Dealing with misuse of personal information online – Copingmeasures of children in the EU Kids Online III project

MONICA BARBOVSCHIE-mail: monica.barbovschi@mail.muni.cz

Abstract

Children’s unpleasant experiences with misuse of their personal information onlineare among the rapidly increasing online ‘risks’, as reported by children in thequalitative data collection conducted by the EU Kids Online III network. Amongthese, dealing with their own hacked accounts, dealing with others’ fake accounts,dealing with fake accounts impersonating them and sending rude messages on theirbehalf with the intent of damaging their reputation, dealing with receiving rudemessages from hacked accounts of friends were experienced as most bothersome.These four subtypes of problematic situations related to privacy were strategicallychosen to illustrate children’s coping responses to situations that are related butincreasingly complex, as well as distinctions related to whether situations involvedpeers or strangers, or whether children were direct victims of hacked accounts, orrecipients of unwelcomed or rude messages sent from fake profiles or hackedaccounts. Furthermore, the four situations were chosen to develop a more inclusivecoping typology for EU Kids Online data which can span across different types ofrisks. This article relies heavily on theoretical work put forward by research oncoping with general and specific stressors, but integrates approaches to children’sdealing with online issues, relevant for online safety measures.

Keywords: privacy issues, personal data misuse, hacking, EU KidsOnline, internet safety

Introduction

The pan-European project EU Kids Online (2010) showed that 9%of children aged 11-16 have experienced one or more forms ofpersonal data misuse, with someone using the child’s passwordor pretending to be them as the most commonly reported(Livingstone, Haddon, Görzig, and Ólafsson, 2011). Moreover,young people experience more negative feelings related to so-called contact and conduct risks (d’Haenens, Vandoninck, andDonoso, 2013), with personal data misuse being one of therisks which raise increasing concerns. Previous research has

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dealt with privacy concerns of adolescents and their privacyprotective behaviors online (Youn, 2009) and has made theconnection between disclosing personal information online andbeing exposed to cyberbullying and contact-related risks(Ybarra and Mitchell, 2008). There is also plenty of researchdealing with children’s general coping and on cyberbullying-specific coping but to date almost no research on how childrencope with different problematic situations related to privacyand personal data misuse online. As Walrave, Vanwesenbeeck andHeirman (2012) notice, personal information disclosed by youngpeople on Social Networking Sites (SNS) can be used forpurposes of identity theft, stalking, cyberbullying or sexualharassment by online predators. Several similarities anddifferences between cyberbullying and misuse of personal datacan be distinguished: They can both involve offensive andaggressive messages (e.g., making a mock Facebook profile of apeer to upload embarrassing content) and be intentionallyhurtful. They might differ with respect to anonymity of theperpetrator: While hacking of profiles can be anonymous,cyberbullying often occurs among peers (Völlink, Boman,Eppingbroek, and Dehue, 2013); another difference is duration,one characteristic of bullying being the repetitive nature andlonger duration, whereas misuse of private data often occursin isolated instances, such as hacking of profiles (but doesnot exclude repetition and longer duration). Childrenthemselves in the EU Kids Online qualitative data collection(2013) spoke about a wide range of problematic situations theyface online in connection to privacy and personal data misuse,and also about the measures they take to deal with thosesituations. As others have argued for the case ofdistinguishing between different types of bullying (Pyzalski,2012; Völlink et al., 2013), namely done by close friends, byknown people from the offline peer group, by known people fromthe online groups and by former romantic partners,distinctions among perpetrators are important also for privacyissues and misuse of personal information online. Given thelinks between the two types of misconduct, the present studybuilds on the literature on young people’s general coping andcyberbullying-specific coping to reflect on children’s copingwith several types of situations involving privacy issues andmisuse of personal information online and on the possibilityof proposing an alternative, more inclusive coping typology

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that could accommodate a wider variety of problems youngpeople face online. The unique feature of the EU Kids OnlineIII data – a qualitative study where children gave spontaneousresponses about what bothers them online – makes this articlevaluable for the comparison of children’s own reporting abouttheir responses with researcher-designed coping scales fromquantitative research.

Coping strategies: Main types of measures The approach-avoidance model (Roth and Cohen, 1986) and thetransactional model (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984), which distinguishbetween problem-focused versus emotion-focused, have beeninstrumental for developing typologies for children’s copingwith stressful situations online (e.g., cyberbullying). InLazarus and Folkman’s (1984) dichotomy, a problem-focusedstrategy for dealing with cyberbullying would be confrontingthe bully and asking him or her to stop, whereas an emotion-focused strategy would involve some sort of emotional release(such as venting negative feelings, or minimizing the bullyingact or its consequences).

Self-reliant versus other-reliant (support seeking) strategies have beenwidely acknowledged by previous research as an importantdistinction between situations where children can deal withthe problems themselves or they reach out for the help ofothers. Support-seeking from peers, siblings or parents(Dehue, Bolman, and Völlink, 2008; Kowalski, Limber, andAgatston, 2008; Mishna, Saini, and Solomon, 2009; Slonje andSmith, 2008; Smith et al., 2008; Stacey, 2009), or institutionalsupport (e.g., schools, hotlines or police) has been reportedfor youth dealing with cyberbullying.

