Ethics and the Computer: Children's Development of Moral Reasoning about Computer and Internet Use

Abstract

With increasing computer use in classrooms, there has been a growing concern of the resulting moral dilemmas that may emanate from their use. Though theorists have conducted extensive research on children's moral development, there has been little attempt to situate this within the digital domain. It is the purpose of this article to examine children's moral reasoning in relation to their use of computers and the Internet. This study reports on interviews conducted with 48 third-grade and fifth-grade students about moral dilemmas involving computer and Internet use. Scenarios involving computer use were developed and compared to Damon's dilemmas which involved moral reasoning about everyday situations. The results indicated that children's moral understandings fell into the expected developmental levels. Significant differences were found between children's moral reasoning in everyday situations compared to those involving computer and Internet use. However, gender differences were not consistently detected for all computer and Internet scenarios. These findings are discussed in light of Turiel's (1983) postulated domain dependence of moral reasoning and the gender differences found so prevalent in children's computer use. We conclude with considerations for school's policies regulating Internet use and potential training programs.