Young People's Online Research Articles

Online safety: Protecting young people from online abuse

The Online Safety Act is landmark legislation but the fight to keep young people safe online is not over. Richard Collard considers the provisions of the Act and looks how schools can protect young people online and spot the signs of online abuse

Young people’s engagement in online research: challenges and lessons from conducting focus groups with young people online

ABSTRACT Online qualitative focus groups are a method which has been increasingly used, especially since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, including in research with young people. Studies have reflected upon the challenges of conducting online qualitative research with young people, often drawing on experiences from the pandemic’s earlier stages [e.g. Smithson et al. 2021; Woodrow et al. 2021]. This article reflects upon the challenges faced, and choices made, when conducting online focus groups with 80 young people aged 14–18 to study their democratic engagement during the later 2021 wave of the pandemic. It highlights specific issues around the method’s effectiveness in engaging young people who face different kinds of marginalisation from democratic processes. While online modes of delivery were positive for engaging some, including groups of geographically dispersed young people, they exacerbated existing inequalities for others: young people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, from remote or rural areas and those with certain disabilities. Such inequalities in research participation can lead to variation in data quality, and therefore in the types of knowledge produced. Using these insights we outline a range of methodological and research design considerations for researchers when choosing whether to conduct online focus group research with young people.

Shifting Mindsets; A Critical Commentary on Child Protection and Welfare, Disability, and Online Risk Through Critical Literature Review

ABSTRACT Critical commentary is presented at the complex intersection of child protection and welfare, disability, and internet use. A profound lack of research exists on this topic. Findings from a critical literature review focus on the theme of online risk which included the topic of child abuse/online solicitation, cyber victimization/cyberbullying, problematic internet use, and breach of data protection. The approach taken to review literature was adopted from Aromataris and Pearson (2014). Disabled young people are exposed to and impacted by harmful online content. Key points, and online resources are highlighted for parents and guardians of disabled children, social care practitioners, safeguarding professionals, and educators. This paper attempts to advance scholarly discourse, policy, and practice, the authors arguing that it is time to shift our mindsets about safeguarding disabled young people online from thoughtful attention to purposeful action.

Young people on social media in a globalized world: self-optimization in highly competitive and achievement-oriented forms of life.

Research investigating young people's social media use has been criticized for its limited theoretical foundations and scope. This paper elaborates young people's social media activity from a socio-ecological evolutionary perspective (SEE), where young people's online exchanges cannot be divorced from the highly competitive and achievement-oriented modern market cultures in which they live. In highly competitive and achievement-oriented forms of life, young people's social media environments are often constituted as dynamic and evolving extrinsically oriented ecological niches that afford for status and identity enhancement while also affording for peer approval, belongingness, and self-worth nested within, and subordinate to, these higher-order affordances. The extrinsic value organization of social media platforms that serve young people's status and identity-enhancement are embodied by a community of mutually interdependent criteria that are evolutionary-based, developmentally salient, and market-driven: physical attractiveness, high (educational and extracurricular) achievements, and material success. Young people's online signaling of these interdependent extrinsic criteria affords for status-allocation and self-enhancement, where each criteria becomes an arena for social competition and identity formation, enabling young people to build personal and optimal models of social success congruent with their own interests and abilities. Young people's status and identity enhancing signaling of these extrinsic criteria is moving toward increasingly idealized or perfect embodiments, informed by accelerating, short-term positive feedback processes that benefit from the technological affordances and densely rewarding peer environments instantiated on social media.

Young sociologists in the mirror: digital ethnographies of young people online.

The aim of the paper is to analyze how the qualitative method represents a tool capable of analyzing the youth experience in the digital context. The contribution takes as a starting point the results of a didactic exercise experimented in the course of "Sociology of youth cultures" by the students of the University of Salerno in which the qualitative method of netnography was applied to study some youth practices online. During the work carried out, the qualitative method represented a way to study the universe of young people, entering the "new digital habitats," where young people create and reproduce relationships, identities and spaces for socializing. The results showed, first of all, how the method of netnography made it possible to analyze the contours and transformations of youth practices in digital spaces, and secondly it allowed to arouse "reflexivity" in young people, it allowed to activate a process in which young people have looked at themselves "in the mirror," entering the folds of the virtual worlds of youth and are amazed at the way in which they represent themselves, becoming observers and observers of that same reality. The qualitative approach has therefore allowed the students to grasp the youth practices in which they are immersed in their daily life from another point of view and have had the opportunity to analyze them from the inside and develop a high degree of reflexivity that it helped to reach a different awareness of being young today and of being able to read the cultural dynamics of youth with a critical eye.

