Child Vulnerability in the Digital World
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | This chapter focuses on child vulnerability during adolescence in relation to activities and experiences in the digital environment. The chapter proposes an operational definition of online vulnerability and explores its relationships with subjective vulnerability. The analysis uses the data from the first two waves of the longitudinally designed survey conducted in 2021 and 2022 within the Horizon 2020 ySKILLS project in six European countries (Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Portugal; N = 5890 at T2). We focus on 3899 adolescents (aged 12–17 at T1) who participated in both waves. Using cluster analysis, we distinguished most vulnerable, average, and least vulnerable groups. Our findings show that subjective vulnerability was related to five online risks (cyberhate, harmful content, sexual content, sexting and cybervictimisation), with the most vulnerable children being significantly more often exposed to repeated unintentional experiences of all risks. The most vulnerable group tended to experience more harm from cyberhate and sexting. We found no significant relationship between digital skills and the subjective vulnerability clusters, implying that digital skills development and subjective vulnerability may be separate factors, not influencing each other directly. Social support and help by mental health professionals probably play a more significant role in enhancing vulnerable children’s online resilience. This is a preview of subscription con |
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