Young People and Digital Intimacies. What is the evidence and what does it mean? Where next?

The digital age makes new forms of connection possible, enabling ‘digital intimacies’ including the many practices of communicating, producing and sharing intimate content (‘sexting’; selfies; making, viewing and circulating sexual content; using hook-up apps; and searching online for advice about sex). Where young people engage in digital intimacies, policymakers have tended to respond with alarm and commissioned research premised on demonstrating negative outcomes. Young people’s take up of technologies is contrasted with previous generations and ideas of ‘healthy’, ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ sexual development which ignores and marginalises diversity of sexuality and sexual expression, and leads to campaigns that seek to supervise and regulate youth sexuality. This in turn results in legislation and censorship with consequences including blocking websites for sexual abuse support and sexual education. The government has suspended introduction of Age Verification for pornographic websites but is pressing ahead with its ‘Online Harms’ White Paper which plans for broader and more comprehensive regulatory frameworks in the interests of protecting children and young people in online spaces. The UK government has positioned itself as a world leader in developing new regulatory approaches to tackle online harms but the evidence base for those approaches is neither robust nor nuanced enough to respond to the increasing mediatisation of everyday life and sexual identity. This briefing advocates for a broader recognition of young people’s investments in digital intimacies, acknowledging what growing up and learning about sex in the digital age means for young people in order to inform future policy and practice. Policies that are informed by robust research and understandings that accommodate the nuanced practices of digital intimacy will provide the support that young people need and deserve as they navigate their media lives, develop awareness of ethical and unethical behaviour, and what is right for them

An exploratory investigation on the effects of online social networking sites on college students

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects online social networking sites have on college students, mainly the effects on their communication. A study at Rowan University was conducted using a random selection of undergraduate students. The Rowan Subject pool was used to recruit students. Although each student was in different majors, all of the students were in an introduction to psychology course. To examine the effects online social networking sites have on college students, there were two separate groups of students designed to interact with one another in two different ways. A group was instructed to communicate face-to-face on a topic and the group were audio and visually recorded. The other group was instructed to communicate through a Facebook page created by the researcher. A status was posted on the main page and the subjects were instructed to communication via Facebook. To examine communication, the number of words was counted. I hypothesized due to the increased use of online social networking sites; the group communicating through Facebook would have a higher word count than the group communicating face-to-face

‘Generation Facebook’ – A Cognitive Calculus Model of Teenage User Behavior on Social Network Sites

With the growing popularity of Facebook, the number of teenage users has significantly increased. Parents and teachersobserve this development critically as they fear that teenagers are prone to over-engage in pleasant activities and neglectthe risks connected with information revelation. This paper adopts an explorative approach in order to investigate whatmotivates and hinders teenagers to use SNS and how using this medium affects their identities. By applying GroundedTheory to analyze data obtained in interviews, we formulate a conceptual model of teenage behavior on Facebook. Wefind that teenagers behave rationally on SNS, consciously weighing the benefits against the costs and acting inaccordance with their preferences. Shared information and the diversified network structure allow teenagers to obtainsupport in school-related matters, broaden their horizon and intensify relationships with their peers. At the same time,peer and parental pressure play a significant role in this process

Kakva je naša onlajn interakcija? Jedan pristup za proučavanje multidimenzionalnosti onlajn komunikacije

If different dimensions of online interaction are neglected and/or unknowingly combined in a research study there is a risk of misleading results due to compensatory effect. With respect to the multidimensionality of online interaction, two substantially different types of online communication are defined - procreative and transmissional. The procreative online communication is understood as a person's tendency to use the internet as a space for social interaction, which essentially differs from using the internet transmissionally, as a peer-to-peer communication channel between people who are familiar with one another. The aim of this paper is to explore more deeply the procreative dimensions of online communication. Based on our conceptual framework, we defined three procreativity dimensions and developed an Online Procreativity Scale (OPS) to measure them. The OPS has been validated through EFA and CFA and the three-dimensional structure has been confirmed. Using the OLS regression analyses we found that gender and psychological characteristics and social network sites (SNS) use have diverse influence depending on the procreativity dimension under observation. Gender, city size, share of unfamiliar SNS friends and loneliness predicted willingness to interact with strangers, while the time spent on SNS predicted only the tendency to participate in public online interaction.Ukoliko se ne vodi računa o različitim dimenzijama onlajn interakcije lako se može desiti da zbog njihovog međusobnog preklapanja i maskiranja dođemo do sasvim pogrešnih istraživačkih nalaza. U skladu sa razumevanjem onlajn interakcije kao multidimenzionalnog procesa izdvojili smo dva suštinski različita tipa on-lajn komunikacije - prokreativni i transmisioni. Onlajn komunikaciju prokreativnog tipa razumemo kao tendenciju pojedinca ka upotrebi interneta kao prostora za društvenu interakciju nasuprot suštinski različitog transmisionog tipa onlajn interakcije koja se zasniva na kanalskoj, jedan na jedan komunikaciji, međusobno poznatih subjekata. Cilj ovog rada je da se bolje istraže različite dimenzije on-lajn prokreativnosti. Na osnovu našeg teorijskog polazišta identifikovali smo tri dimenzije prokreativnosti i razvili skalu onlajn prokreativnosti (OPS-Online Pro-creativity Scale) za njihovo merenje. Validnost OPS je verifikovana posredstvom EFA i CFA čime je potvrđena trodimenzionalna struktura skale. Koristeći OLS regresionu analizu utvrdili smo da pol, psihološke karakteristike i upotreba platformi za društveno umrežavanje, imaju različit uticaj na tri dimenzije prokreativnosti. Utvrdili smo da su pol, veličina mesta boravka, udeo nepoznatih ljudi među prijateljima na onlajn mrežama i usamljenost prediktori spremnosti da se uđe u interakciju sa nepoznatim ljudima na internetu, dok je vreme koje se provodi na onlajn mrežama jedino bilo prediktor tendencije da se učestvuje u javnoj onlajn interakciji

