Digital uses, victimization and online aggression: a comparative study between primary school and lowersecondary school students in France.

Résumé En

With the growing use of electronic communication among children andadolescents, the Internet has become an important tool for their socialization andhas opened up new perspectives for network and community building opportunities.However, the Internet and electronic communication tools can be used either positivelyor negatively and the spread of its use in these recent years has led to onlinerisky behaviours and harm. This questionnaire survey was completed in five primaryschools and seven lower secondary schools in the South of France. It sets out toassess the digital uses, risk taking and negative experiences online among primary andsecondary school students in France (N=4200). Findings show that primary schoolstudents are pretty well involved in digital communication since they spend anaverage of 150 min per day online vs. 190 for secondary school participants. Socialnetworking is also part of their lives with 17 % of primary school children and 50 %secondary school students who use Facebook. In terms of risk taking, only 49 % ofprimary students and 39 % of secondary school students report they personally knowall their online friends. Cyberbullying figures show that quite a few respondents havebeen affected with negative experiences among which some were repeatedly victimized(14 % in primary schools and 5 % in secondary schools). These findingshighlight the necessity to take the issue of educating towards a positive and safeuse of the Internet seriously and that primary school children also need to be providedwith proper guidance towards a safer Interne