Internet and adolescents: reflecting on data from a descriptive statistical analysis

Although Internet was not created with young people in mind, it now represents a huge part of their lives. Many concerns have arisen regarding potential risks, and several measures have been proposed to manage them as well as better understand the phenomenon and its social consequences. This presentation aims to reflect on some data from a previous study titled “Internet and adolescents: use and access, behavior, cyberbullying and grooming” conducted under the program “Strategies for a better internet for children” started in May 2012 by the European Commission. That study was the main result of the project “Anche io ho qualcosa da dire” (I too have something to say). We conducted a descriptive statistical analysis, a survey about the internet usage habits of all the public high school population (age 14-18) of a whole Italian regional capital, Catanzaro, during the school year 2014. These results provide a snapshot of the frequency and methods of internet usage of a highly representative sample of Italian adolescents. Data appear to suggest issues related to some attributes of communication mediated by new digital technologies: anonymity, asynchronization, and accessibility. We would now like to analyze some key aspects of these findings from a philosophical and ethical perspective. The information we collected represents a valuable starting point in overcoming the generational gap arisen between teens and their tutorial figures. It can also be used to assess outcomes and risk factors, to better understand the social consequences of the phenomenon and generate hypotheses about strategies for intervention.