research-article

Adolescent online safety: the "moral" of the story

Authors:

Pamela J. Wisniewski,

Mary Beth Rosson,

John M. CarrollAuthors Info & Claims

CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

Pages 1258 - 1271

https://doi.org/10.1145/2531602.2531696

Published: 15 February 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Adolescence is characterized by heightened risk-taking and independence from parents; these tendencies seem to be magnified by the opportunities afforded through online interactions. Drawing on Kohlberg's Cognitive Moral Development (CMD) theory, we conduct a qualitative study of 12 parent-adolescent dyads that examines the interplay between parenting behaviors and adolescent moral development. We show an association between adolescent moral judgment and online behavior, and we illustrate how parenting style and mediation strategies influence the teen's moral growth and decision making about online behaviors. We also note that parental mediation strategies are moderated by parents' digital literacy: reduced digital literacy is associated with more restrictive or indulgent strategies; while more digitally competent parents are more likely to monitor and mediate their teen's behaviors as they engage online. We also found that experience, not restriction, facilitates the teen's moral growth.

References

[1]

Baumrind, D. A developmental perspective on adolescent risk taking in contemporary America. New directions for child development, 37 (1987), 93--125.

[2]

Baumrind, D. The Influence of Parenting Style on Adolescent Competence and Substance Use. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 11, 1 (1991), 56--95.

[3]

Baumrind, D. Patterns of parental authority and adolescent autonomy. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2005, 108 (2005), 61--69.

[4]

Bradley, K. Internet lives: Social context and moral domain in adolescent development. New Directions for Youth Development, 2005, 108 (2005), 57--76.

[5]

Crossler, R. E., Bélanger, F., Hiller, J. S., Park, J.-M., Hsiao, M., Channakeshava, K., Bian, K. and Korbich, E. Determinants of Protection Behaviors for Online Privacy of Children. In Proc. 39th Annual Meeting of The Decision Sciences Institute (2008), 1641--1647.

[6]

Defalco, B. Teen convicted under Internet piracy law. 2005, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2005-03-07-az-teen-downloader-convicted_x.htm?csp=34.

[7]

Eastin, M. S., Greenberg, B. S. and Hofschire, L. Parenting the Internet. Journal of Communication, 56, 3 (2006), 486--504.

[8]

ISTTF. Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies. Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, 2008, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/ISTTF_Final_Report.pdf.

[9]

Kohlberg, L. The Development of Children's Orientations Toward a Moral Order. Human Development, 6, 1--2 (1963), 11--33.

[10]

Kohlberg, L. Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive Developmental Approach to Socialisation. In D. A. Goslin (ed.) Handbook of Socialisation Theory and Research, (1969), 347--480.

[11]

Lamborn, S. D., Mounts, N. S., Steinberg, L. and Dornbusch, S. M. Patterns of Competence and Adjustment among Adolescents from Authoritative, Authoritarian, Indulgent, and Neglectful Families. Child Development, 62, 5 (1991), 1049--1065.

[12]

Lerner, R. M. Adolescence: Development, diversity, context, and application. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.

[13]

Leung, L. and Lee, P. S. N. The influences of information literacy, internet addiction and parenting styles on internet risks. New Media & Society, 14, 1 (2012), 117--136.

[14]

Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A. and Ólafsson, K. Risks and safety on the internet: The perspective of European children. EU Kids Online, 2011, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/33731/.

[15]

Lwin, M. O., Stanaland, A. J. S. and Miyazaki, A. D. Protecting children's privacy online: How parental mediation strategies affect website safeguard effectiveness. Journal of Retailing, 84, 2 (2008), 205--217.

[16]

Malin, J. and Fowers, B. Adolescent self-control and music and movie piracy. Computers in Human Behavior, 25, 3 (2009), 718--722.

Digital Library

[17]

Malin, J. and Fowers, B. Adolescent self-control and music and movie piracy. Computers in Human Behavior, 25, 2009 (2009), 718--722.

Digital Library

[18]

Nunner-Winkler, G., Meyer-Nikele, M. and Wohlrab, D. Gender Differences in Moral Motivation Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 53, 1 (2007), 26--52.

[19]

Press, A. Father of gay teen who committed suicide plans nationwide walk against bullying. 2013, http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2013/04/father-of-bullied-gay-teen-who-committed-suicide-plans-nationwide-walk/.

[20]

Sorbring, E. and Lundin, L. Mothers' and fathers' insights into teenagers' use of the internet. New Media & Society, 14, 7 (2012), 1181--1197.

[21]

Steinberg, L., Lamborn, S. D., Dornbusch, S. M. and Darling, N. Impact of Parenting Practices on Adolescent Achievement: Authoritative Parenting, School Involvement, and Encouragement to Succeed. Child Development, 63, 5 (1992), 1266--1281.

[22]

Valcke, M., Bonte, S., De Wever, B. and Rots, I. Internet parenting styles and the impact on Internet use of primary school children. Computers & Education, 55, 2 (2010), 454--464.

Digital Library

[23]

Valkenburg, P. M., Krcmar, M., Peeters, A. L. and Marseille, N. M. Developing A Scale to Assess Three Styles of Television Mediation: "Instructive Mediation," "Restrictive Mediation," and "Social Coviewing". Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 43, 1 (1999), 52--66.

