Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Theoretical framework for children's internet use
- two Methodological framework: the EU Kids Online project
- three Cognitive interviewing and responses to EU Kids Online survey questions
- four Which children are fully online?
- five Varieties of access and use
- six Online opportunities
- seven Digital skills in the context of media literacy
- eight Between public and private: privacy in social networking sites
- nine Experimenting with the self online: a risky opportunity
- ten Young Europeans’ online environments: a typology of user practices
- eleven Bullying
- twelve ‘Sexting’: the exchange of sexual messages online among European youth
- thirteen Pornography
- fourteen Meeting new contacts online
- fifteen Excessive internet use among European children
- sixteen Coping and resilience: children's responses to online risks
- seventeen Agents of mediation and sources of safety awareness: a comparative overview
- eighteen The effectiveness of parental mediation
- nineteen Effectiveness of teachers’ and peers’ mediation in supporting opportunities and reducing risks online
- twenty Understanding digital inequality: the interplay between parental socialisation and children's development
- twenty-one Similarities and differences across Europe
- twenty-two Mobile access: different users, different risks, different consequences?
- twenty-three Explaining vulnerability to risk and harm
- twenty-four Relating online practices, negative experiences and coping strategies
- twenty-five Towards a general model of determinants of risk and safety
- twenty-six Policy implications and recommendations: now what?
- Appendix Key variables used in EU Kids Online analyses
- Index
nine - Experimenting with the self online: a risky opportunity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on contributors
- one Theoretical framework for children's internet use
- two Methodological framework: the EU Kids Online project
- three Cognitive interviewing and responses to EU Kids Online survey questions
- four Which children are fully online?
- five Varieties of access and use
- six Online opportunities
- seven Digital skills in the context of media literacy
- eight Between public and private: privacy in social networking sites
- nine Experimenting with the self online: a risky opportunity
- ten Young Europeans’ online environments: a typology of user practices
- eleven Bullying
- twelve ‘Sexting’: the exchange of sexual messages online among European youth
- thirteen Pornography
- fourteen Meeting new contacts online
- fifteen Excessive internet use among European children
- sixteen Coping and resilience: children's responses to online risks
- seventeen Agents of mediation and sources of safety awareness: a comparative overview
- eighteen The effectiveness of parental mediation
- nineteen Effectiveness of teachers’ and peers’ mediation in supporting opportunities and reducing risks online
- twenty Understanding digital inequality: the interplay between parental socialisation and children's development
- twenty-one Similarities and differences across Europe
- twenty-two Mobile access: different users, different risks, different consequences?
- twenty-three Explaining vulnerability to risk and harm
- twenty-four Relating online practices, negative experiences and coping strategies
- twenty-five Towards a general model of determinants of risk and safety
- twenty-six Policy implications and recommendations: now what?
- Appendix Key variables used in EU Kids Online analyses
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Developmental theories assume that at the beginning stages of adolescence, young people's developmental tasks and the instability of their ‘selves’ motivate them to experiment with their identities and self-presentation. There is growing evidence that adolescents use the internet to experiment in this way, especially on social networking sites (SNS) (Calvert et al, 2003; Valkenburg et al, 2005; Williams and Merten, 2008). This experimentation should gradually decrease as children get older and fulfil their developmental tasks, that is, younger children should experiment more than older ones (Valkenburg et al, 2005; Livingstone, 2008) – the closer to the goal, that is, being adult, an adolescent is, the stronger should be his/her motivation to complete a developmental task.
Experimenting with the self is considered here as experimenting with self-presentation online. It is defined as pretending to be someone else, of another gender, practised more often by boys than girls, or, more commonly, of a different age (Calvert et al, 2003; Valkenburg et al, 2005; Valkenburg and Peter, 2008; Williams and Merten, 2008). For example, some girls want to be perceived as younger and nicer while others want to present themselves as older or attractive (Calvert et al, 2003; Valkenburg et al, 2005). Of course, teenagers are working out who they really are. Experimentation is about necessary and constructive exploration and discovery rather than deceit. Motivations of experimentation include social compensation (i.e. to overcome shyness, communication difficulty or other weaknesses), self-exploration (i.e. taking various personality features or identities to investigate how others react on an adolescent), and social facilitation (to facilitate dating, making friends and relationship formation).
Research aims and methods
The first part of the chapter explores the hypothesis that this experimentation is common. We also hypothesise that age matters substantially, being less prevalent among older children. Our third hypothesis predicts that experimenting with self-presentation online is more common among boys for two reasons: boys are developmentally further from adulthood than girls of the same age (Allison and Shultz, 2001; Lerner and Steinberg, 2004; Sax, 2007), thus they feel more pressure to pass through consecutive developmental stages; and boys undertake more online activities measured in terms of variety, frequency and length of time ( Jackson, 2008; Gui and Argentin, 2011), so they are also more likely to experiment online.
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- Children, Risk and Safety on the InternetResearch and Policy Challenges in Comparative Perspective, pp. 113 - 126Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2012