Technology and Youth: Growing Up in a Digital World: Volume 19

In this study, we aimed at examining the unique and interactive effects of peer violence in cyberspace on adolescents’ emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment, as well as the mediational role of resilience in the link between adolescent’s pathogenic relational experiences and behavioral outcomes. Specifically, we intended to explore emotion differentiation and regulation in reaction to bullying perpetration and victimization and in terms of positive (proud, confident, good) and negative (ashamed, excited, guilty), Passive (sad, embarrassed, humiliated) and Reactive (angry, scared) emotions and how it impacted and predicted positive and negative outcomes.

A stratified convenient sample of 494 Italian students aged 13–19 years (M = 15.27, SD = 1.23) was selected to represent all different school types in Italy and the students were administered a self-report questionnaire on school bullying involvement. General Linear Models, ANOVA, and T-tests were employed to explore gender differences, the relationships between variables, and their contribution to the predictive model. A two-step Cluster analysis was used to profile adolescents based on patterns of resilience, health outcomes, and cyberbullying involvement.

Results showed significant gender differences, with females using internet and Facebook more than males and being more resilient, positive, and prosocial, but also responding to victimization with higher levels of alienation, anger, humiliation, and psychosomatic and emotional symptoms. Males perpetrated peer violence more than females, were less likely to be victimized, and were generally less emotionally impacted by it. Victimization rates (63.7%, n = 296) were higher than perpetration rates (51.7%, n = 233) and bully-victimization was prevalent (47.1%). Victims prevalently experienced passive emotions (sadness, humiliation, embarrassment) while perpetrators experienced negative ones (guilt and shame). Cluster analysis evidenced different pathways and trajectories of resilience and cyberbullying involvement: Resilient victims (RV), Healthy uninvolved (HU), Healthy Bullies (HB), Alienated Bully-Victims (ABV), and Resilient Bully-Victims (RBV). RV, HU, and HB resulted all well-adjusted, despite the different involvement in cyberbullying, and also RBV and despite the double involvement in cyberbullying, ABV were the only maladjusted and at-risk group in our sample characterized by very low Positivity, very low Resilience, and extremely high Alienation.

This study proposes a comprehensive, developmental, ecological, relational, and self-regulatory resilience approach to cyberbullying, which represents an innovative and advanced contribution to the literature with significant implication for research and practice. Fully understanding and measuring the emotional impact of cyber peer violence and resilience following cyberbullying victimization and perpetration can help in developing targeted interventions for both victims and bullies. This study highlighted the need for a self-regulatory model of resilience for modulating emotions, arousal, and behaviors across contexts, relationships, and difficulties. It also evidenced that moderate levels of resilience and positivity are sufficient to buffer youth from involvement in cyberbullying and to predict healthy adjustment and less pathological outcomes.

By profiling adolescents based on resilience levels, health outcomes, and cyberbullying involvement, we evidenced five distinct trajectories of risk evaluation for cyberbullying beyond participating roles. Our results confirmed the fundamental importance of assessing resilience and emotion regulatory resources together with peer violence involvement in identifying and targeting adolescents at risk.

Despite growing attention to the prevalence and consequences of cyberbullying within the social sciences, research on cyber-bystander reactions has been largely overlooked. Drawing from Latane and Darley’s (1970) bystander engagement model, the current study sought to fill this gap by exploring how common it is for adolescents to encounter cyberbullying on social networking sites (SNS), how youth react to the cyberbullying witnessed on SNS, and most importantly to uncover factors that may be related to two potential bystander trajectories on SNS, namely traditional bystanding and prosocial bystander engagement.

Data was drawn from the 2011 Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project (Princeton Survey Research Associates International, 2011). The secondary analysis was restricted to only adolescents who ranged in age from 12 to 17. Grounded in existing research on face-to-face bystander behaviors, two Ordinary Least Squares regression models were run testing which independent variables (age, gender, frequency of SNS use, perceived peer norms, and prior cyberbully victimization) were related to traditional and to prosocial bystander behavior online.

Approximately 88% of youth reported they’ve witnessed a cyberbullying exchange on an SNS. Among these witnesses, the majority reported engaging in both prosocial (62%) and traditional (74%) bystander practices. Based on the regression analyses, a key factor for bystander practice online appears to be observed peer behavior.

The findings from this research provide an initial exploration into cyber-bystander behavior, with potential implications for both future research directions and cyberbully prevention programming.

