The study was designed to identify “sets of practices and media and digital consumption, understanding attitudes to the new media alongside situations of risk and vulnerabilities in the digital world.”
Around 45 percent of the participating youths said that they had friends who had been the victims of cyberbullying even though only 14.3 percent said that they had themselves been the target of this type of violence.
The project coordinator Paula Lopes termed these percentages high whilst “more surprising” was “the same percentage said they knew of the theft of profiles on social networks” with 11 percent self-reporting themselves as victims of such theft.
There were also significant proportions who had been targeted by practices interrelated with grooming, with the reporting finding 26.4 percent had been invited to chat privately, 25.7 percent unwillingly exposed to erotic or pornographic content whilst 25.5 percent had met with someone they otherwise only knew from online interactions.
“However much Internet programmes say people should pay attention with what users share, the majority share photographs, their true names and their true ages and many still remain minors,” Lopes said.
The study’s findings indicate that 81 percent of young people put up personal photos on social networks, 77.4 percent give their real name and surname, 53.3 percent their age and 51.6 percent the name of the school they attend.
Finally, when these students were asked just who should teach them about online patterns of behaviour, 54.1 percent identified the family, 55.3 percent their teachers, 53.5 percent the media with Internet service suppliers also selected by 52.3 percent.