Momentary Links Between Adolescents’ Digital Media Use and Social Connectedness: Differences by Gender and In-Person Social Interactions

For 14-days (2,415 observations), adolescents reported their hourly use of different types of digital media (i.e., video chatting, texting, social media, phone calling) to connect with peers, in-person interactions, and social connectedness. Across the racially-diverse sample of adolescents’ (N = 212, Mage = 15.5 years) adolescents felt less socially connected in hours where they had video chatted or used social media, but only when they had also interacted with peers in-person in the same hour. As girls felt less socially connected in hours where they had texted, boys felt more socially connected in hours where they had texted and interacted in-person with peers. Findings suggest that social connectedness is influenced by type of digital media use, gender, and in-person interactions in the same hour.Master of Art

Computer-mediated communication use among adolescents and its implication for psychological need satisfaction

Online self-disclosure and online communication are two communication behaviours that, on the basis of prior research and theory, would appear to be related both to one another and to psychological need satisfaction. This study explored these relationships among a sample of 190 secondary school students drawn from a district in Malaysia. Respondents completed a questionnaire battery, which included measures of online self-disclosure, online communication and psychological need satisfaction. Quantitative data were then entered and analysed via Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results demonstrated that adolescents disclosed more during same-sex interaction than opposite-sex interaction. The findings also showed a positive relationship between online communication and same-sex disclosure for adolescent girls, but not necessarily for boys. Hierarchical regression analyses confirmed that for male and female adolescents, same-sex disclosure, opposite-sex disclosure and online communication were found to be predictive of adolescents' experiences of psychological need satisfaction in online friendships. No interaction effect was found between online self-disclosure and online communication on psychological need satisfaction. The contribution of this study is two-fold. First, currently, little research exists examining the association between online self-disclosure, online communication and psychological need satisfaction in a single published study. Second, we extend previous research with a more nuanced understanding of psychological need satisfaction embedded in the context of CMC

Self-presentation and emotional contagion on Facebook: new experimental measures of profiles' emotional coherence

Social Networks allow users to self-present by sharing personal contents with others which may add comments. Recent studies highlighted how the emotions expressed in a post affect others' posts, eliciting a congruent emotion. So far, no studies have yet investigated the emotional coherence between wall posts and its comments. This research evaluated posts and comments mood of Facebook profiles, analyzing their linguistic features, and a measure to assess an excessive self-presentation was introduced. Two new experimental measures were built, describing the emotional loading (positive and negative) of posts and comments, and the mood correspondence between them was evaluated. The profiles "empathy", the mood coherence between post and comments, was used to investigate the relation between an excessive self-presentation and the emotional coherence of a profile. Participants publish a higher average number of posts with positive mood. To publish an emotional post corresponds to get more likes, comments and receive a coherent mood of comments, confirming the emotional contagion effect reported in literature. Finally, the more empathetic profiles are characterized by an excessive self-presentation, having more posts, and receiving more comments and likes. To publish emotional contents appears to be functional to receive more comments and likes, fulfilling needs of attention-seeking.Comment: Submitted to Complexit

Instant Messenger Friends? Social Relationship Behavior Differences Between Two Countries

Canadian and U.S. respondents’ social behavior resulting from communication tools is examined.  Results suggest that Canadians are less likely to use social communication tools to develop new relationships

Online Self-Disclosure Through Social Networking Sites Addiction: A Case Study of Pakistani University Students

Social networking sites provide a virtual platform for socialization, interaction, and entertainment. The overuse of social networking sites has become a global phenomenon, especially among young generations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the addiction elements of social networking sites and the impact of such an addiction on online self-disclosure. Additionally, the moderation effect of openness and extraversion was also analysed. Data from university students in Pakistan was gathered online using the Google survey application. In total 290 samples were gathered and examined. SPSS and AMOS software programmes were used to analyse data. Findings confirmed that young generations tend to have greater online self-disclosure due to social networking sites addiction. Both moderation results also showed a significant relationship between social networking sites addiction and online self-disclosure. The results of the current study are also used as a guideline for making policies related to social networking sites addiction