This book is organized along three lines: privacy, property, and participation in the digital age, both from a moral and an ethical point of view. The arguments are based on research that uses qualitative data collected from extensive interviews with tweens, teens, young adults, and adults influential in young people’s lives. The emphasis is on peer-to-peer ethical issues.

The first chapter opens with examples of invaded privacy, stolen intellectual property, and finally a participation case that entails racism. The privacy invasion example involves secretly videotaping the same-sex love affair of an 18-year-old male Rutgers University student who, because of the incident, committed suicide. The stolen property case involves a female teenager who entered German literary circles with success, but it was later found out that she lifted text from another author’s novel; she apologized and referred to her action as creative remixing. The troubling participation case is about a Facebook group created by some New York City police officers. Posts on the public page referred to the people of a parade as “savages” and “animals.” Later, 17 police officers faced disciplinary action by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

The author defines two shortfalls in not considering the consequences of an activity: blind spots and disconnects. Blind spots are unconscious, naive, and unintentional; on the other hand, disconnects are conscious and mindful. She argues that they are common to an unfortunate degree and occur when we collaborate, interact, play, and share content by email, text message, and social media.

In chapters 2 through 4, “Privacy,” “Property,” and “Participation,” James explores young people’s mindsets, providing specific example problems for each of the dimensions. In the fifth and final chapter, “Correcting the Blind Spots, Reconnecting the Disconnects,” James starts with the Steubenville, Ohio rape case of August 2012, where a teenage girl was sexually assaulted by high school football players, arguing that the Internet not only magnifies such harm but also provides opportunities for addressing it. She provides pointers for correcting blind spots and disconnects with proactive behavior on the digital front, as well as on educational, home, peer, and individual fronts. The book ends with a hopeful tone for the future.

This timely book is worth reading and requires reflection. I would highly recommend it to people who are interested in ethical issues in digital media. The book includes a detailed index, notes, and references for each chapter, and an appendix that details the research. The index contains minor omissions: for example, “moral thinking,” one of the key concepts of the book, is not included.

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