Introduction

The initial findings of the EU Kids Online survey (as presented in the preceding chapters in this book) provide detailed information on the types and nature of risks that children face when using the internet. In this chapter we focus on the presence of multiple risks in children’s lives, using a complex approach that also takes account of the complex characteristics of the different coping strategies employed to obviate potential harm. We investigate the following questions:

• • What are the typical risk patterns from the child's perspective? What kinds of risks are related?

• • What are the typical risk and harm factors?

• • How do children react to exposure to risk? How do they respond to harm and how do they develop resilience to risk and harm? What is the nature of their various coping strategies?

To start, we provide a brief overview of the changing concept of risk in general, and the meaning of risk in the online world.

Changing concept and role of risk in children's lives

The early modernist notion of risk was a neutral concept, denoting the probability of something happening combined with potential losses or gains from its occurrence. By the end of the 20th century this meaning had been almost completely overtaken by a negative concept of risk as involving undesirable, threatening and dangerous outcomes (Lupton, 2005, p 8). The current understanding is generally that risk describes the probability of an unwanted event that may or may not occur (Hansson, 2007).

Opinions on childhood and children's relation to risk have changed throughout history (Cunningham, 2006). Gill (2007) argues that enjoyment of childhood is being undermined by increasing risk-aversion and increasing adult intervention to minimise risk at the expense of childhood experiences. Children have numerous restrictions imposed on them that are intended to support them by minimising or even eliminating risk (Gill, 2007), which leads to the argument that children will be unable to understand risk if society (at the macro level of policy making or the micro level of family) prevents them from experiencing it.

Resilience generally refers to positive adaptation developed in response to negative experiences (Masten and Gewirtz, 2006). The challenge model of resilience suggests that low levels of exposure to risk may have beneficial or ‘steeling’ effects, and provide opportunities to rehearse problem-solving skills and to mobilise resources.