Children's Meetings Offline with People Met Online:

Abstract

Building on EU Kids Online data, this article deals with the psycho-social context of children's meetings with “complete strangers” as opposed to meetings with “friends of friends”, that is, people who are already connected to their social network. The original contribution of this article lies in the distinction operated between the types of people met this way for several measures of internet use and the children's psychological characteristics. The study hypothesizes children who met any type of online contacts (“friends of friends”, “complete strangers” or “both”) to be heavier internet users than children who met no one. Moreover, children who met “complete strangers” or “both” were expected to report higher levels of risk-taking behaviour online and offline than children who met “friends of friends” or no one. The same relations were hypothesized for the psychological characteristics. Finally, harm was expected to occur more in the case of meetings with “complete strangers” or “both” than in the case of meetings with “friends of friends”.

Keywords:

• “complete strangers”
• “friends of friends”
• face-to-face meetings
• online risks
• online safety

Notes

^1. This article is based on data collected by the EU Kids Online II network (2009–11), funded by the European Commission (DG Information Society) Safer Internet plus Programme (project code SIP-KEP-321803), coordinated by Sonia Livingstone and Leslie Haddon, London School of Economics and Political Science. For detailed reports, consult www.eukidsonline.net.

^2. Weighted values were used for reporting frequencies/percentages; no weight was used for further statistical analyses.