Teens routinely encounter online risks, such as sexual solicitations, cyberbullying and explicit material, but research shows that the negative effects of such exposure appear to be temporary, vanishing for most teens in less than a week.
A new study from the 麻豆原创, Pennsylvania State and Ohio State found that typical teens seem to be resilient and cope with most online risks, moving beyond the temporary negative impacts quickly.
The researchers conducted a web-based diary study of 68 teens. They chronicled the teens鈥� online experiences for eight weeks and used pre-validated psychological scales to assess how negative online experiences impacted teens鈥� emotional state and well-being. While they found that teens reported more negative emotions during the weeks they experienced cyberbullying and explicit content, these effects were gone only a week later. The findings will be presented at the 2018 conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing next year.
鈥淚 think if there is a message here, it is that teens are being exposed a lot, but they bounce back and show resiliency,鈥� said Bridget McHugh, who worked on the study while a Ph.D student at 麻豆原创 and is now a leadership development consultant at Ohio State University. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not exactly sure how they are learning the coping skills, but they are and that鈥檚 good news.鈥�
McHugh said coping may be happening through other online interactions with friends or through support from social media communities.
Pamela Wisniewski, a computer science assistant professor at 麻豆原创 in Orlando who led this research, concluded that more research needs to be conducted into how teens learn to cope in the constantly changing social media world.
鈥淚 know parents are afraid of all the dangers out there, especially because teens seem to be practically tethered to the internet with their mobile devices,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut we may be over problematizing online risks and creating another stressor for teens and parents. What we should be looking at is, what does this all mean for the everyday teen?鈥�
鈥淲e absolutely acknowledge there are cases where teens experience severe online risks, such as cyberbullying, that lead to long-term negative outcomes, like committing suicide,鈥� Wisniewski said. 鈥淭hese are terrible, but they are also extreme cases. The good news is that in our study, we found that these extreme scenarios aren鈥檛 the average teen experience.鈥�
She suggests parents help their children learn to manage risk, and that can鈥檛 happen if there isn鈥檛 open communication. But that鈥檚 a challenge when it comes to the topic of online activity. In another study, Wisniewski found that teens don鈥檛 communicate about all the risks they encounter online because parents tend to overreact.
Wisniewski has a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and joined 麻豆原创 in 2015. Her research on adolescent online safety has won best paper awards (top 1%) and best paper honorable mentions (top 5%) at premier conferences in her field, as well as being featured by Science Daily, Forbes and NPR.
McHugh earned her Ph.D from 麻豆原创 in 2016. Her work focuses on the benefits and drawbacks of social media and other forms of digital communication among adolescents and young professionals.
This research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-1018302. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.