PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION

2021, VOL. 39, NO. 2, 91–107

https://doi.org/10.1080/02643944.2020.1774635

ARTICLE

Applying a ‘digital ethics of care’ philosophy to

understand adolescents’ sense of responsibility on social
media
Michelle O’Reillya, Diane Levineb and Effie Lawc
a
School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK; bLeicester
Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK; cSchool of Informatics, University
of Leicester, Leicester, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Through empirical work we conceptualise a framework of an Received 16 February 2020
ethics of care philosophy with digital media, coining the Accepted 15 April 2020
notion, a ‘digital ethics of care’. Increasing focus on the KEYWORDS
potential of social media to harm the mental wellbeing of Ethics of care; adolescents;
adolescents has led to greater emphasis on their conduct digital; social media; mental
online. Entrenched with adolescent conduct in digital spaces health
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.

Introduction
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, 2018), 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, 2011), notwithstanding the
sense that individuals have multiple intersecting lives and complex identities

CONTACT Michelle O’Reilly Mjo14@le.ac.uk

© 2020 NAPCE
92 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

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 commu­
nication, friendships, education and leisure are reconfigured by this engage­
ment with social media (Ito et al., 2010).
Commonly, the rhetoric about adolescent social media use is framed as
having negative impact, especially in terms of their mental health and well­
being. 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., 2005). 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 media may 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, 2014; O’Reilly et al., 2018; Valkenburg & Peter, 2009).
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, 2013). 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, 1997). 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, 2010). This is necessary as they begin to
experiment and explore in ways that increase their freedom and growth toward
adulthood (Pickhardt, 2014). Risk-taking is therefore central as adolescents learn
to self-regulate (Steinberg et al., 2017) and navigate through the challenges to
reach independence (Romer et al., 2017).
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 differ­
ent, 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, 2012; Young
Minds, 2016) :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) commu­
nication, the risk of misleading communication and 5) commercialism, the risk of
being exploited by those seeking commercial gain.
 PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION 93

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 ado­
lescent-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, 2015). In this way adolescents are held to account for
their behaviour (Jones & Bell, 2000). 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, 2005) and as children
move through adolescence, they become more responsible for their own
behaviour (Keenan et al., 2016). 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, 2013).
In this paper we argue that we need a more interdisciplinary, fluid and
flexible theory of moral digital use than those posed in traditional develop­
mental psychology. Traditional ideologies of developmentalism proposed nat­
uralised prescriptions of the adolescent, yet our understanding of adolescent
development is historically and culturally specific, entangled in political agen­
das about what constitutes a normally developing child (Burman, 2008). To
avoid these universalised, reductionist, naturalised views of adolescent moral
development in the context of digitally mediated social interaction and respon­
sibility 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,
94 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

1982), but recent efforts have transcended this caring context from the domain
of health to broader social contexts because empathy, care, respect and auton­
omy 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, 1994, 2005). 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., 2014). 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, 1982) and in contemporary writing has
made some effort to assimilate virtue ethics (Slote, 1998), although it is recog­
nised 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, 2006).
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,
2007). 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, 2011). Indeed, all persons, organisations, and communities are
interdependent and relational (Held, 2006). 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, 2003).
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.

Research aims and question

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
 PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION 95

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 per­
ceive and experience when interacting via social media?’

Method
Consistent with the exploratory scope of our research question, we adopted
a qualitative thematic approach to address the research problem. This is espe­
cially appropriate for adolescent-centred work whereby adolescent voices are
key to informing the research problem and where new ideas and conceptualisa­
tions are emerging or being built.

Theoretical framework

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., 2007) 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 impor­
tantly, 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, 2013). 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., 2004).

Procedure and data collection

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, 2008). 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
96 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

Table 1. Demographics of the adolescents by gender.

Male Female Total
London 18 9 27
Leicester 12 15 27
Total 30 24 54

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., 2016). 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.

Data analysis

A thematic design was adopted as this emphasises language and meaning from
the perspective of those central to research (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Utilising
a conceptual coding-based approach to analysis, the core salient issues were
identified through a process of multiple coder approaches. Three coders inde­
pendently 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.

Ethics

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.

Results
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
 PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION 97

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.

Theme one: social media facilitates interaction and caring

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, 2013). In this way the interaction aspect of social media is
especially beneficial to the development and maintenance of peer relations
(Uhls et al., 2017). Opportunities for self-disclosure can generate trust and peer
feedback which can promote positive self-esteem (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009).
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., 2016).
Through their discussions of social media, adolescents were clear that social
media had 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)

98 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

“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 I communicate with friends . . .. Social
media is a much 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 a way 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 com­
munication 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 a post 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
 PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION 99

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 a large impact on your mental health because you kind of use friends as
a release”

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.

Theme two: adolescent responsibility and support

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 emo­
tional regulation, and the extent to which they can consider the feelings and
impact on others (Cimbora & McIntosh, 2005). In digital spaces, the typical social
and visual cues that illuminate the impact on others are not necessarily imme­
diately obvious and adolescents must translate and consider the potential
impact that their conduct has. Through our focus group discussions, the ado­
lescents 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, 2006;
McLuhan, 1964) continues to bear scrutiny as we see the rise of artificial
intelligence and machine learning. Yet, it is not the mechanism that is funda­
mentally 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’.
100 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

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 a certain 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 responsi­
bility’ 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, I always 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)

 PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION 101

Theme three: lack of responsibility leads to misconduct

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 relation­
ship (or potential for one) between people or groups. Second, the obligation to
be prepared to care for the ‘proximate stranger’ (Nodding, 1984). 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 con­
duct and behaviour via social media was perceived as being especially impor­
tant 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 thoughtless­
ness, 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 a message you just want to open it, and I think a lot of people,
like, I mean, late at night and it keeps me awake at night . . . . So then I’m tired the
next day”

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 I felt 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 nega­
tive consequences as it did ‘affect my sleep’ and kept them ‘awake at night’,
102 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

resulting in being ‘tired the next day’. This is especially concerning given the
evidence that poor sleep negatively impacts mental health (Alfarno et al., 2009).
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 narra­
tive 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 a huge 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
 PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION 103

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 conse­
quences. Here we see both participants proposing that it is social media that
causes the negative consequences.

Discussion
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, 1969). 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 exam­
ple, James & Prout, 2015). Through our analytic framing of the adolescent narra­
tives, 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-
104 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

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, 2014). 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, 1983).
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,
2006). 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 inter­
connected persons in contexts of families, friendships and social groups. 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
 PASTORAL CARE IN EDUCATION 105

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., 2014).
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, 2018). 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, 2018).
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.

Concluding remarks
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 evi­
dence 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 conclu­
sion, 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.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Natasha Whiteman who was instrumental in our
discussions and development of the concept.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust [109393/Z/15/Z].
106 M. O’REILLY ET AL.

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