Any Girls Want to Chat Press 911: Partner Selection in Monitored and Unmonitored Teen Chat Rooms

Warning

This publication doesn't include Faculty of Education. It includes Faculty of Social Studies. Official publication website can be found on muni.cz.
Authors

ŠMAHEL David SUBRAHMANYAM Kaveri

Year of publication 2007
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source CyberPsychology & Behavior
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Field Psychology
Keywords adolescent; chat room; Internet; partner selection
Description We examined the search for partners by participants two teen chat services having different ecologies. Over 12,000 utterances from monitored and unmonitored chat rooms were analyzed to assess online partner selection attempts and to see how such attempts may be influenced by the presence of an adult monitor. We found that the search for partners is ubiquitous in adolescents online haunts just as it is in their offline lives and approximately two requests for a partner occur each minute. Although partner selection appears to be an important activity in online teen chat rooms, there are differences in frequency and format (e.g., the use of numerals, sexualized requests, etc.) as a function of participants age and gender, and chat room ecology (monitored vs. unmonitored)
Related projects:

You are running an old browser version. We recommend updating your browser to its latest version.