The adoption of mobile technology by the youth has been gaining momentum as a growing area of exploration for scholars. Several aspects of this technology, including its adoption and usage patterns, have been explored both theoretically and in empirical research. The purpose of this paper is to understand the cell phone usage of the young university students, the effects of this usage of the cell phone on their personal communication needs, their perceptions of cell phone communication in the society, and gender similarities and differences in these matters.

This paper relies on primary data of randomly selected engineering students in a university in South Africa. Data was collected from 200 respondents using face-to-face interviews with the help of a structured interview schedule.

The analysis shows the relationship between the measures of cell phone usage, personal communication, and perceptions, across different racial groups. The findings of the study have relevance and significance for the understanding of the communication patterns and their social consequences for the youth in South Africa.

Most of the research in this area has originated from the developed regions and countries in the Nordic region and Japan. This paper presents the findings on the cell phone use of students in South Africa.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how young women and men perceive the Internet as a phenomenon and what role and meaning they ascribe to the Internet as an arena for defining themselves and for shaping their identity.

The empirical data consist of narratives written by Swedish adolescents. Using content analysis the analysis was carried out in three steps: (1) finding categories and themes, (2) calculation of statistical differences in category frequencies, (3) a theoretically informed interpretation of central themes, using Bourdieu’s concept of different forms of capital, and Giddens’ concept of “pure relations.”

The narratives exemplify how computer literacy and technological competence can be converted into social, cultural, and symbolic capital. Gender differences occur both in statistical differences between category frequencies in girls’ and boys’ narratives and in the interpretation of central themes. But there are also several examples that show more complex and contradictory tendencies, exceeding or transformative of gender differences and hierarchy.

This study considers adolescents’ own perspectives on an arena of great importance. The analyses have been performed both qualitatively and quantitatively, which gives a nuanced picture of young people’s self-defining experiences on the Internet.

The paper presents final results of a comparative research on young Brazilian collegians in the 18–24-year-old age bracket. The objective was to understand the interactions and ways in which they transit within the physical and digital Web spaces and, within their transits, set up “circulatory territories,” deepen and enrich their secondary socialization setups and sociability, as well as their processes of individuation within the historic condition in which youth lives.

The study is supported by conceptual contributions offered by the sociology of youth, circulatory territory, socialization, sociability, and individuation. Research was carried out with students of two different universities: a public/state one and a public/municipal/foundational one situated in different urban centers of the southeastern region of the country. Procedures were qualitative and quantitative – closed questions forms, interviews, registries in field notebooks, etc.

The results of the investigation demonstrate: (a) that the representatives of the two student collectives studied circulate in physical and digital territories, setting up circulatory territories; (b) there are also different youth lifestyles, either due to social positions and the fact that they possess social capital, or because of differences and inequalities referring to gender, race/ethnicity (whites and non-whites), living situations.

In this manner, the study indicates the importance of questioning the homogenized image of connected youth since some collegians’ lives are limited due to their condition as young workers, while others live their youth condition as a social moratorium, being able to produce other manners of being and of living in the world.

Rooted in adult fear, adult authority aims to protect and control youth (Gannon, 2008; Valentine, 1997). Continuously negotiating for freedom, youth search for adult-free public spaces and are therefore extremely attracted to social networking sites (boyd, 2007, 2014). However, a significant portion of youth now includes adult authorities within their Facebook networks (Madden et al., 2013). Thus, this study explores how youth navigate familial- and educational-adult authorities across social networking sites in relation to their local peer culture.

Through semi-structured interviews, including youth-centered and participant-driven social media tours, 82 youth from the Northeast region of the United States of America (9–17 years of age; 43 females and 39 males) shared their lived experiences and perspectives about social media during the summer of 2013.

In their everyday lives, youth are subjected to the normative expectations emerging from peer culture, school, and family life. Within these different and at times conflicting normative schemas, youth’s social media use is subject to adult authority. In response, youth develop intricate ways to navigate adult authority across social networking sites.

Adult fear is powerful, but fragile to youth’s interpretation; networked publics are now regulated and youth’s ability to navigate then is based on their social location; and youth’s social media use must be contextualized to be holistically understood.

Online Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter have become increasingly popular in the last decade. Each SNS varies somewhat, with different forms of expression, communication and customization. Different sites may have different priorities, methods of interacting, social features and definitions of what it means to be ‘social’ on their sites.