“My Little Influencer”

“My Little Influencer”

COVID-19 messages targeting young people on social media: content analysis of Australian health authority posts.

Health authorities utilized social media during the COVID-19 pandemic to disseminate critical and timely health messages, specifically targeting priority groups such as young people. To understand how social media was used for this purpose, we investigated the content of COVID-19-related social media posts targeting young people (16-29 years old) shared by Australian health departments. Posts targeting young people with COVID-19 information were extracted from all eight Australian State and Territory health department Facebook, Instagram and TikTok accounts over 1 month of the Delta outbreak (September 2021) and analysed thematically. In total, 238 posts targeting young people were identified from 1059 COVID-19 posts extracted. All eight health departments used Facebook, five used Instagram and only one used TikTok. The majority of posts implicitly targeted young people; only 14.7% explicitly mentioned age or 'young people'. All posts included accompanying visuals; 77% were still images like photos or illustrations whilst 23% were moving images like videos and GIFs. Communication techniques included calls to action (63% of posts), responsive communication (32% of posts) and positive emotional appeal (31% of posts). Social marketing techniques catering to young people were used to varying extents despite receiving higher levels of engagement; 45% featured emojis whilst only 16% used humour, 14% featured celebrities and 6% were memes. Priority groups like ethnic/cultural groups and chronic health/disability communities were rarely targeted in this communication. The findings indicate a lack of health communication on social media directed towards young people, highlighting an opportunity for increased use of platforms like TikTok and trends popular with young people online.

Motivations and perceived harms and benefits of online communication about self-harm: An interview study with young people.

Self-harm behaviour is prevalent among young people and online communication about self-harm is frequent. These online communications are associated with potential harms and potential benefits. To date, few studies have explored the motivations and mechanisms involved in youth online communication about self-harm. This study aimed to explore why young people communicate online about self-harm and the perceived benefits and harms of these communications. Twenty young people aged between 18 and 25 years completed an online interview. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes. Four main themes are reported: (1) crossing from offline to online-the double-edged affordances of social media: young people engaged in online communication about self-harm because they were unable or unwilling to speak about their experiences in offline contexts. Online spaces afforded anonymity and peer support, which were associated with benefits and harms; (2) user-generated is not quite the same as user-resonated: perceptions were influenced by whether the young person created or viewed or responded to the content. Written and visual content had pros and cons; (3) it's not just you, it's mostly me-individual characteristics influence perceptions: age and mental state influenced perceptions and behavior; and (4) beyond individuals-parameters are protective: leadership and platform policies and procedures aided safety. Online communication about self-harm is neither entirely helpful nor harmful. Perceptions are influenced by individual, social, and systematic factors. Evidence-based guidelines are needed to increase young people's online self-harm literacy and help them build effective communication skills to buffer psychological and potentially physical harm.

Young Platforms and Old Politics: Quantitative Analysis of Parties’ Instagram Posts During the 2022 French Legislative Elections

The French legislative elections of 2022 saw President Emmanuel Macron's majority in the National Assembly being dramatically tilted. This was driven by youth votes that favoured the left-wing group NUPES and the far- right party Rassemblement National. The literature on young people's online political communication, on the characteristics of social media campaigns and on political outreach to young people usually assumes dichotomies of political engagement and age. The aim of this study is to challenge these dichotomies and establish a baseline of communication characteristics for each of these areas, as well as for the areas of political campaigning on Instagram and political campaigning for young people. The content of the Instagram pages of the parties in the elections and their youth branches was analysed quantitatively. A codebook combining a priori, inductive and deductive knowledge was used to highlight patterns in the use of social media, visual and campaign features. Statistical tests were conducted to examine their relationship to the pages of youth and traditional parties, and to the pages of parties more or less successful in mobilising young voters. Statistically significant features were arranged in a matrix that summarises them visually. The results show that youth parties and the parties that are more successful in mobilising young voters have similar visual approach to information structure and presentation. Additionally, while youth and more successful parties might follow different strategies in their choices of topics and issues, they follow similar trends identifiable only by considering the strategies employed by their counterparts.