Avoidance has been identified by Parris, Varjas, Meyers andCutts (2012) as a strategy of evading cyberbullies orcyberbullying situations, but nonetheless as a useful strategyfor victims of cyberbullying (Macháčková, Černá, Ševčíková,Dědková, and Daneback, 2013), whereas purposeful ignoring has beenreported by several studies (Dehue et al., 2008; Stacey,2009). Previous research identified less resilient children asthe ones who rely more on withdrawal (or fatalistic) strategies(Vandoninck, d’Haenens, and Roe, 2012), such as technicalwithdrawal (e.g., stop using the internet or the platform,disabling or deleting accounts) or social withdrawal (i.e.,

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refusing to leave their room, refusing to go to school,secluding themselves from social interaction), deemed asunhealthy, maladaptive (Hoff and Mitchell, 2009; Perren etal., 2012). However, children do engage with the stressors inmultiple ways. Retaliation and non-aggressive confrontation have beenreported by Perren and colleagues (2012) as two type ofconfrontational coping. Retaliation has been noted by previousresearch as a strategy children use both online and offline(Juvonen and Gross, 2008; Šléglová, and Černá, 2011), but withprolonged use leading to developmental risk and copingvulnerabilities (Skinner, Edge, Altman, and Sherwood, 2003, p.231).

Cognitive reappraisals can group lower-order coping instances ofcoping under the category of strategies directed eithertowards self or outwardly (others or the context). Forexample, acceptance of bullying as part of life (Parris et al.,2012), as something occurring regardless of actions taken, wasa strategy identified by children dealing with cyberbullying,with ‘moving on’ or ‘just let it go’ signaling an acceptance-type of coping. Justification such as discrediting the bully or thebullying act was used in reasoning why the act should notbother the victim.

In addition to distinctions from general coping, technicalmeasures (e.g., deleting or blocking threatening messages) asmost at-hand solutions to dealing with aggression online werereported in several studies on coping with cyberbullying(Hinduja and Patchin, 2007; Kowalski et al., 2008). Buchanan,Reips, Paine, and Joinson (2007) talk about “general caution”and “technical protection”, although the distinction might bedifficult to make because while deleting an account is a clearfunctional response, the reason behind it might be emotionalcoping. The usefulness of simple technical solutions has beencontested (Parris et al., 2012; Šléglová and Černá, 2011), asbullies can often find ways to bypass them.

Finally, bystander support was considered a crucial resourcethat can be used to tackle cyberbullying (Stacey, 2009),especially in connection with children seeking supportthemselves (Macháčková, Dědková, Ševčíková, and Černá, 2013).Children standing up for one another emerged from literatureas one type of response to bullying that deserves moreattention, to balance the predominant emphasis on individualaspects of coping (Folkman and Moskowitz, 2004). In the case

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of personal data misuse, children teamed up against a commonthreat (someone posting rude messages, a hacked account,etc.), the difference from bystander support in the case ofcyberbullying being the misconduct affecting them all, notjust one single individual, which can indicate a collective type ofcoping. Although arguably a coping measure per se, theincreasing amount of research around empathic responses toothers’ distress, such as the mirror neurons (Iacoboni, 2009),which mimic the brain responses of the person dealing with theactual stressor, should offer reasons for looking closer intoresponses to responding to others’ distress as coping.

From coping strategies to coping typologies

Numerous coping typologies have included the initialconceptualizations of approach versus avoidance or problem-focused versus emotion-focused coping into their framework(Skinner et al., 2003), but have been also criticized in spiteof their undisputed value in establishing this research field.Other researchers suggest a wider range of coping strategies(Parris et al., 2012; Skinner et al., 2003; Šléglová andČerná, 2011; Tenenbaum, Varjas, Meyers, and Parris, 2011).Other research (Šléglová and Černá, 2011) acknowledged avoidanceas a legitimate, adaptive strategy for coping with onlinebullying and aggression-type stressors, whereas the categoryof emotion-focused coping (Kopp, 2009; Lazarus, 2006), focused onreducing negative emotions, was found relevant for its linkwith further victimization (Kochenderfer-Ladd and Skinner,2002) and depreciation of wellbeing (Völlink et al., 2013) foradolescents. The EU Kids Online (2010) survey has broadlygrouped children’s coping responses into communicative, problem-solving and fatalistic strategies (Vandoninck, d’Haenens, and Segers,2012), with close equivalents in categories proposed by others(e.g., fatalistic and avoidant).

Current research dealing with children’s coping ascomplex, multidimensional process should look atinterconnections among different coping measures1 (coping

1 For clarity purposes, this article uses the term “coping measure” to refer to single instances or types of coping and “coping strategy” or “coping repertoires” to refer to simultaneous use of different measures to deal with a problematic situation.

