David Šmahel

Connecting Developmental Constructions to the Internet: Identity Presentation and Sexual Exploration in Online Teen Chat Rooms.

The authors examined the online construction of identity and sexuality in a large sample of conversations from monitored and unmonitored teen chat rooms. More than half of the 583 participants (identified by a distinct screen name) communicated identity information, most frequently gender. In this way, participants compensated for the text-based chat environment by providing information about themselves that would be visible and obvious in face-to-face communication. Sexual themes constituted 5% of all utterances (1 sexual comment per minute); bad or obscene language constituted 3% of the sample (1 obscenity every 2 minutes). Participants who self-identified as female produced more implicit sexual communication, participants who self-identified as male produced more explicit sexual communication. The protected environment of monitored chat (hosts who enforce basic behavioral rules) contained an environment with less explicit sexuality and fewer obscenities than the freer environment of unmonitored chat. These differences were attributable both to the monitoring process itself and to the differing populations attracted to each type of chat room (monitored: more participants self-identified as younger and female; unmonitored: more participants self-identified as older and male).

Playing MMORPGs: Connections between Addiction and Identifying with a Character

Addiction to online role-playing games is one of the most discussed aspects of recent cyberpsychology, mainly for its potentially negative impact on the social lives of young people. In our study, we focus on some aspects of youth and adolescent addiction to MMORPGs. We investigated connections between players and their game characters and examined if, and in what ways, player relationship to their character affected potential addiction. Players attitude to their characters seems to play a specific role, since players who tend to be addicted view their characters as being superior and more often wish to be like their characters in their real lives. Our research also confirmed that younger players are generally more prone to addiction.

Cyberbullying in context: Direct and indirect effects by low self-control across 25 European countries

Random samples of at least 1,000 youth, ages 9 to 16 years, from 25 European countries (N = 25,142) were used to test the salience of low self-control on cyberbullying perpetration and victimization (direct and indirect effects), framed by a cross-cultural developmental approach. Path models, which provided evidence of invariance by sex, tested the hypothesized links among low self-control as well as known correlates, including offline perpetration and victimization, and externalizing behaviours. Results showed positive associations between online and offline bullying behaviours (perpetration and victimization), and, more interestingly, both direct but mostly indirect effects by low self-control on cyberbullying perpetration and victimization; externalizing behaviours had little additional explanatory power. Importantly, multi-group tests by country samples provided evidence of quite modest differences in the tested links across the 25 developmental contexts, despite some observed differences in the amount of variance explained in the dependent measures.

Online Harassment and Cyberbullying in the Czech Republic:Comparison Across Age Groups

The presented study is the first report on harassment and cyberbullying in the Czech Republic. The representative research was realized on the Czech population (N = 2215, of which 1470 were internet users) across all age groups (12 and above). In the sample, 10,1% of internet users claimed they were victims of online offending behavior and 4.8% of internet users said they were both victims and aggressors. Only 0.9% identified themselves as pure online aggressors. Ratios in the roles of victim and victim/bully varied across age groups.

Constructing Identity Online: Identity Exploration and Self-Presentation

From the early days of the Internet, scholars and writers have speculated that digital worlds are venues where users can leave their bodies behind and create new and different selves online. These speculations take on added significance in the context of adolescence, when individuals have to construct a coherent identity of the self. This chapter examines the role of technology in identity construction – a key adolescent developmental task. We begin by examining theoretical conceptions about identity in the context of adolescence and then explore the meaning of the terms self-presentation and virtual identity. To show how adolescents’ use technology in the service of identity, we will first describe some of the online tools they can use for self-presentation and identity construction. Then we show how adolescents use these tools to explore identity on the Internet, particularly through blogs and social networking sites; in a separate section, we show how youth use the Internet to construct their ethnic identity. Last, we turn to whether adolescents’ engage in identity experiments and online pretending and whether they have virtual personas in a psychological sense. In the conclusion section, we identify questions about online self-presentation, virtual identity, offline identity development for future research to address.

Classification of online problematic situations in the context of youths’ development

Abstract Previous research on youths’ online risky experiences has mostly utilized quantitative designs. However, some of this research does not account for youths’ views and perceptions. This qualitative study fills this gap by describing online problematic situations from the perspectives of European youths, focuses on classifying online problematic situations based on youths’ perspectives and interrelates these with their developmental contexts. As a theoretical framework, the co-construction model was adopted, which proposes that youths’ online and offline worlds are interconnected. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with youths between the ages of 9 and 16 from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Youths’ responses reflected the complexity of the various problematic situations online they encountered or indirectly experienced, and how such experiences were interconnected with the developmental contexts of peer relationships, parent-child relationships, romantic relationships, school, sexuality, identity, health, and morality. We recommend the development of complex educational programs focused on youths about problematic situations online, which discuss the possible situations they may encounter and how to deal with them.

