Children’s and adolescents’ Internet use: Possibilities and risks tendencies in Lithuania

Abstract

Due to technologies, the Internet becomes accessible to everyone and every year more interactive. For that there are changes in the Internet use and also in opportunities and threats that affect children's development from a very early age. However, it is not clear how the changes of technologies are related to the changes of Internet use, what differences of the Internet use exist in some countries. Researchers are interested in the Internet use consequences; however, research does not answer the question about the mechanisms underlying relationships between the Internet use and consequences. One of the mechanisms could be identity formation and various child’s context (family, friends). Thus, it’s important to analyze threats and opportunities for children and to reveal the Internet use and psychological functioning mechanisms, while analyzing the identity formation while being active online. This study is a part of EU Kids online network data collection. The aim is to evaluate changes of the 9‐17‐year‐old children’s Internet use in Lithuania since 2010 (using EU Kids online data collected in 2010) and to start to reveal the mechanism of children's Internet use on their psychological functioning. Methods: results of two studies will be compared: I) 1000 Lithuanian 9‐17‐year‐old children and 1000 parents participated in face-to-face survey on children's Internet use, personal, family and friends' contexts; II) 1000 Lithuanian 9‐16‐year‐old children and their parents in 2010. Results. 9‐17‐year‐old children are very active internet users (from 86% in 2010 to almost 100% nowadays in Lithuania). Children experience more threats and upsetting things while using the Internet. Children who use the Internet daily and whose relationship with adults or friends are disturbed, experience more cyberbullying and do not feel safe online. Expediencies online are tightly related to children ‘s identity aspects and behavior issues. Taken all results together, parental or teachers involvement (control, help, rules, instructions) in children's Internet use helps them to cope with issues that are online and are related to the safety.