Children's online coping strategies: Rethinking coping typologies in a risk-specific approach

摘要

Understanding how children deal with problematic situations online is helpful in developingefficient awareness raising and online resilience building initiatives. In this article,we will discuss and develop typologies for online coping strategies. In a school survey,2046 Flemish children aged 10e16 were asked about how they (would) respond whenconfronted with different types of online risks. Using principal component analyses andmulti-dimensional scaling, we identified different types of cross-risk and risk-specificcoping strategies, and explored which types of coping have similar underlying meanings.The results suggest to distinguish behavioral avoidance tactics from mere passiveresponses or indifference. Young people tend to perceive online coping strategies alongtwo dimensions: engagement versus disengagement and technical versus non-technicalmeasures. Behavioral avoidance is popular among younger children and is associatedwith a medium level of active engagement and often combined with communicative approaches.Girls are more communicative and respond more proactively.