engleski

Children’s well-being and negative online experiences.

Problematic Internet use is one of the biggest threats for healthy development of children in modern society. Not only do online activities take over various aspects of children’s lives, reducing amount of time spent outdoors and quality time spent with family and friends, but they might at the same time present a media suitable for cyberbullies’ and predators’ attacks. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between children’s perceived negative experiences on the Internet and their well-being. The research was conducted as a part of Child-Well project pilot study in Osijek and Varaždin. The sample consisted of 96 boys and 77 girls (average age 10.17±0.885 years) who attended 3rd (30%), 4th (35%), or 5th (35%) grade of primary school. The survey, which consisted of a comprehensive battery of questionnaires related to child’s personality, well-being, technology use and parenting styles, was applied in person during the classes in winter/spring 2020. For the purpose of this study we analyzed short scale of negative experiences on the Internet (NEI) and recently experienced positive and negative affect assessed by PANAS-C (Ebesutani et al, 2012) . The NEI scale, developed for this research, comprised four items dealing with inappropriate Internet content, online harassment and Internet overuse. Participants responded on the three point scales: never, a few times, often. Positive and negative affect was measured by five items each. Respondents reported using 5-point scale to indicate a frequency of certain emotion (e.g. anger, happiness) during the last few weeks. Results showed that about one third of the participants did not report any negative experiences on the Internet. About one third of the participants came across sexual or aggressive content on the Internet, about 10% were asked private information by a stranger, over 20% were teased, mocked or insulted on the Internet and almost half of the pupils reported that at least sometimes they felt down and restless after long hours on the Internet. Pupils who had less negative online experiences (measured as total result at NEI) experienced less negative emotions (r=0.24, p<0.01), more positive emotions (r=0.2, p<0.05) and achieved better grades (r=0.21, p<0.01). Regarding specific items, children who reported that someone teased, mocked or offended them on the Internet, experienced less positive (r=0.22, p<0.01) and more negative affect (r=0.25, p<0.01), while those who occasionally felt down and restless after excessive use of the Internet experienced more negative emotions (r=0.16, p<0.05). Although this preliminary study employed only small sample from two schools, results suggested that negative experiences on the Internet were associated with decreased well-being in children.

Positive affect ; Negative affect ; Problematic Internet use ; Negative Internet experiences ; Children

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