Introduction

Online communication and information is increasingly accessible to young people, from several other platforms than traditional personal computers. While mobile phones may be primary sources of online access to some and supplementing access to others, all mobile platforms offer the benefits of being personal, portable and always on and to hand. The increased online access from mobile phones raises two questions: does more access to the internet from mobile phones expose children to more risk and harm, and are there different risks and harm if children use mobile access rather than traditional personal computers? This chapter explores and analyses potential correlations between online access through mobile platforms, and patterns of exposure to risks.

The original purpose of the chapter was to look into patterns of and relations among risk, actual harm and coping strategies, related to using the internet accessed via a mobile device. Based on the questions asked and the size of the relevant groups we cannot, however, find evidence in the dataset that show that specific mobile uses result in higher levels of harm than ‘traditional’ internet use, and the same is the case for findings regarding coping strategies. Deeper explorations of these topics would have been possible if we could compare groups of users who access the internet only from mobile devices and those that use multiple platforms. However, the data set do not enable such comparison because very few respondents fall into these groups.

New opportunities, new challenges

This chapter builds on theories about how media landscapes are changing and how young people are adapting digital media. When we look at how new opportunities are being integrated at various rates and in various – different and similar – ways across Europe, it is clear that we must see ‘media as part of the changing context, the environment or the ecology of everyday life’ (Livingstone, 2002, p 71). Although, in principle, the introduction of new technological opportunities provides the same opportunities in terms of access to information and communication and social factors, our data show that despite their similarities, new technologies should be analysed in the context of the social landscape they become part of (Silverstone and Hirsch, 1992; Livingstone, 2002, 2009; Haddon, 2004).