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repertoires or strategies), be sensitive to the challenges, and takeinto consideration the complexities of children’s copingreactions (Folkman and Moskowitz, 2004), which are embedded ina dynamic stress-reduction process involving the individualpersonality dispositions, the social context, and therelationship between them. Finally, research on cyberbullyinghas been preoccupied with identifying useful coping strategiesboth in terms of reducing harmful effects on victims, and interms of designing the best practical interventions andpolicies to support these strategies (Mc Guckin et al., 2013).In the same vein, there is a need to investigate children’scoping with other online risks on the rise, such as privacyissues, which have been deemed among the highest on the policyagenda of safer internet, in order to determine what works toreduce or cope with them and how policy interventions can bestsupport the most effective measures.

The present study reflects on coping instances reported bychildren in the EU Kids Online III project (2012-2014) inresponse to online problems related to privacy and misuse ofpersonal data, in an attempt of mapping them back intoconcepts and schemes developed in the literature oncyberbullying-specific coping. This article uses the labelsproposed by Parris and colleagues (2012) of reactive and preventivecoping2, while acknowledging the awareness about possibleoverlaps noticed by Šléglová, and Černá (2011), with manymeasures taken as subsequent coping being also taken toprevent unpleasant experiences from happening again (e.g.,changing the password after having the account hacked).Supported by the need to distinguish between types ofcyberbullying and the actors involved (Pyzalski, 2012), thepresent study proposes a similar attempt to differentiatebetween several types of problematic situations related toprivacy and misuse of personal information online.

More specifically, the following objectives were proposed:

O1.To identify and select relevant subtypes of problematicsituations online which children encounter in relationto privacy and personal data misuse, reflecting thecomplexity of children’s experiences;

2 This decision has been thoroughly discussed with several researchers involved in the qualitative Work Package of EU Kids Online III project and has been coherently used for data analyses by team members.

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O2.To selectively illustrate children’s responses withexamples of instances of coping to the specificsubtypes of problematic situations;

O3.Starting from instances of coping responses toproblematic situations involving privacy and personaldata misuse, to propose distinctions about categoriesof coping which are relevant for targeted policymeasures;

O4.To look at coping strategies and repertoires, inaddition to single measures;

O5.To look at instances of bystander support andcollective coping as some of the untapped resources fordealing with online risks;

O6.To reflect on common coping measures for cyberbullyingand privacy issues and on a possible coping typologythat can accommodate various types of unpleasantsituations online.

Methods

Context and participants

Nine countries in the EU Kids Online network participated in aqualitative comparative study, which aimed to investigatechildren’s understanding and experiences of online problematicsituations (Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Malta,Portugal, Romania, Spain, and United Kingdom). In total, 67focus groups, counting 250 participants and 130 interviews,were conducted with boys and girls aged 9-11, 11-13 and 14-163.As a next step, the descriptive codes were further categoriesusing a coding manual developed by the core research groupleading the work on the qualitative analysis4.

Procedures and instruments

Several studies have used qualitative methodologies forinvestigating perceptions and experiences of negative onlineexperiences, such as cyberbullying (Stacey, 2009; Šléglová &Černá, 2011; Parris et al., 2012). The EU Kids Online III3 For further methodological details, see Šmahel, Wright, and Černíková, this issue.4 The qualitative core group lead by David Šmahel included Monica Barbovschi, SofieVandonink, Giovanna Mascheroni, Martina Černíková and Leslie Haddon.

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project decided to use semi-structured individual interviewsand focus groups to investigate children’s perceptions andexperiences of online risks. Children were not provided withany definitions prior to the interviews (e.g., definition ofcyberbullying or sexting), but spontaneous responses to questionsrelated to what they considered or experienced as problematicor unpleasant online were recorded.

Data analysis

Data was analyzed in nVivo 10 using an inductive-deductivemodel, which is both data-driven and informed by previousliterature on coping (Nastasi, 2009; Parris et al., 2012;Strauss and Corbin, 1998). In the first phase, codes weresorted out to select coping measures per type of problematicsituation experienced by child (576 instances of childrencoping with problems related to privacy and personal datamisuse). In a second phase, subtypes of problematic situationswere discerned. The codes were analyzed as openly and asuninhibitedly as possible (Nastasi, 2009; Parris et al., 2012)in order to allow children’s coping strategies to emerge fromtheir own accounts (open coding). In the next phase, deductivemethods (rational sorting, axial coding) were used to groupand map back children’s reactions onto previous coping modelsfrom literature (Roth and Cohen, 1986). The broad scope of thequalitative data collection had the advantage of looking atmultiple online risks simultaneously instead of just one,which is the most common case for investigating children’scoping responses (e.g., cyber-bullying). The innovativeness ofthe methodology comes from adaptation of existing qualitativemethods to a new research context (Barbovschi, Green, andVandoninck, 2013) created by the novel topic of research andthe large amount of cross-risk comparable data.

Results

Children were asked to talk about things they experiencedthemselves, as well as experiences of their peers orhypothetical coping scenarios. This paper relies on children’sresponses to situations they or someone close were directlyinvolved in (either as victim of hacking or as recipient ofmessages sent from a hacked or fake account). In addition to

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coping responses identified in previous literature, thecombinations of coping measures (coping repertoires orstrategies) children take when faced with online problems wereillustrated. All answers related to children’s onlineexperiences with misuse of personal data were sorted andcategorized in order to 1) determine subtypes of unpleasantexperiences which are substantially different and 2) examinechildren’s various responses when faced with those situations.

