Risks of interactive communication

Abstract

In recent years, adolescents have increased the use of interactive technologies. These children have more and more technological equipment and they commonly use interactive communication. This type of communication offers many possibilities and benefits to the users, but it also involves disadvantages and dangers that are of particular concern in the case of minors: exposure to pornography, cyberbullying, sexual harassment or grooming, sexting, contact with strangers… In this situation, we should not deprive adolescents of the use of digital technologies and interactive communication. The solution is to provide them with digital skills so they can use these tools safely. Therefore, this project aims to increase the digital skills of adolescents with a proposal for diagnosis and intervention of digital literacy. This project will be implemented through three phases. In the first phase we will make a survey to find the level of digital skills of children. To do this, we will create and validate a scale of digital skills. In the second phase we want to check if the digital literacy influences on the degree of gratification obtained with digital contents. To do this, we will conduct an experiment. The goal is to know if the process for getting children safer involves a restriction of the opportunities and advantages of the online world. Finally, in the third phase we will consider the results of the two previous studies to develop a mobile app to digitally literate. To develop this application we will build on the theories of persuasion and the strategy of entertainment-education. This last phase will be carried out by an experiment. Through it we would check if this application is effective for digitally literate, and more specifically, whether the narrative persuasion is effective for persuading and educating.