Abstract:

Over the past years, some studies pointed out that the time that teenagers spend online is raising every year, as well as the chances to do it outside, and thus, without supervision (National Institute of Statistics: 2014). Thanks to a great variety of devises and an easier access to Internet, teenagers have the chance to use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in very different places (at their school, at home or outside) and with different purposes (for developing academic tasks, for entertainment and leisure with their friends or individually). It is clear that due to this easy Internet access, the possibility of becoming dependent is increased (Chóliz y Villanueva: 2011) as well as and the opportunity to harass others or being abused (De la Caba y otros: 2013). In fact, almost one out of four teenagers admits to have suffered an uncomfortable situation online (Consumers and Users Organization, 2013). In this context, knowing the potential risks becomes a priority in order to take action in the educational community, such as training parents, teachers and students about how to manage teenagers’ online lives and having internet codes of conduct and handbooks at their disposal.

In order to know how Spanish teenagers use Internet and ICT, in this paper we draw from a study we carried out last year about ICT uses and abuses of Spanish teenagers. The data was gathered through surveys, in-depth interviews and focus groups in Madrid, Andalusia and Catalonia, which helped to delve in this issue, know what kind of use give Spanish teenagers to ICT and identify any differences between gender, age, socioeconomic status and region, among others. After careful consideration of these results, we created a handbook divided in the 10 key points that we identified in our research as potentially dangerous for teenagers from 12 to 17, whom spend a consider amount of time using ICTs. In every key point, there is a summary of that particular risk, a statistic taken from the data collected related to this risk and one tip for every potential target group: tip addressed to parents, to teachers and to students.

Keywords:

Cyber bullying, Internet, Technology risks, high-school students, teenagers, ICT, netiquette, online ethics.