The following four subtypes of problematic situationsemerged from the data as most salient from children’s accountsand were strategically chosen to emphasize both simple andcomplex situations where children were either victims ofhacked accounts (one situation being ‘simple’ hacking,another, hacking with rude messages spread), or recipients ofrude or unpleasant messages (one situation involving fakeaccounts from strangers, the other, rude messages sent fromhacked profiles of friends):

a) Dealing with (own) hacked accounts (SNS, IM or games).These were situations of ‘simple’ hacking of SNS, InstantMessaging or games accounts, either by strangers (usuallyin games) or known peers, with no messages sent fromtheir accounts. Sometimes they reported “suspiciousactivity” or their game accounts being hacked and“robbed” of game items, or simply not being able toaccess their accounts any longer;

b) Dealing with (own) hacked accounts with the hackerimpersonating them and usually sending nasty messages ontheir behalf. In addition to the previous type ofsituations, these were characterized by more unpleasantoutcomes, with victims having to deal with brokenreputations or sometimes cyberbullying or real-lifebullying as retaliation for the rude messages theysupposedly sent;

c) Dealing with fake (impersonating) profiles. These werecases where children received friend requests or messagesfrom people they did not know and they assumed these werepeople pretending to be someone younger. These cases weretreated as fake profiles involving “strangers” (but mostof the time children could not confirm the real identitybehind the profile);

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d) Dealing with receiving nasty messages from fake or hackedaccounts of friends. These were situations where childrenwere recipients of offensive messages coming from hackedaccounts of friends.

These four situations are relevant as they distinguish betweencases of personal data misuse involving close peers oranonymous perpetrators, situations involving bullying oraggression compared to situations where no bullying occurredand finally, between cases where children themselves receivedrude messages and cases where children’s accounts were hackedand used to send rude messages.

Examples of other situations related to privacy and misuseof personal information mentioned by children (not analyzedhere) were peers posting or tagging private or embarrassinginformation (pictures, videos) of respondents without theirconsent, or being asked to disclose personal data online(e.g., strangers or websites asking for personal information).

The first two chosen subtypes are both situations ofhacked accounts of children, the second involving additionalaggressive or rude behavior implemented through the hackedaccount of the child.

a) Dealing with (own) hacked accounts (SNS, IM or games)

Requesting another password via email, making a new account and increasingsafety were reported for issues with hacked accounts. Thesecases were the least problematic, with the children managingto retrieve the passwords themselves and restore the hackedaccount, with little or no damage to the account (deletedmessages or contacts, rude messages sent as if from the ownerof the account). Another strategy of dealing with hackedaccounts is creating a new profile and sending new friendrequests (sometimes with an explanation about the hackedaccount):

Interviewer: Aha... And for you, as a user, this type of hackers is bothersome?Boy: No, because I’m a child and I don’t... I don’t have websites, I don’t... he’sgot nothing of mine to hack... he hacks my account... I make another...Interviewer: Aha. So for you, it’s not a problem...Boy: No.

(Romania, boy, 14)

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Another usual measure after an experience with a hackedaccount was exercising more cautiousness with privacysettings, such as choosing more secure passwords (Belgium,boy, 14; Portugal, boy, 12), or stop using public computers togo on Facebook (Portugal, boy, 11). As previously stated,these subsequent measures can fall also under the preventivemeasures, as explicitly directed towards preventing the badexperience from happening again in the future.

Technical information seeking was reported in case of hackedaccounts. In one case, a Romanian girl (13) recounts that forchecking if indeed there is someone who hacked the Facebookaccount, she appealed at a friend who worked at Facebook totell her whether some activities had been seen on her accountand after, to check if her best friend, the co-owner of theaccount, was online. One Romanian boy had his account hackedand game trophies stolen, so after a failed attempt toretrieve them, he complained/reported to the game admin whobanned the hacker and restored the boy’s account (Romania,boys, 9-10). Another Romanian boy (12), realizing his gameaccount was being hacked, called a neighbor who told him to turnoff the PC immediately. Another boy mentioned asking forparents’ help with changing the password of his hacked account(Romania, boys, 9-10). Some children faced with someonehacking their own account consider disabling or deleting their profile(Portugal, girls, 14-16), while others resort to even moredrastic measures, such as quit using the internet for a while (Belgium,boy, 13).

Sometimes children resort to nonviolent confrontations with thehacker, such as politely asking for the account back (Romania,boy, 14); other times they have violent behavioral reactions, such asaggression towards inanimate objects, for instance, swearing,shouting, breaking keyboard or screen in the case of stolengame accounts, which was reported by a Czech boy (12-14). Oneof the unusual measures was reported by one Romanian boy whopaid money to get the account back from the hacker. Although uncommon, itis nonetheless interesting how children find self-reliant,rational solutions to their problems.

Researcher: Facebook. And did you get it back or did you lose everything?

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Boy: Yes, I got it back. (answers simultaneously) [...] I found out who hadhacked it and asked nicely to get it back. [...] And he asked me for an amount ofmoney.Researcher: And did you give him... the money?Boy: Yes, good thing it wasn’t too much.

