THE DIGITAL DILEMMA DEBATE...,SOUTH AFRICAN CHILD AND YOUTH CARE

Weekly, this blog invariably refers to child and youth care worker's posts and comments in social media. It's one of our ways of keeping an ear to the ground as it were. What I miss are posts and comments from children and young persons in the system. Strange.....cellphones, tablets, i-phones, and even laptops are all part of everyday communication, expressions of opinion and knowledge acquisition. Am I thinking way out of the box to contemplate young persons being part of our facebook or twitter friends and commenting with us on issues that affect not only us, but have an impact on the social services they receive? Someone said that young persons are just not in the same whatsapp groups as child and youth care workers ...(and me !!) I wonder why?

Anyway, group and friendship chats apart, it got me thinking about young persons in our systems and their access to digital communication.

In the 1995 Cabinet Enquiry into the status of Places of Safety,and what were then called Places of Detention, one of the queries of the facility was whether young people had access to newspapers, receive and send uncensored letters, radio and TV..especially international and local news  The non-availability to communication, of any sort, was regarded as a violation of a RIGHT. The world has turned a few revolutions since then. Now, communication and recreation,.is digital. We have been through the 3rd Industrial Revolution, ....We are already well into the 4th Industrial Revolution. I heard only two days ago about an Artificial Intelligence (AI) dating app available on mobile phones, tablets and laptops!! And it's voice activated to boot.!!! The question of young person's rights comes up again....this time in a completely different ballpark. This is the kernel of what I have dubbed a digital dilemma

What do the.Rules and Conventions say? 

Let's start with The Rights and Rules of Juveniles in Detention UN Annexure 45 of December. A(45/49) 1990. The Beijing Rules.  See,.the title is outdated, as is the century, We have to translate  contextually to capture the implications for us, young persons and the upholding of rights today.
Rule J59 is probably the most significant, 
But Ill start with: Rule 18(c) Juveniles should receive and retain materials for their leisure,and recreation as are acceptable with the interests of the administration of justice. ( My bold).
The question is; does this then mean, mobile digital games, music, and video?
Rule J moves on...Contacts with the wider community...J59 and 61 deal with the right to communicate in writing or telephone with family, friends, and other persons and representatives of reputable organisations ........
 The question then is,  does this now mean the right to e-mail, google , websites, facebook, twitter, whatsapp and the like?

Key words in all the documents including the 2009 UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (See.Section 104 (d) stress: retain, communicate, access, link.....
What links? how? when? using what means of communication? To whom? under what supervision, levels of privacy and access to information? Does the Right to Access to Information apply to young persons and children and those in facilities?

I did a round of telephone calls to people I knew in different settings in the field of child and youth care. It will be a lengthy blog if each of the different policies and practices were to be fully articulated here. I'm going to try a type of summary:

No facility I contacted allow the children to retain their mobile digital devices on admission. In the more restrictive environments, especially those young people in conflict with the law and sentenced or awaiting trial, this could mean the return of the device on disengagement.
However, policies around access and useage appeared then later, in some instances to be discretionary. So I got different practices around control. These ranged from a Children's Home setting where the child and youth care worker held the devices and allowed use in supervised limited screen times . The criteria for access to devices changes from facility to facility ranging from,,,,only senior grade, responsible, serious learners, to young persons in diversion programmes getting some easier access. The least restrictive most empowering controls spoke of the young persons allowed access  to google, be part of whatsapp study groups and friendship groups.

HOWEVER... without exception there was considerable emphasis on what was called "THE RISKS".

So let's go there.   And herein lies the debate, the tension and the digital dilemma..... Policies of access and usage were diverse but there was total agreement on the risks ... firstly to the facility itself. Theft......theft of digital devices raises issues of responsibility. apart from the behaviour management that theft causes...can for example, the state be held somehow accountable or responsible if digital devises are stolen. Can a facility be accused of negligence or inadequate control of property or supervision? 
Then comes cost. Who pays? Data and airtime costs are high and how is that controlled and provided for?

Then came a single word "Sites" No real need for further explanation...

Then a number of other risk words, nude pics (swapping), blessers, sugar daddies and stalkers....all of which in- house, increases the risks they said, of sexual acting out. "Heightened hormones" one said.

The telephone conversations highlighted, acknowledged and debated the tension between today's digital world, the cyber space realities, the rules and conventions that determine child rights and the child and youth care realities of practice in residential facilities.  

I'm left with more questions than solutions. What is out of line, the rules, our practice or our policies?

There is no doubt ..... the digital dilemma debate continues.