Nameless strangers, similar others: the affordances of a young people's anonymous online forum for health information practices

PurposeThe study examines how the technical features and associated social practices of an anonymous, text-based online forum intended for young people make it a unique platform for acquiring and sharing health information among peers.Design/methodology/approachThe features and content of a young people's section of a popular Finnish discussion forum were examined with a focus on health-related threads. Observational notes and thread content were analysed with a focus on the forum's affordances for health information practices.FindingsThe findings indicate that the forum's affordances including anonymity, persistence, searchability, cohesion and tolerance enabled the pooling of peer experiences, opinions and experience-based advice on health, rather than sharing factual information or embracing reciprocal discussion. As such, instead of competing for a cognitive authority position with medical authorities or offering emotional support like tight online support communities, the anonymous forum served as a platform for young people to gain information on others' experiences and opinions on sensitive, mundane and disnormative health issues and for reflecting their own lived experiences to those of others.Originality/valueThe study is original in its approach to examining the affordances of an online platform for health information practices. It helps in understanding young people's ways of using different resources to meet their diverse health information needs and the value of gaining access to experiential health information.

Young people's online communication and its association with mental well-being: results from the 2019 student health and well-being survey.

Online communication has become an integral aspect of daily life for young people internationally. Very little research has examined whether the association between social media use and well-being depends on who young people engage with (i.e. real, or virtual friendships). Data were drawn from a subsample of students (N=38,736) who took part in the School Health Research Network (SHRN) 2019 Student Health and Well-being (SHW) survey. A series of multivariable regression models were used to assess the association between who adolescents were communicating with online and well-being, controlling for confounders: passive social media use; friendship quality; and cyberbullying. We also tested whether these associations were modified based on gender. Students are highly engaged on social networking sites, and these sites are used to communicate with existing friendship groups and develop virtual friendships. Frequent online communication with best friends (b=.340, p < .001) and bigger friendship groups (b=.397; p < .001) was associated with higher levels of well-being. However, the frequency of online contact with virtual friends made online was negatively and significantly associated with well-being (b=-.760; p < .001), with a larger negative association for girls than boys. Online communication with virtual friendship networks were associated with lower mental well-being, with stronger associations for girls than boys; however, frequent online communication with 'real' friends was associated with better well-being. Our results indicate the importance of considering the nature of adolescent online communication, rather than just its quantity, in developing interventions to improve adolescent well-being.

Exploring the process of harsh parenting on online aggressive behaviour: The mediating role of trait anger

We investigated the role of trait anger in the relationship between harsh parenting and online aggressive behaviour. Participants were 459 college students (female= 60.13%; mean age= 19.18 years, SD = 0.92 years). For the measures, the students completed the Harsh Parenting Scale, the Trait Anger Scale, and the Online Aggressive Behaviour Scale. Results indicated a history of harsh parenting to predict online aggressive behaviour. Trait anger mediated the relationship between harsh parenting and online aggressive behaviour, increasing the risk for engaging in online aggressive behaviour. Trait anger appears to be a predisposition for online aggressive behaviour with a history of hostile parenting. Findings suggest a need for targeted interventions to reduce young people's online aggressive behaviour by their personal predispositions and developmental growth needs.

Exploratory Study on Young People's Online Behavior: Educational Keys to Take Action

Exploratory Study on Young People's Online Behavior: Educational Keys to Take Action

Meaningful Online Connections during Covid-19: Reflections on Using Arts-Based Approaches in Social Work Practice

This paper offers reflections on an organic turn to the arts as a means of connecting and working with children and young people online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Lockdowns during the pandemic required social work practitioners, students, and social care staff to find innovative and creative ways of engaging with people. Online delivery of services presents both challenges and opportunities for communicating and building relationships. The arts, currently underutilised in social work, is one way to open up opportunities, and provide a ‘way in’ to the lives of people who use services. This paper draws on reflections from a student social worker based in Scotland, UK, on how a turn to the arts provided an effective means to connect with and understand the children and young people she was supporting. The paper first explores some of the benefits of using the arts in social work practice; second, it introduces online arts-based approaches used during the Covid-19 pandemic; and concludes by encouraging readers to adopt and adapt the approaches introduced in the paper to integrate arts-based approaches into social work.