(Romania, boy, 14)

Minimizing the problem (cognitively reappraising the context) was a copingmeasure several children reported. One girl mentioned findingsomething on her Skype chat that she did not write, but shedid not change the password because it did not happen againever since (Italy, girls, 11-13). Combinations of coping measures(coping strategies) were also reported, since complex problems oftenrequire complex responses. For example, children sometimesemployed measures directed towards the stressor, while workingon their own attitude, doing both a positive reappraisal andconfronting:

Girl: They logged into my profile; basically, they changed my password and Icouldn’t log in. Then my best friend logged in at hers, checked out mine andsaw that everything was deleted ... photos, files, everything [...]Researcher: And how did you deal with it?Girl: ... with patience to begin with [laughs], but then I got crossed and told him‘don’t you ever do that again’ – cause he’s done it to my friend as well, thoughhe didn’t delete anything there. But we do know it’s him cause he was, like,joking with it a couple of days before, going ‘I’m gonna hack your profiles’ andstuff, and we didn’t take him seriously.

(Greece, girl, 14)

Others might resort to less peaceful approaches, with someboys reporting a combination of measures which included findingthe hacker, verbal retaliation against the hacker and subsequently increasingsecurity of their accounts:

Boy: I immediately found out who it was. Because they referred to all thepeople I have in my friends, with whom I associate. And then I found out whowas not there. And it certainly had to be him. And I wrote that he was a jerk, orI was swearing like that. So I found out who it was like that. So I came to him, Ibegan to bitch at him. And I immediately changed the password.

(Czech Republic, boys, 12-14)

b) Dealing with (own) hacked accounts (with the hacker impersonating them andsending nasty messages on their behalf)

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When confronted with their own hacked account being used tosend offensive messages to their friends, children resorted totechnical measures, such as creating a new profile, usually to warnothers (Spain, girls, 14-16). However, these were rarelysufficient. Communicative responses, such as warning their peers whenrealizing their own account was hacked, by creating a newprofile or via other media, that they might be receivingunpleasant messages, should be considered coping measures inthemselves (Belgium, boy, 13; Belgium, girl, 14; Spain, boys,14-16). Some young people even tried to explain themselves to peersin order to protect their own reputation (Italy, girls, 14-16). However, the aims of the responses (protectingthemselves, protecting others) should be distinguished fromthe means used to achieve them. Other strategies includesupport-seeking from adults, such as telling and asking parents of bully tointervene:

Girl: She was with these people, and she was sending these messages togetherwith them. So I told my mum about this, but it continued for a while. Then wewent to this girl’s home and her parents. But her parents are very rich peopleand the girl is a bit spoiled, so they told that their daughter would never sendsuch nasty messages. So we showed her parents these messages. Then herparents were surprised and wondered why their daughter would send suchnasty messages. So that was a bit weird. And my sister Laura was also verymad at the girl, and she still is very mad.

(Belgium, girls, 12-13)

Children rely also on institutional support to report the fakeprofiles. One Spanish girl had a fake Twitter account madewith her photo and pictures. The account was used to spread“personal issues”. She reported it to the police but they did not findout who did it (Spain, girls, 14-16). Another Spanish girl’ssister had someone impersonating her with a fake profile, soshe reported it to the hotline; the hotline notified the police, whoremoved it (Spain, girl, 12). Bystander support/collective coping wasreported in several interviews and focus groups, such as in aBelgian interview where a girl, 15, reported dealing with afake profile together with her friends, asking theimpersonator to stop posting rude messages and acting togetherto delete the profile. In one Romanian focus group, some girlsreported a shared account being hacked and nasty messages sent

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to a colleague on their behalf. So the next day, theyinterrogated all classmates to find out who did it (Romania,girls, 14-16).

One of the most extreme cases, indicator of serious harm,was reported by a Czech girl (12) not able to cope withbullying, which followed her hacked profile being used to sendrude messages on her behalf; she resorted to changing school (oneof the life altering measures) as a coping mechanism. This was anothercase of combination of coping measures. The girl told theinterviewer she was bullied because someone hacked her accountand used it to send vulgar messages to her schoolmates. Herfamily found out but the school was more interested in receivingexplanations for the messages she sent than in dealing withthe girl being bullied. Her brother managed to log into heraccount and post a message in which he explained thesituation. Because nobody did anything to stop the bullying,the girl had to change schools. She reported losing all herfriends, except for two who believed it was not her sendingthe rude messages. She learnt to use more complicated passwords, and tonot share her password with anyone. She has stopped using Facebook eversince.

c) Dealing with fake (impersonating) profiles

A lot of times the fake/impersonating profiles are just foramusement among peers that cause no problems or harm (Belgium,boy, 15). Also, cases of strangers impersonating youngerpeople are usually easy to handle. Among the self-reliantmeasures, the technical ones such as blocking the fake profile arecommon. One Belgian girl (16) talked about a man posing as ahandsome young boy on Facebook, and sending fake pictures toher and some of her friends. The solution was blocking theprofile (Belgium, girl, 16). Technical support-seeking from adultswas mentioned in Malta (girl, 12). Non-technical, other-reliant measures, such as information seeking or asking friends ifthey knew the profile (Greece, girls, 15), have also beenmentioned by children.

