ONLINE RISKS AND COPING STRATEGIES OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN ROMANIA

Abstract

The internet offers young people plenty of possibilities, but according to the “more is more” hypothesis, online opportunities and risks tend to go together. We look for the features of online stressful situations to which 9−16 years old Romanian young people are exposed, and we follow the way they cope with adversity. The resilience of young people to online risks varies, as some of them cope better than others. We pursue few protective factors which can attenuate the negative online experience and enhance the resilience of young people. Among online risks we focus on the following: experiencing online sexual contents (images, messages), online bullying, offline meetings with online contacts. We base our study on the analyses conducted on the empirical data of the EU Kids Online II (2010) project regarding Romanian youth