct. A strong example of this were the common narrative threads about the prevalence of cyberbullying, whereby an agent (i.e., the perpetrator) was responsible for the negative impact on the relational peer (i.e., the victim).
"I feel like cyberbullying plays ahuge part in everyday life, and that comes mainly from social media" P2-London Year 11 (15-16yrs)
"It's just bullies like say on the Internet, um, if you ask for help and they'll say something, then you think no-one will ever help you" P5-Leicester Year 10 (14-15yrs)
Here we can see that the sense of agency of the bully is implicit and implied, with 'cyberbullying' playing a 'huge part in everyday life'. Although the bully is not explicitly referred to, their use of social media is oriented to as a mechanism to express their behaviour. This is supported in the narrative of P5, who notes that there are 'bullies on the Internet' as if they are separate entities, just out there targeting individuals preventing them from seeking help. Indeed, for some the role social media plays in mediating and facilitating this bullying behaviour was viewed as having extreme mental health consequences for some adolescents.
"Social media can fuel cyberbullying and that could lead to problems like suicide and anger and depression" P1-London Year 8 (12-13yrs)
"Social media can cause suicide and depression, and like addiction and bullying" P4-London Year 9 (13-14yrs)
What is especially interesting here is the removal of agency. Where most narratives of adolescents placed a person with responsibility conducting the behaviour, in some versions they instead neutralised the individual behind the screen, positing social media as somehow agentive in the negative consequences. Here we see both participants proposing that it is social media that causes the negative consequences.
For those who take a traditional developmental perspective of children and childhood, and for those alternative positions arguing for a sociological paradigm promoting the socially constructed nature of childhood, morality and agency are important social constructs. For the developmentalist, moral development is positioned as occurring through a staged development as the child grows older and acquires cognitive and social skills (see for example, Kohlberg, [22]). For more critical positions, children and adolescents construct their social worlds, and their morality reflects a sense of personal agency and responsibility that is culturally, socially and historically situated within certain contexts (see for example, James & Prout, [18]). Through our analytic framing of the adolescent narratives, we adopted a social constructionist, adolescent-centred approach, looking to the rights-based paradigm of children and childhood to better understand autonomy, independence and agency from the perspectives of those who enact it. In contemporary society, these adolescents have merged their digital and physical worlds whereby their digitally mediated communication and social interactions are extensions of their physical offline environments. It is arguably, therefore, more important than ever, to spotlight and appreciate the sense of self-responsibility and moral agency as constructed by those who purport it. We must remember that adolescents are not passive consumers of technology but are active agents with digital responsibility and oversee their own online conduct. Thus, responsible digital conduct, that is 'a digital ethics of care' needs to become an automatic part of the moral repertoire of young people.
In proposing a digital ethics of care framework, we argued that to highlight the responsibility of conduct in online social interaction it is central to take a gender-neutral ideology, and examine the real-world responsible practices of adolescents, as their development of empathy and care, support and communication are embedded in a digital space. We showed, through the identification of salient practices, that adolescents raised perspectives of accountability, responsibility and care when narrating stories about their peer relations and their use of social media in practice. In so doing, they implicitly pointed to their moral sense of responsibility toward others online, and highlighted the negative consequences when adolescents fail to care for each other in these environments. In other words, it is through digitally mediated social interaction that adolescents can enact and express their moral judgements. Arguably, there is no fundamental difference between adults and adolescents as moral agents, and real moral responsibility is that which supports legitimate judgements of conduct and blame across contexts (Tiboris, [42]). Our data illustrate that adolescents are avid users of social media, and they do this to communicate and build peer relations online. In so doing, they recognised that they had a responsibility for their own behaviour and conduct and when adolescents fail to do so there are negative impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of others.
Such a perspective on adolescent conduct recognises that in real world contexts, adolescent conduct is fluid and iterative, messy and chaotic. For those educationalists who are concerned with adolescent mental health and wellbeing, and the role that social media might play, it is important to open dialogue and better understand the embedded and integrated role of digitally mediated communication in their lives. Indeed, for mental health practice, it is open dialogue that allows practitioners to communicate about the uniqueness of individual's situations and through social interaction that they can come to understand the uncertainty and values that need to be addressed (Schön, [37]). Arguably then, mental health of adolescents is potentially best appreciated through a systemic lens, in that their lives are shrouded within a range of systems of peers, family, communities and education, and these are influential in on and offline ways, and ways that inevitably intersect and overlap.
Notably, the dominant developmentally informed moral theories failed to appreciate the moral significance of the private domains of adolescent family, school and friendships, assuming morality ought to be sought for independent, unrelated and mutually indifferent individuals who were thought of as equal (Held, [15]). Held, reported however that a different view of this will ensure that we can see adolescent development in a more fluid, iterative, and constructed way. Held proposed that the ethics of care recognises that moral issues arise between interconnected persons in contexts of families, friendships and socialgroups. Our data reflect this, as we illustrated that the adolescents grappled with and negotiated their social identity through digital communication via social media and negotiated their responsibility and care toward others, while seeking to protect their own wellbeing by taking steps to understand and mitigate the misconduct of others. Adolescents must take some responsibility for their online behaviour, but adults need to encourage them to develop coping strategies and to report the poor conduct of others (e.g., in the case of cyberbullying) (Livingstone et al., [25]). Families and schools therefore need guidance and support so that they are to take active measures to support their child's mental health, especially in relation to their use of social media (OECD, [31]). This is crucial as evidence shows that younger children are more frequently utilising digital technology now, and this poses a need for more research with younger age groups (Hooft Graafland, [16]). We argue that the moral developmental ability of younger children and their views and ideals of caring and responsibility warrant further research attention in relation to their digitally mediated social interactions.
In our focus groups, we identified three salient issues that are pertinent to our new digital ethics of care conceptual framework. First, there is a digitally-mediated particularity of relations between adolescents using social media. There was evidence of our participants placing the reciprocal and mutual nature of their caring relationships at the heart of their digitally-mediated interactions. Second, we found that adolescent peer relations are closely linked to their sense of responsibility to their peers, and potentially also to proximate strangers. This is of course by no means universal, and future study could usefully address the factors at play when a digital ethics of care is not reproduced in contexts in which one might expect it to be seen. Finally, our participants believed that the absence of the obligations located in a digital ethics of care led to misconduct and inappropriate interactions. In conclusion, therefore, we propose that the literature on ethics of care, although not without limitations, provides a possible framework within which we can begin to understand adolescents' use of social media. Notwithstanding the limitations of this qualitative study, we can begin to hypothesise whether digital ethics of care could provide young people with a language with which to describe their experiences.
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