Bystander support and collective coping were reported by childrendealing with fake profiles online. As a special type ofreaction to stressors, it draws on resources of the group andis used to protect a member of the group. Some girls in Malta

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talked about collective reporting of a fake profile, with thepurpose of having it deleted:

Girl: Also report if a friend posts ‘it’s fake, report it’. And I do that. If it’s a friendsaying. If it’s not, I don’t report.Interviewer: Will the account be deleted if everyone reports?Girl: Yes, if it’s many people doing it.

(Malta, girls, 14-16)

Other young people resort to collectively warning a peer they thinkis in danger:

Girl: Because she was going to meet that person and she couldn’t understandthat the person she was talking to didn’t exist, was not who she thought it was,and we had understood that a long time ago. And it was us who had to talk toher and warn her, so...Interviewer: So she never got to meet this person.Girl: No, she didn’t.

(Portugal, girl, 16)

This type of problematic situation is sometimes approachedwith a combination of coping measures, such as ignoring, confronting andtelling parents:

Girl: About two years ago, someone created a fake FB account with a friend’sname. I knew him from primary school and in the beginning, when I askedhim at school why he hadn’t befriended me, he said I don’t have an account.[...]Researcher: When you realized that it wasn’t your old friend, did you tellanyone?Girl: In the beginning I just ignored it, I said ‘I know it’s not you, just knock it offbecause you‘ll get into trouble’. Then I told my parents, we called other parentsand I don’t know what they did, and then the guy deleted the account.

(Greece, girls, 15)

However, often fake profiles were created either by peers oronline strangers to purposefully damage the reputation of thetargeted children. These unpleasant situations are perceivedas extremely stressful and bothersome. Usually, a combinationof resources was required when children received rude messagesfrom a fake profile impersonating one of their peers.

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d) Dealing with receiving nasty messages from fake or hacked accounts of friends

Children resorted to mainly two strategies (non-technical)when dealing with receiving rude messages from friends’accounts, such as confronting and asking for explanations/asking to stopdirectly to the hacked profile (Belgium, girls, 12-13).Sometimes children’s reaction was to contact the friend via other mediaor check in person if they were really the sender of the nastymessages, to avoid getting into unnecessary fights (Belgium,boy, 14; Belgium, girls 12-13; Romania, girl, 10). They oftenexercised cautiousness by refraining to engage immediately inonline retaliation, an indication of cognitive reappraisal of thesituation.

Girl: ... my friend had a fake profile, and this person on the fake profile wassending me rude comments a bit. [...]so I sent an sms to my friend, and he toldme the profile was fake. So he went home, and yeah, then he told it was fake...[...]then he said he didn’t do anything, but first I didn’t believe him. [...] then heforwarded me this, so to prove to me that it wasn’t him.Interviewer: Hmm, hmm, and did you do anything about this fake profile?Girl: No, but then he deleted this himself, so yeah.

(Belgium, girl, 15)

Girl: Yeah, for example, when you are on Facebook or MSN, and you receive amessage. And then suddenly, this is like some kind of hatemail, and it saysthings like ‘you are a stupid bitch’ or these kinds of things. And then the nextday you ask the person about this hate message, but then she says ‘no, I don’tknow anything about it’. And then you don’t know what to believe.

(Belgium, girls, 12-13)

A few observations can be made from the four types ofproblematic situations presented here. In the first situation,dealing with their own hacked account, children were able toresort to a diversity of measures to cope with the problem,either technical or non-technical, either self-reliant orrequesting the support of others. They were also more able toaddress the problem directly and do positive reappraisals ofthe situation. On the contrary, when dealing with their ownhacked account being used to send rude messages to peers, theyusually resorted to a wider variety of measures: trying towarn peers via other media or face to face, seeking thesupport of adults (both technical and non-technical), and

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seeking institutional support (school, police, hotlines). Theywere less able to do positive reappraisals and sometimes theyeven resorted to life-altering measures, such as moving awayor changing schools.

The other pair, dealing with fake/impersonating profilesversus receiving rude messages from hacked accounts offriends, showed several differences: The first one did notseem to pose much trouble, with children being able to simplyblock the profile or to seek information about the profile (inaddition, they also reported not being extremely bothered).The latter, however, because it involved friends, requiredexercising cautiousness in engaging immediately inretaliation, supplemented by non-aggressive confrontation andinformation seeking via other means. No technical measureswere reported for these experiences, with children relyingentirely on communication strategies, seeking informationabout the profile and cognitively reframing the situations.

In a next phase, coping instances were grouped throughrational sorting into higher coping categories, previouslyidentified in the literature on coping typologies. For thepurpose of the article, the distinction between technical and non-technical measures was deemed as necessary from the standpoint ofthe usefulness of technical safety measures (e.g., reportbuttons, deleting an unwelcome message or blocking someonechildren did not want to hear from), the so-calledinstrumental digital skills the EU Kids Online II survey(2009-2011) inquired about. The distinction between technicaland non-technical is essential in understanding how childrenmake use of available resources and how safety measures can betailored to specific online contexts.