This paper reports on 2 months of exploratory observations and interviews with participants using two of the most popular SNSs; Facebook.com and Twitter.com. Paying attention to the modal nuances of the sites and their effect on social interaction and identity portrayal, the focus of analysis is upon how these two sites are interacted with as ‘stages’ for identity performances, and how the varying aspects of design and modality on these interactive sites can result in different multimodal identity performances and social interactions.

Data revealed that youth are adeptly able to negotiate the different modal options presented to them online, yet the temporal aspects presented by the design of the site, the differing definitions and priorities in the framing of identity presented by the SNSs, and the modal choices present across the two sites resulted in markedly differing presentations of identity to markedly differing audiences.

This research demonstrates the impact of modality and design on how we act and interact, and highlights that as Digital Sociologists and Researchers, we should be careful not to treat all Online SNSs the same, but pay attention to the plethora of nuances these sites offer as stages for identity performances.

This study illustrates how youth and young adults use boundary-making processes to create a regulated community online.

Ethnographic methods are used to compare deviance models of internet participation with work on digital youth culture.

This paper finds that digital youth draw boundaries around three categories of participation (n00bs, trolls, and idols) to identify new people who need help, ward off bullies, and uphold community ideals.

Contrary to deviance perspectives, this study finds that digital youth use boundary-making processes to cultivate a civil online community.

Information and communication technology (ICT) usage is pervasive among present day youth, with about 95% of youth ages 12–17 years reporting use of the Internet. Due to the proliferation of ICT use among this generation, it is important to understand the impacts of ICT usage on well-being. The goal of this study was to determine the impact of ICT usage on psychological well-being among a sample of urban, predominately African American youth.

Paper and pencil surveys were administered to fourth and fifth grade students enrolled in 27 elementary schools in the southeastern United States. Relationships between hours using various types of ICTs and the frequency of Internet activities on depression, hopelessness, self-esteem, and belonging were examined using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression.

Results indicate that ICT usage has both positive and negative implications for psychological well-being, depending upon the type of ICT use and outcome being examined.

The proliferation of ICT usage among present day youth may actually lessen its impact on psychological well-being. Since the amount of ICT usage does not seem to influence psychological well-being, future research should examine the impact of ICT content on psychological well-being.

The primary goal of this longitudinal study was to examine whether technology use predicts substance use and/or whether substance use predicts technology use during adolescence.

The sample included 1,031 10th and 11th grade students from the Mid-Atlantic United States. The students completed surveys in school in the spring of 2007 and 2008.

Gender differences in technology use were observed with girls texting, e-mailing/instant messaging, and working on the computer more than boys, and boys playing video games more than girls. Technology use also predicted later substance use for boys and girls. Importantly, technology use was observed to have both negative and positive effects on youth. Substance use also predicted later technology use for girls.

The sample only included adolescents from the Mid-Atlantic United States. In addition, the measures were based on self-reports. Nevertheless, results from this study highlight the importance of considering both negative and positive effects of technology on adolescents. Of note, social types of technology (texting and e-mailing) predicted more substance use for both boys and girls. As such, substance use prevention programs should target these types of technology.

Findings from this study underscore the importance of examining both directions of influence between technology use and adolescent adjustment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the narratives that construct the practice and regulation of ‘sexting’, the sending of sexualised images via text message, when engaged in by young people. The aim of this discussion is to better understand the extent to which those narratives recognise young people’s agency in relation to their sexuality and the role that new media plays in enabling youth to explore their sexual identity.

The methodology employed is that of discourse analysis. This approach is used to deconstruct the dominant narrative of sexting contained in the literature, a narrative that constructs it as a problem to be contained and controlled, either through the application of the criminal law or through education and guidance approaches. This paper then investigates an emerging counter narrative that gives greater emphasis to the autonomy rights of youth. A case study involving a Parliamentary Inquiry in one Australian State into sexting is also employed to further this analysis.

This paper concludes that the dominant narrative remains the strongest influence in the shaping of law and the practice of sexting, but that young people may be better served by the counter narrative that recognises their agency in ways that may empower and grant them more control over their bodies.

The paper thus provides an alternative approach to developing new law and policy with respect to the regulation of sexting by youth that should be of value to lawmakers and child and youth advocates.

