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Australian high school students and their Internet use: perceptions of opportunities versus ‘problematic situations’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

luke gaspard Open the ORCID record for luke gaspard [Opens in a new window]
luke gaspard*
Affiliation:
Department of Media and Communications, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
*
Author for correspondence: luke gaspard, Email: luke.gaspard@sydney.edu.au
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Abstract

The Internet has, for varied reasons, emerged as a critical mediating tool in the everyday experience for many young people. Opportunities for access and participation are vast and well-documented. There are, however, risks, or more accurately ‘problematic situations’, associated with these online experiences. From a digital youth’s perspective, real and perceived threats, primarily related to content, contact and conduct, all play to policy agendas, and adult fears of how best to protect youth within virtual space where the boundaries of private and public are easily blurred and compromised. Drawing upon a purposive sample of four high schools, in greater Melbourne, Australia, frequency analysis is performed on questionnaire data from 770 students aged 12–18. Adapting the research taxonomy from the EU Kids Online (2014, EU Kids Online: findings, methods, recommendations (deliverable D1.6)) project, this paper extends that work by developing a more comprehensive coding structure to reflect the complex attitudes high school students of this study exhibit with their online practice. In doing so, this research, via a more nuanced classification, supports the ongoing validity of previous research that points to navigation of the Internet as a continuing contestation between balancing opportunity and risk.

Keywords

online risksopportunitiesproblematic situationsyoung people
Type
Articles
Information
Children Australia , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 54 - 63
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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