Children in the EU Kids Online study rely greatly on theirown resources to tackle various problems they encounter online(technical and non-technical measures). They do, however,reach for peer, adult or institutional support for situationsthey cannot handle on their own. From a viewpoint of focusingon promoting children’s agency, the distinction between self-reliant andother-reliant measures is important for identifying situations wherechildren are self-reliant (and how to best support theirautonomous coping and agency) and situations where they needguidance and adult intervention (and how to best facilitateit).

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The third dichotomy, away or towards the stressor,comprises a lot of measures identified in previous research.As forms of moving away from the stressor and avoiding to engage withthe problem, children in the EU Kids Online study used theignoring strategy for coping with simpler types of onlineproblems (e.g., friend requests from strangers) and reportedlittle or no cost on personal (emotional, cognitive)resources. They also chose to withdraw from stressfulsituations. Among the strategies away from the stressor, life-alteringstrategies such as changing schools or moving away (relocatingwith family) have been reported by children in EU Kids OnlineIII among the most drastic coping strategies. Retaliation and non-aggressive confrontation have been identified by Perren andcolleagues (2012) as two types of confrontational coping: Bothaggressive and non-aggressive confrontation have been reported bychildren in the EU Kids Online III study. Children alsoreported resorting to various reappraising or cognitivereframing strategies (e.g., minimizing the problem,justification, self-assertion). Finally, the few instances ofcollective coping show insights into an untapped copingresource. Perceiving one of their peers in danger or distresswas often experienced by children as stressful. As a flipside,collective coping also shows interesting cases in our data ofchildren ganging up on another perceived as simply annoying.

Building on coping schemes developed for coping withcyberbullying, the current study takes advantage of the largescope of the EU Kids Online study to show intersectionsbetween types of problematic situations related to misuse ofpersonal information and their coping responses as experiencedby children, and to compare them with coping responsespreviously identified in research on cyberbullying-specificcoping. The following table presents the main coping reactionsreported by children for the four types of problematicsituations involving privacy issues and misuse of personaldata, mapping them onto the three dichotomies identified. Itdoes not attempt to give an exhaustive list of copingresponses, but to list the ones reported by respondents in theEU Kids Online III study.

----------------------------------------insert table 1here-------------------------------------------

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Discussion and conclusions

As children’s online experiences with hacked accounts or fakeprofiles are getting increasingly common, they require theattention of both research and policy. Building on anextensive body of research on coping responses and on the EUKids Online II survey (2009-2011), this article looked at foursubtypes of problematic situations related to privacy issuesand misuse of personal data as experienced and dealt with bychildren in the qualitative EU Kids Online III study (2012-2014). The four subtypes, dealing with own hacked accounts,dealing with fake accounts of strangers, dealing with ownhacked account used to send rude messages to peers and dealingwith receiving rude messages from hacked accounts of peers,were strategically selected based on children’s own reportingas most problematic to illustrate coping instances of dealingwith simple versus complex scenarios, of dealing withstrangers versus own peers, and of being the victim of hackedaccounts or the recipient of rude messages sent from hackedaccounts.

The data offered a complex image of children’s responsesto the four chosen subtypes of situations. Among the technicalsolutions, increased security and awareness about need of safety wereidentified as preventive measures by Parris et al. (2012).Nonetheless, when children in the EU Kids Online projectreported these following direct negative experiences(subsequent coping) they were therefore treated as reactivecoping. However, technical solutions, such as using the reportbutton or blocking unwanted users, reportedly worked only forsimple problems perceived by children as manageable, whichpoints to the need to stop advocating policy measures relyingsolely on purely technical solutions, and instead acknowledgetheir limited usefulness.

The second distinction proposed was between self-reliant andother reliant measures (or support-seeking). While Perren et al. (2012)distinguish between instrumental and emotional support, thisarticle did not operate this functional distinction (asmultiple functions can be covered by the same coping measure).Most times, in simple situations, children were able to findself-reliant solutions (such as technical measures) orconfront the perpetrator themselves. However, in many cases,simple technical solutions were insufficient, with children

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needing to reach out to other resources of their own or toadult or institutional support. These, too, however, havetheir limits in their proven usefulness (as reported bychildren). Nonetheless, from a standpoint of targeted safetymeasures, understanding when children are self-reliant andwhen they still need the support of others (significantadults, peers, or institutional support) is essential.

Directed towards self or towards the context (or others) was one of thehigher-order distinctions operated by Skinner et al. (2003).Subsequently, the classical distinction approach-avoidance (orits related distinction, coping directed towards or away fromthe stressor) fits under the first (as both directions arerelated to context). For this paper, it was chosen as a usefuldistinction for identifying those situations where childrenengage with the stressor or choose to withdraw. A wide rangeof lower-order coping measures fit under these opposing terms,illustrated by children’s own responses, such as positivereappraisal, confrontation, avoiding or purposefully ignoringthe bully, identified by children as a helpful measure in theEU Kids Online study and also other research (Macháčková,Černá, Ševčíková, Dědková, and Daneback, 2013; Šléglová andČerná, 2011).