The advent of the Internet and social medial presents major challenges to contemporary social work involving young people and their families particularly in the sphere of fostering.

This discussion paper begins an exploration of how risk and vulnerability, associated with the use of social networking, are usually managed using a traditional model that is rooted in psychologically informed social work.

The discussion then moves to viewing an alternative model of social work that is informed by the sociology of childhood. An argument is made that this model can be effectively used to meet the challenges of safeguarding in a technological age.

The authors of this paper sought to qualitatively understand the perceived stereotypes associated with the youth culture surrounding texting.

Drawing on responses from 161 high school students and using qualitative methods as outlined by Bogden and Biklen to analyze data, four main themes of perceived adult misconceptions emerged. Adolescents spoke about adults’ general misperceptions about adolescents’ motivations to text, practices associated with texting, the content of their messages, and the impact of texting behaviors on adolescents’ developmental processes.

The existence of a youth culture that is imperceptible to adults seems evident from these findings. Texting is a primary form of communication for adolescents and, for this sample, enhances face-to-face relationships. Adolescents indicated they have control over their texting choices and behaviors.

Two common limitations existed in this study. These included using a convenience sample from only one high school, and including only adolescent perspectives. Future research should also examine the parent–child dyad in relationship to texting.

This research contributes to the understanding of social implications of adolescent text messaging and helps to further clarify the youth culture of texting. Although there are media that have been extensively studied in relation to adolescent development, newer media such as social networking and texting need further examination, as they have become definitive components of youth culture.

The current paper examines the relationships between watching television for various times of day and reading achievement for a subsample of third grade language minority (LM) students compared to third grade students in general.

The analysis uses ECLS-K 1998–99 data to first test for significant differences between the two samples, then further explores these relationships using separate OLS multiple regression models, while controlling for past reading achievements and socioeconomic variation.

Building on more nuanced versions of displacement theory, this paper finds a positive relationship between reading achievement and watching television after dinner on weekdays specifically for LM students. For the general sample, watching TV on weekends or weekdays at any time period has no relationship with reading achievement.

This research suggests the potential for TV or perhaps other media to act as a lingual- or cultural-learning facilitator for LM students, being positively tied to reading achievement. The paper’s unique focus on multimedia use and LM students makes it particularly applicable to educators and public policy officials tasked with confronting the reading skills gap for a growing LM student population.

Past studies have shown that acculturation has been linked with media consumption (Shi, 2005; Shohat & Stam, 1996). Some risky health behaviors are associated with immigrants’ acculturation into the American society. In this study, we investigate the association between Latino adolescents’ recreational use of media with acculturation as related to risky health behaviors such as the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, the experience of getting sunburns, smoking, and drinking alcohol.

Regression models were run to analyze the Latino adolescent subsample (aged 12–17) of the 2009 California Health Interview Survey (Ponce et al., 2004).

The regression models show that weekend television and video gaming are significantly associated with the number of sunburns one had in the past year (incident rate ratio = 1.008, z = 2.73), and weekend recreational computer use is significantly associated with the number of cans of soda with sugar one drank during the previous day (incident rate ratio = 1.003, z = 2.09). The use of English for the interview, age, parents’ educational attainment, household size, and gender are also found to be associated with different acculturation-related risky health behaviors investigated in this study.

This study is the first to analyze media consumption’s association with sunburn among Latino adolescents. Our findings indicate that among Latino adolescents in the United States, a large amount of media consumption can lead to risky health behaviors that were not common in Latin America. Therefore, parents should heed possible behavioral consequences when they decide on the amount of media exposure children have.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study of the use of technology as a hidden curriculum in a youth leadership program (United Future Leaders-UFL).

A description of the UFL program, including theoretical framework and current use of various technology platforms, provide a backdrop to the hidden curriculum implemented by the programming staff. Both intended and unintended outcomes of the use of technology are discussed in the context of UFL values/themes.

A review of technology use in the UFL program resulted in the categorization of realms of influence (Staff ↔ Student Participants, Staff ↔ Staff, Staff ↔ Parents, Participants ↔ Participants) and five categories of technology use (reminders, communication, sharing of resources, reinforcing learning, increased parental involvement).

Examples of emerging patterns of this hidden curriculum, future directions for technology use within the program, and advice for youth program practitioners are included.

This paper adds to the general discussion of types and purpose of technology use, youth programming, and role of technology use as hidden curriculum.