Challenging risk: NZ high-school students’ activity, challenge, distress, and resiliency, within cyberspace

Abstract

Cyberspace, the digital environment produced by the Internet and mobile phones, has become a major developmental context for young people in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ). From 2005, the phenomena of convergence and Web 2.0, enabled more cyber-activity, from more places, more often. The thesis utilised mixed methods to explore cyber-activity, and the challenges it produced. It also examined resilience; focusing on factors associated with successful resolution of distressing challenges. The first phase used eight focus groups (N = 36), as well as literature reviews, to produce a model for understanding cyber-challenge. The second phase deployed a questionnaire, based on aspects of this model, with 1,673 diverse NZ secondary school students. Cyberspace was accessed frequently (at least three or more times a week) by 98.4% of the sample. Participants reported an average of 7.29 (sd = 1.93) categories of cyber-activity annually. Activities classed as “communicating” and “researching” were most common. At least one cyber-challenge was reported by 67.5% of participants, however, only around half of them reported distress associated with a challenge. By volume, cyberbullying was the most distressing challenge reported (17.6%). Although ignoring was the most common management strategy used across six distressing challenges, it was never positively associated with resolution. On average, 38.3% of participants reported use of social support to manage distressing cyber-challenges. Significant age and gender differences highlighted aspects of adolescent development in cyberspace, for example older adolescents were more likely to report communication, banking, copyright-infringement, timemanagement problems; females reported more communication, phone-cyberbullying, distressing cyberbullying, unwanted sexual solicitation; and males reported more making new friends, dating, gaming, trading, Internetcyberbullying, cyberbullying others, sexual-content exposure, and distressing time-management problems. Logistic regression identified features associated with distressing challenge resolution. Although adult help seeking ability was associated with the resolution of four categories of cyber-challenge, actual adult support (or other social support) was not, suggesting that resiliency depends on the quality of the intervention, not its presence per se. Given the prominent place of social support as an intervention, adults (and peers) need to be equipped to better support young people to manage challenges. Cybersafety programmes should target common distressing challenges first.