Evidence on the extent of harms experienced by children as a result of online risks: implications for policy and research

Abstract

Intense media and policy focus on issues of online child protection have prompted a resurgence of moral panics about children and adolescents' Internet use, with frequent confounding of different types of risk and harm and little reference to empirical evidence of actual harm. Meanwhile, within the academic literature, the quantity and quality of studies detailing the risks and opportunities of online activity for children and young people has risen substantially in the past 10 years, but this is also largely focused on risk rather than evidence of harm. Whilst this is understandable given the methodological and ethical challenges of studying Internet-related harms to minors, the very concept of risk is dependent on some prior understanding of harm, meaning that without efforts to study what harms are connected with children's online experiences, discussions of risk lack a strong foundation. This article makes a key contribution to the field by reviewing available evidence about the scale and scope of online harms from across a range of disciplines and identifying key obstacles in this research area as well as the major policy implications. The findings are based on a review of 148 empirical studies. Results were found in relation to main types of harms: health-related harms as a result of using pro-eating disorder, self-harm or pro-suicide websites; sex-related harms such as Internet-initiated sexual abuse of minors and cyber-bullying.

Keywords:

• children
• adolescents
• Internet
• harms
• risks
• policy

Funding

This research was funded by the John Fell OUP Research Fund, under grant number 103/760.

Notes

1. Given that our intent is simply to expose the rich array of research that does address questions of harm, we do not ourselves impose any assumptions about the precise nature of the relationship between Internet experiences and reported harms.

2. The percentages in Table 1 do not add to 100% precisely because of overlaps between the categories. Three articles discuss all three key topics, five articles discuss both risks and outcomes, four focus on processes and risks and three on processes and outcomes.

3. Although the term ‘child pornography’ may be more accurately replaced with the term ‘child abuse images’ we employ it when used by the articles reviewed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova

Dr Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova is Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Chester in the Department of Media. [email: [email protected]]

Victoria Jane Nash

Dr Victoria Nash is Research and Policy Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute. [email: [email protected]]

Monica Bulger

Dr Bulger is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. [email: [email protected]]