OnlineSafetyPAL References

Online Victimization: A Report on the Nation's Youth

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Produced by National Center For Missing and Exploited Children in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, this groundbreaking national survey of 1,501 youth aged 10 to 17 documented their use of the Internet and experiences while online including unwanted exposure to sexual solicitation, sexual material, and harassment. And it includes recommendations to help make the Internet safer for children. 62 pages.

Escaping or Connecting? Characteristics of youth who form close online relationships

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This report used the data from the above-mentioned national sample of Internet users, ages 10 to 17, to explore the characteristics of youth who had formed close relationships with people they first met online and found that

• Fourteen percent of youth reported close online friendships and 2 percent reported online romances. Girls were slightly more likely than boys to have close online relationships with 16 and 12 percent, respectively.
• Girls aged 14 to 17 were about twice as likely as girls who were 10 to 13 to form close online relationships.
• The two problem characteristics associated with close online relationships were high parent-child conflict and being highly troubled. The girls with high levels of parent-child conflict reported yelling, nagging, and taking away privileges by parents at a higher level than the other girls. The highly troubled girls had levels of depression, victimization, and troubling life events at a higher level than the other girls in the sample. Girls in either of these categories were more than twice as likely as the other girls in the sample to have formed close online relationships.
• Boys who had low communication with their parents, and who also reported that their parents were less likely to know where they were and who they were with than the other boys in the sample were the most strongly associated with close online relationships.
• Girls and boys who reported high levels of Internet use and home Internet access were more likely to report close online relationships.
• Youth with problems were more likely to have formed online romantic relationships, been asked by online friends for face-to-face meetings, and attended face-to-face meetings with people they first met online.
• Youth who communicate well with their friends and family have people to talk with about online encounters; can get advice about behavior they find weird or unnerving; and, therefore, develop a sense of appropriate and inappropriate online behavior. Youth with problems may be less likely to get good advice and feedback.