Misuse of ICTs among Turkish children and youth: A study on newspaper reports

Abstract

<p>This study investigated the misuse of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) among children and youth. The data source was newspaper reports obtained from three Turkish daily newspapers, between January 2006 and December 2012. In that seven years period, a total of 66 ICT misuse incidents were reported in the selected newspapers. Document analysis was performed on the newspaper reports. Themes and codes were entered as variables to manage the data quantitatively. Results revealed that ICT misuse was most commonly conducted through cell phones, social networking sites, instant messaging and web pages. Young people’s involvement of ICT misuse had three forms; from young perpetrator/s to the young victim/s, from young perpetrator/s to adult victim/s and from adult perpetrator/s to young victim/s. ICTs were commonly misused for sexual abuse, insulting or taking revenge. While perpetrators were mostly males whose ages ranged between 14 and 52, a great majority of ICT misuse victims were females, with an age range from 8 to 46. Negative psychological and physiological impacts were reported by the victims.</p>