The activities of young people on the Internet are a frequently debated topic. In the media space, concerns frequently arise that when adolescents meet their online acquaintances face to face, they are at risk of encountering "predators," i.e., someone who wants to exploit or harm them. However, face-to-face meetings with people from the internet can also be beneficial, as people can form new friendships in this way. This can be especially important for people from minority groups or those who lack close relationships in their everyday lives, says Vojtěch Mýlek, the report's lead author, who examined this phenomenon with his team. "Our aim was to provide an empirical context for the public debate and to describe which teenagers meet people from the internet in person, who they meet, or how they evaluate these meetings."
The results show that older adolescents are more likely to attend face-to-face meetings. Almost half of 15-16-year-olds have experienced them, compared to a fifth of 11-12-year-olds. Teens' motives were predominantly friendly - they wanted to talk to someone or meet someone new. They mostly met with people of the same age or someone a little younger or older; meeting adults was not common. Girls and boys attend meetings equally often, but girls are more likely to meet older people.
A common concern is that people on the internet lie to adolescents about who they really are and when the meeting happens, adolescents encounter someone they did not expect. However, the study shows that these situations are rare. In the vast majority of cases, the person who came to the meeting matched the adolescents' expectations in terms of age and gender. Similarly, the behavior and appearance of these people met or exceeded expectations at over 85% of face-to-face meetings.
A positive finding is that 68.9% of adolescents who experienced a face-to-face meeting evaluated it as pleasant, and 23.1% as neutral. Only 6.5% of meetings were rather unpleasant, and 1.5% were very unpleasant.
"It is good to remember that an unpleasant meeting is not automatically a dangerous meeting. We know from previous research that in addition to cases where serious harm occurred (e.g. sexual harassment or abuse), adolescents also rate as unpleasant meetings that were boring or embarrassing," says Lenka Dědková, one of the authors of the study.
An interesting finding is that when the online contact before the face-to-face meeting spans a longer period, the chances for a pleasant meeting are higher. Thus, it is advisable for teens to take their time before they meet in person and try to get to know the other person as well as possible.
"The results show that most face-to-face meetings between adolescents and people from the Internet are not problematic. Risky meetings are rather rare, but unfortunately, they do happen. This cannot be downplayed and caution is therefore in order. At the same time, however, we need to accept that meeting new people is part of healthy adolescent development and that the current generation of young people uses the internet to do so. Therefore, we should have open conversations with adolescents about socializing online and, instead of prohibiting them from doing so, we should discuss how to do it safely," summarizes Mýlek.
The report is currently available only in Czech, but we are working on a translation. The English version should be available at the beginning of 2024.