[24]

Walsh, J. Man Admits Meeting Teen Online and Keeping Her as Sex Slave. 2006, http://www.wktv.com/news/new-york-state/2813571.html.

[25]

Yardi, S. A. Social Media at the Boundaries: Supporting Parents in Managing Youth's Social Media Use. Dissertation, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 2012.

Cited By

Sweigart EPark JWisniewski P(2025)It Takes a Village: Youth Online Safety Research Highlights Need for Interdisciplinary, Multistakeholder SolutionsJournal of Advances in Information Technology10.12720/jait.16.1.121-12916:1(121-129)Online publication date: 2025
https://doi.org/10.12720/jait.16.1.121-129
Yu Y(2025)Safeguarding Children in Generative AI: Risk Frameworks and Parental Control ToolsCompanion Proceedings of the 2025 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work10.1145/3688828.3699656(121-123)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3688828.3699656
Alsoubai ARazi AAgha ZAli SStringhini GDe Choudhury MWisniewski P(2024)Profiling the Offline and Online Risk Experiences of Youth to Develop Targeted Interventions for Online SafetyProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373918:CSCW1(1-37)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3637391
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Adolescent online safety: the "moral" of the story
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

Recommendations

‘Just-in-Time’ Parenting: A Two-Month Examination of the Bi-directional Influences Between Parental Mediation and Adolescent Online Risk Exposure
HCI for Cybersecurity, Privacy and Trust
Abstract
Parental mediation is a key factor that influences adolescents’ exposure to online risk. Yet, research on this topic has mostly been cross-sectional and correlative, not exploring whether the relationship between parental mediation and adolescent ...
To control or not to control? Parenting behaviours and adolescent online aggression

Non-empirical publications have espoused the importance of monitoring/controlling children's online and computer activities through monitoring software; however, no empirical research has verified whether this is a viable means for promoting responsible ...
A Matter of Control or Safety?: Examining Parental Use of Technical Monitoring Apps on Teens' Mobile Devices
CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Adoption rates of parental control applications ("apps") for teens' mobile devices are low, but little is known about the characteristics of parents (or teens) who use these apps. We conducted a web-based survey of 215 parents and their teens (ages 13-...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CSCW '14: Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing

February 2014

1600 pages

ISBN:9781450325400

DOI:10.1145/2531602

General Chairs:
Susan Fussell
Cornell University
,
Wayne Lutters
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
,
Program Chairs:
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Madhu Reddy
Penn State University

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 February 2014

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CSCW'14

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

CSCW'14: Computer Supported Cooperative Work

February 15 - 19, 2014

Maryland, Baltimore, USA

Acceptance Rates

CSCW '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 134 of 497 submissions, 27%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

Upcoming Conference

CSCW '25

Sponsor:
sigchi

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

October 18 - 22, 2025

Bergen , Norway

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

43
Total Citations
View Citations
837
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)120
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)4

Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Sweigart EPark JWisniewski P(2025)It Takes a Village: Youth Online Safety Research Highlights Need for Interdisciplinary, Multistakeholder SolutionsJournal of Advances in Information Technology10.12720/jait.16.1.121-12916:1(121-129)Online publication date: 2025
https://doi.org/10.12720/jait.16.1.121-129
Yu Y(2025)Safeguarding Children in Generative AI: Risk Frameworks and Parental Control ToolsCompanion Proceedings of the 2025 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work10.1145/3688828.3699656(121-123)Online publication date: 12-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3688828.3699656
Alsoubai ARazi AAgha ZAli SStringhini GDe Choudhury MWisniewski P(2024)Profiling the Offline and Online Risk Experiences of Youth to Develop Targeted Interventions for Online SafetyProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36373918:CSCW1(1-37)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1145/3637391
Taylor JSimpson ETran ABrubaker JFox SZhu H(2024)Cruising Queer HCI on the DL: A Literature Review of LGBTQ+ People in HCIProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642494(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642494
Cao JB ADas AEmami-Naeini P(2024)Understanding Parents’ Perceptions and Practices Toward Children’s Security and Privacy in Virtual Reality2024 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP54263.2024.00222(1554-1572)Online publication date: 19-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SP54263.2024.00222
Corcoran EClement AGabrielli J(2024)A measurement model of online privacy cognitions in a sample of U.S. adolescentsBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2024.230528643:16(4150-4171)Online publication date: 22-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2024.2305286
Mustafa MAsad AHassan SHaider UDurrani ZKrombholz KMeng WJensen CCremers CKirda E(2023)Pakistani Teens and Privacy - How Gender Disparities, Religion and Family Values Impact the Privacy Design SpaceProceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security10.1145/3576915.3623087(195-209)Online publication date: 15-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576915.3623087
Caddle XNaher NMiller ZBadillo-Urquiola KWisniewski P(2022)Duty to RespondProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35675567:GROUP(1-35)Online publication date: 29-Dec-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3567556
Xiao SCheshire CSalehi N(2022)Sensemaking, Support, Safety, Retribution, Transformation: A Restorative Justice Approach to Understanding Adolescents’ Needs for Addressing Online HarmProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517614(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3517614
Rutkowski THartikainen HRichards KWisniewski P(2021)Family Communication: Examining the Differing Perceptions of Parents and Teens Regarding Online Safety CommunicationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34795175:CSCW2(1-23)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3479517
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten