Livingstone (2008) challenges the ‘

Livingstone (2008) challenges the ‘myth of the cyberkid’, arguing that the young people who are engaging with social digital technologies are not digital experts, but are still negotiating the rules and norms around them.

Digital technologies therefore have the potential to be used as reflexive instruction tools around the social aspects of the use and engagement with the technologies. Through the use of social network platforms such as MySpace and Facebook, young people can learn to appreciate and respond to differing viewpoints, and develop and refine their own self-identity (Patchin and Hinduja 2010).

Hinduja and Patchin (2008) argue that these tools can therefore be used to teach youth about various social and emotional skills such as tolerance and communication, based on their own lived experiences.

The social nature of young people’s engagement with digital technologies and content therefore has potential as an instructional tool for ethics education, as the way that young people use social networking sites and online games are key ways in which they ‘grow into adults who manage, produce and consume technology intelligently on a daily basis’ (Cassell and Cramer 2008).