Extent Matters Exposure to Sexual Material Among Czech Adolescents

Adolescents use media that exposes them to sexual material. This study focused on adolescents in the Czech Republic, a country with relatively high rates of exposure to sexual material (ESM). A sample of adolescents aged 11 to 15 years (N = 495) taken from the project EU Kids Online II was examined for predictors of the following: frequency of ESM, place of ESM, and, for online ESM, the types of sites. The only predictors of sporadic ESM were age and excessive Internet use, while age, gender, sensation seeking, and excessive Internet use were predictors of frequent ESM. Age and excessive Internet use were predictors only of ESM online, while age, gender, emotional problems, sensation seeking, and excessive Internet use were predictors of ESM in online and offline environments. High ESM is linked to adolescent vulnerability and also to adolescent psychosexual development. The implications of these findings are discussed in this article.

Internet Use and Well-Being: Physical and Psychological Effects

The second part of the book starting with this chapter looks at the practical implications of young people’s interactions with technology. This chapter takes an in-depth look into how adolescents’ online activities influence their well-being. First, it suggests some of the different pathways by which the Internet might mediate well-being. Then, it examines the direct and indirect effects of technology on physical well-being. Some of the direct effects include the potential for physical injuries, physiological arousal; indirect effects include the relation between technology use and obesity and sleep patterns. In the final section, the chapter describes extant research on the relation between Internet use and psychological well-being and the factors (e.g., user characteristics, kind of online activity) that mediate this relation. Two other important issues that we address are short-term effects and the effect of negative interactions on well-being. Throughout, we emphasize the important of education to ensure that youth use technology in ways that will enhance their well-being.

Intimacy and the Internet: Relationships with Friends, Romantic Partners, and Family Members

Digital communication tools, such as email, instant messaging, text messaging, games, and social networking sites are very popular among adolescents. Youth use them to interact and communicate with their peers as well as their family members. In this chapter, we explore the role of technology in the third task facing adolescents: that of developing intimacy and interconnections with the people in their lives. We consider the mediating role of technology in three important relationships in young people’s lives: friendships and peer group relationships, romantic relationships (dating), and relationships within the family. First, we describe their use of online contexts to interact with their friends and other peers. Because of concerns about purely online friendships, we examine separately their online interactions with offline friends and acquaintances as well as their online relationships with peers, who are not part of their offline world, and the quality of such purely online relationships. Then we describe adolescents’ online romantic relationships, and reflecting extant research, will focus on those that are purely online. The final section will describe technology and teens’ relationships with their family, with a special emphasis on how teens’ status as the technology expert may be altering traditional family dynamics and relationships. The chapter concludes by raising questions about whether adolescents’ online interactions with their peers may transform their friendships and disrupt their family relationships.

Who are mobile app users from healthy lifestyle websites? Analysis of patterns of app use and user characteristics

The use of online communities and websites for health information has proliferated along with the use of mobile apps for managing health behaviors such as diet and exercise. The scarce evidence available to date suggests that users of these websites and apps differ in significant ways from non-users but most data come from US- and UK-based populations. In this study, we recruited users of nutrition, weight management, and fitness-oriented websites in the Czech Republic to better understand who uses mobile apps and who does not, including user sociodemographic and psychological profiles. Respondents aged 13–39 provided information on app use through an online survey (n = 669; M age = 24.06, SD = 5.23; 84% female). Among users interested in health topics, respondents using apps for managing nutrition, weight, and fitness (n = 403, 60%) were more often female, reported more frequent smartphone use, and more expert phone skills. In logistic regression models, controlling for sociodemographics, web, and phone activity, mHealth app use was predicted by levels of excessive exercise (OR 1.346, 95% CI 1.061–1.707, p < .01). Among app users, we found differences in types of apps used by gender, age, and weight status. Controlling for sociodemographics and web and phone use, drive for thinness predicted the frequency of use of apps for healthy eating (β = 0.14, p < .05), keeping a diet (β = 0.27, p < .001), and losing weight (β = 0.33, p < .001), whereas excessive exercise predicted the use of apps for keeping a diet (β = 0.18, p < .01), losing weight (β = 0.12, p < .05), and managing sport/exercise (β = 0.28, p < .001). Sensation seeking was negatively associated with the frequency of use of apps for maintaining weight (β = − 0.13, p < .05). These data unveil the user characteristics of mHealth app users from nutrition, weight management, and fitness websites, helping inform subsequent design of mHealth apps and mobile intervention strategies.