CHILDREN AND ONLINE RISK

Abstract

Research on the risks associated with children's use of the internet often aims to inform policies of risk prevention. Yet paralleling the effort to map the nature and extent of online risk is a growing unease that the goal of risk prevention tends to support an over-protective, risk-averse culture that restricts the freedom of online exploration that society encourages for children in other spheres. It is central to adolescence that teenagers learn to anticipate and cope with risk – in short, to become resilient. In this article, we inquire into children and teenagers' responses after they have experienced online content or contact risks. Pan-European findings show that especially in Northern European countries with high internet access, parental perception of likelihood of online risk to their child is negatively associated with their perceived ability to cope. A comparison of representative surveys conducted among children in three relatively ‘high risk’ countries (Norway, Ireland and the United Kingdom) found that although the frequency of exposure to perceived online risks, especially content risks, is fairly high, most children adopt positive (e.g. seek help from friends) or, more commonly, neutral (e.g. ignoring the experience) strategies to cope, although a minority exacerbate the risks (e.g. passing risky content on to friends). Most strategies tend to exclude adult involvement. Significant differences in both risk and coping are found by gender and age across these countries, pointing to different styles of youthful risk management.

Keywords:

• Children
• internet
• risk
• parenting
• coping
• resilience

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements are due as follows. For the SAFT project we thank the European Commission Safer Internet Action Plan, the Norwegian Media Authority, and Kathrine Andersen at Synovate Norway. For the Irish data, we also thank Simon Grehan and the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE). The UK data collection was funded by an Economic and Social Research Council grant (RES-335-25-0008), with co-funding from AOL, BSC, Childnet-International, Citizens Online, ITC and Ofcom (see http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/children-go-online/, last accessed 25 March 2008). We also thank the Mediatized Stories project lead by Professor Knut Lundby at the University of Oslo for funding, and Ellen Helsper and Jørgen Kirksæther for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

‘Grooming’ in the Internet context refers to online activities performed by adults seeking to establish trust-based relationships with the child with the intention of future sexual abuse (see e.g. Staksrud forthcoming a).

See www.eukidsonline.net (last accessed 23 August 2008).

Several risks have not yet been researched comparatively, including self harm, anorexia, race hate, commercial exploitation or suicide.

As Hasebrink et al. (2008) note, other evidence contradicts this classification insofar as it positions the UK as a high risk country.

Questions posed directly to children are important. Both SAFT and UKCGO projects found large discrepancies between parents’ and children's understanding of children's internet use (Livingstone & Bober 2006; Staksrud forthcoming b).

The replication of the SAFT survey in Ireland 2006 was called the ‘Webwise 2006 Survey of Children's Use of the Internet’.

Although collected in different years, the collection of data took place at the same time of the year, in January and February.

According to Eurostat, internet diffusion occurred earlier in Norway than in the UK and Ireland and, in 2007 reached 87 per cent of adults (78 per cent of households) in Norway, 75 per cent of adults (67 per cent of households) in the UK and 61 per cent of adults (57 per cent of households) in Ireland. See Eurostat statistics at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/ (last accessed 7 August 2008).

Thanks to Uwe Hasebrink and Panayiota Tsatsou for calculating the figures in this table and in Figure 1; see Hasebrink et al. (2008).