The importance of peers in mediating online safety issignificant, especially in countries where children are lessable to rely on parental support (Mascheroni and Ólafsson,2014). One effective measure of coping with unpleasantsituations involving hacking of own accounts or fake profileswas reportedly bystander support or, in some cases, collective coping,with more children defending and standing up for one another.Collective coping and intervention stands out as particularlypowerful since it combines the resources of a group,counteracts the social isolation that victims might feel inaddition to other emotional costs (e.g., damages toreputation, humiliation etc.) and sends out a common messagethat such acts are not to be tolerated. Furthermore, at thelevel of escalation of the experiences themselves, it has aunique ability to stop problematic conducts that feed onisolating the victim, thus making him or her more vulnerableto attacks. However, the contexts in which the bystander supportcan be re-conceptualized as collective coping go beyond the scopeof the present study, although both measures as forms of

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children keeping each other safe online should receive moreattention in the context of designing safety policy.

The previous EU Kids Online typology, which createdcategories based on literature and grouped children’sresponses into problem-focus, communicative and fatalisticstrategies, could be problematic due to a lack of conceptualclarity and mutually exclusive categories, as well as forusing the term “fatalistic” for a variety of coping responses(avoidance, withdrawal, ignoring), some reportedly useful.Similarly, “communicative” is less conceptually clear thanfactual distinction between situations where children rely ontheir own resources or they reach out to the support and helpof others. In addition to offering illustrations of children’scoping in increasingly problematic situations involvingprivacy and personal data misuse, this article offered alsosome directions for a more inclusive and accommodating copingscheme from a standpoint of targeted policy measures.

Limitations

The alternative three-dimensional coping typology proposed bythis article has the potential to be conceptually clearer andmore relevant to online safety approaches (e.g., technicalsolutions, children’s agency) than the previous EU Kids Onlinecoping typology. Regarding the applicability of the copingscheme developed in this article, one can argue that thedistinctions used are still unclear (e.g., support-seeking,other-reliant strategies can be seen as children avoiding todeal with the problem themselves). The data collection did notallow for deeper investigation of coping strategies, in orderto determine if self-efficacy or dependency were behindsupport-seeking measures. The categories chosen to structurethe data were based on both existing research on coping andpolicy-relevant distinctions, in a manner that strived towardsobjective, factual distinctions (technical versus non-technical, self-reliant versus other-reliant, towards thestressor versus away from the stressor). The coping instancesreported by children and the higher-order categories should befurther confirmed and standardized through validity andreliability testing.

Although inspired by the Grounded Theory approach(Strauss and Corbin, 1998), the EU Kids Online researchers

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made a common decision to not use it in the analyses, due toconstraints related to the initial preparation of data (i.e.,only English descriptive codes provided by national teams, notfull translations of national transcripts). Also, due to theextensive scope of EU Kids Online, specific attention and in-depth explorations of coping mechanisms were not possible,thus restricting the analyses to rational sorting of empiricaldata and axial coding.

Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the support of the VITOVIN project(CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0184), which is co-financed by the EuropeanSocial Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic.

Bionote

Monica Barbovschi is a Senior Researcher at the Institute forResearch on Children, Youth and Families at MasarykUniversity, Brno (CZ) and an associated researcher with theInstitute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy. She is theRomanian national contact for EU Kids Online (2009-2014) and amember of the Romanian team in Net Children Go Mobile (2012-2014).

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Table 1. Coping measures for dealing with unpleasant experiences related to privacy issues andmisuse of personal data online.

Subtypes of unpleasant experiences

Dealing with own hacked account

Dealing with (own) hacked account (with hacker sendingnasty messages on their behalf)

Dealing with fake/ impersonating profiles

Dealing with receiving nasty messages from fake or hacked accounts of friends

Technical Non-technical Technical Non-technical

Technical Non-technical Technical Non-technical

Towardsthe stressor/context

Self-reliant

Requesting another password,

Making a new account,

Increasing safety

Bargaining/paying to getthe account back,

Confronting (non-aggressive, asking the account back),

Verbal retaliation (violent confrontation),

Violence towards objects

Making a new account (to warn others),

Increasing safety

Warning others and explaining (via other media or FtF) to protect peers or themselves

Blocking thefake account

Confronting (non-aggressive, asking to stop)

Technical support-

Technical support-

Support-seeking from

Technical support-

Information-seeking

Information-seeking

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Away from stressor/context

Other-reliant(support-seekinginitiate by child)

seeking from adults (parents, game admins, others)

seeking from adults (parents, game admins, others),

Reporting to hotline

adults (non-technical),

Reporting topolice

seeking fromadults (parents, game admins,others)

(checking with friends if they know the profile)

(verifying ifthe sender was the friend or not, via other media or in person)

Disabling or deleting account,

Quit using the platform or website,

Quit using the internet for a while

Acceptance (minimizing the problem),

Justification,

Positive reappraisals (of situationor self)

Quit using the platform or website

Life-altering measures (changing schools, moving)

Positive reappraisals of situation,

Patience (notengaging immediately)

Other-reliant(bystander supportinitiated by others)

Bystander support/collective coping

- information-seeking

- confronting

- collective reporting

Bystander support/collective coping

- reporting

Bystander support/collective coping

- warning

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