Description
Adolescents are increasingly turning to social networking as a means of communication. The Internet has provided adolescents with a means of communicating with not only friends and family members, but also people unknown to them offline. This means that adolescents are also being afforded opportunities that involve engaging in online risk-behaviors related to self-disclosure to strangers, unwanted sexual solicitation, and the arrangement of face-to-face meetings with strangers offline. The purpose of this literature review is to explore the factors that can potentially contribute to adolescents’ vulnerabilities to such risk-taking online and discuss a number of ways in which parents and other adults can make efforts towards intervention and prevention of adolescents’ online risk-taking behaviors.
