Young people are increasingly interacting and living in an online environment characterized by eyes-hands-fingers communication that has dramatically changed peer relationships, expectations, and behaviors. In a world immersed in digital, the net generation communicates across all domains by sharing a “third space” (neither home nor school/work) central to their lives. The digital environment is ideal for communicating with existing friends or starting new mixmode relationships that originated online but were further developed offline.
The nature of these digital exchanges, being characterized by a particular language usage (i.e., short utterances, abbreviations, emoticons, and symbols), simulates face-to-face informal conversations that are particularly well suited for peer-to-peer social networking. In online forums and weblogs, in fact, language is a key means through which youth express and explore their identity. Instant messaging may foster intimacy, self-disclosure, and feelings because it cultivates connectedness. Online chatting, which includes similar features of the face-to-face interactions in terms of verbosity, assertiveness, profanity, politeness, and representations of emotions, facilitates interactive engagement.
Demographic factors, like age, gender, and socioeconomic status together with digital expertise account for variations in the breadth and depth of digital and online communication in youth and inequalities in the quality of access to and use of the ICT technologies. Digital communication knows no geographical boundaries and time constrains, and thus it represents both an extended social opportunity and a challenge where flexibility and anonymity are possible and adolescents feel more comfortable expressing their identity beyond social prescriptions. However, the extensive use of the Internet for communication.
Exposure to and involvement in cyberbullying are evident risks that contemporary youth face through adolescence. Cyberbullying frequency, participating role, and characteristics have been widely studied and found to be related differently to several emotional, psychological, and physical problems, poor academic performance, and increased suicidal ideation. Moreover, the perceptions, expectations, and emotional reactions of those involved differ according to the role and the context in which cyberbullying has been experienced. However, few studies have considered how adolescents manage these risks and develop resilience simultaneously accounting for emotional regulation and behavioral self-control. Raskauskas, Rubiano, Offen, and Wayland found lower peer victimization and depression, higher academic performance and emotional resilience in middle school students with above average social self-efficacy.
Youth tend to seek situations that help them value themselves positively and to avoid those which make them feel bad about who they are. Their perception and acceptance of their changing self play a critical role in directing their personal and even professional growth trajectory. Experience with cyberbullying, both as a victim and as an offender, is associated with significantly lower levels of self-esteem, even after controlling for demographic differences. Self-esteem, in fact, is an internal representation of social acceptance and rejection and a psychological gauge monitoring the degree to which a person is included versus excluded by others. Previous European studies have assessed the emotional impact of cyber victimization classifying victims accordingly to the specific type of aggression suffered (verbal, physical, and relational) and its severity, mostly based on a frequency measure.
Internet and New Modes of Social Life