The Impact of TikTok Advertising on Young People's Online Shopping Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Impact of TikTok Advertising on Young People's Online Shopping Behavior during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The Impact of Social Media on Arabs Young People's Online Shopping

This study aims to look at the elements that influence online shopping and learn more about the factors that influence online shopping among young people. This is done by looking at the characteristics that encourage individuals to shop online, such as security, quick delivery, comparable pricing, convenience, reduced prices, and a more extensive selection. Over the years, the issue has been studied in several settings. Even though researchers from various types of businesses have made significant progress in recent years, the scope of these studies is relatively broad, the studies appear fragmented, and there is no research on this subject in the UAE, prompting the researcher to pick the topic and apply it in the UAE. This paper investigates how social media has influenced young people's behavior, with the goals of determining the impact of social media on young people's brand identity and image creation, determining the influence of social media on their purchasing, and determining the effectiveness of social media on young people's brand loyalty. A survey was used as the study approach, using a questionnaire as the data collection tool and a descriptive statistic as the data analysis tool. The study is characterized as a quantitative one. Three hundred people were polled for this study. This study's empirical findings show that young people in the UAE still prefer social media for informational purposes rather than transactional objectives. However, this preference may alter over time as social media trust grows. In terms of involvement and the enhancement of e-commerce services, young people in the UAE have high expectations for what social media can do. However, they maintain that the private sector must take some actions to promote consumer participation and match their wants and expectations.

A magyarországi fiatalok munkaerőpiaci integrációja a covid-19 világjárvány idején

In this study, my goal is to present the results of an on-line research conducted in the autumn of 2020 in Hungary focusing on the labour market situation and opportunities and difficulties of integration of 17-29 aged young people. The aim of research is to improve the labour market situation of young people in the COVID-19 pandemic. The research question is what impact does the pandemic have on the integration of young people into the labour market. It is assumed that the COVID-19 pandemic will have a negative impact on the target group. My work involves quantitative methodology as well as questionnaires filled out by young people on-line.

Towards a cross-cultural education framework for online safety awareness

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine effective online safety awareness education for young people in less developed countries. The research followed an explanatory mixed methods design starting with an online survey (quantitative element) and then interesting or anomalous findings were followed up with one-on-one interviews (qualitative element). The data gathered on the online habits and views of young people were fed into the Young People Online Model. It was also used to create online safety workshops. The standout issue from this research is the prevalence of cyberbullying, and this was used as the core theme. They were carried out using the action-research approach, whereby after each workshop, the facilitators would reflect and analyse and suggest improvements for the next one.Design/methodology/approachThe majority of online safety awareness education programmes have been developed in and for advanced countries. In less developed countries, there are fewer programmes as well as a lack of research on the factors that influence the online behaviour of young people online. The Young People Online Education Framework seeks to address this and provide educators, researchers and policymakers an evidence driven construct for developing education programmes informed by issues affecting young people in their respective country/region.FindingsThe framework was applied in Thailand. As there were very few previous studies, original research was conducted via surveys and interviews. It was found that a high proportion of young people had experienced negative interactions online with cyberbullying the main concern. This was confirmed during the workshop phase indicating the need for more research and workshops. There is a plan to continue the research in Thailand, and it is hoped that other researchers will make use of the framework to extend its scope and application.Originality/valueA novel feature of this framework is the cultural mask. The cultural context of learners is often overlooked in education, especially when education programmes are imported from other countries. This research contends that effective learning strategies and programmes will have a better chance to succeed if the cultural makeup of the target audience is considered and that all topics and activities are parsed through the cultural mask element of the framework.

Radical Nostalgia

Radical Nostalgia

Negative Perceptions of Young People Using E-Cigarettes on Instagram: An Experiment With Adolescents

Although e-cigarette marketing on social media increases positive attitudes and experimentation, little is known about non-influencer e-cigarette portrayals of young people. High school adolescents (n = 928, 15-18) were recruited by Lightspeed Health for an online experiment and randomized to view an Instagram post with or without e-cigarette use. Outcomes were positive and negative perceptions (prototypes), social distance, and willingness to use. Half (50%) of participants were susceptible to e-cigarette use. E-cigarettes shown (vs. not) led to less positive prototypes, p = .017, more negative prototypes, p = .004, and more social distance, p < .001. Negative prototypes and social distance were moderated by susceptibility (both p < .05); effects among non-susceptible adolescents only. Showing e-cigarettes did not impact willingness to use if offered. Negative perceptions of e-cigarettes use challenge assumptions that vaping online is universally admirable. Highlighting unfavorable opinions of vaping or negative impacts for adolescents' social image are potential strategies for tobacco counter-marketing. Despite daily use of visual-based social media by most adolescents, little is known about the influence of e-cigarette use among young people online. Adolescent negative perceptions and desired distance from non-influencers using e-cigarettes on Instagram indicate digital e-cigarette portrayals are not universally accepted. Negative impacts for adolescents' social image present a counter-marketing strategy.