Foster care case managers are responsible for the wellbeing of foster youth in the foster care system. Teens (ages 13-17) in foster care are most vulnerable to serious risks, such as sex trafficking. Such risks have been heightened by the advent of internet-based technologies that connect foster youth with unsafe others at unprecedented frequency and speed. This thesis examines how case managers tackle the challenge of online safety as it relates to adolescents in the foster care system in the United States. I conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with case managers who worked with foster teens (ages 13-17) within the past 5 years. After each interview, I transcribed the recording and conducted qualitative data analysis to identify emerging themes. I found that foster teens face numerous online risks with sexual-related risks (e.g., sex trafficking) and contact-related risks (e.g., unsolicited contact) being most prominent. However, case workers may not be prepared to address all of these challenges because of lack of online safety training and support from foster parents. Also, case workers are overburdened with many responsibilities that make online safety a secondary priority. This thesis identifies the gaps in which case managers are trained and highlights the need for more support to handle online safety challenges. Therefore, this thesis recommends that the foster care system must place a higher priority in establishing support groups and collaborative training among foster parents, case workers, and foster children to fully manage foster youth online safety.

Youth in the foster care system experience unique and challenging situations online, such as higher risks of inappropriate messaging (e.g., sexting) and unwanted solicitations from strangers. As a vulnerable group of adolescents, foster youth often use online platforms as a resource to express themselves and seek support over their sexual experiences online. This thesis analyzes how foster youth seek support online for their sexual risk experiences, including sexual abuse, sexting, and sexuality. To understand how adolescents (ages 13-17) in the child welfare system seek support for these experiences, we conducted a thematic analysis of 541 individual posts made by 121 different foster youth on an online mental health peer support forum. The majority of the foster youth used the platform to seek support online over their traumatic sexual experiences involving sexual abuse (42%), sexting (31%), and sexuality (28%). Approximately 9% of foster youth used the platform to connect with others for sexting. As a result of seeking support online and connecting with others on the platform, they shared personal and intimate details about themselves and their experiences and, unfortunately, also encountered unwanted sexual solicitations while doing so. Our research highlights the importance of providing safe spaces for foster youth to seek support and advice regarding their sexual risk experiences online. Trigger Warning: This thesis discusses sensitive topics, such as sexual abuse and sexuality. Reader discretion is advised.

Social media platforms have become a popular and inexpensive way for people to communicate with millions of others. However, this increased usage has also led to an increase in risks associated with it, such as cyberbullying, trolling, misinformation, and privacy abuse. Previous research in this field has mainly focused on isolated aspects of online risk detection, which can limit the effectiveness of these studies. To address these issues, this dissertation presents a more holistic approach to detecting and reducing harmful and abusive behavior online. To gain an initial understanding of the problem, we first present a mixed-method study of messages and media files shared in private conversations by youth to understand the risky communication experienced by them. We use these findings to determine which features can automatically detect unsafe private conversations and whether social media platforms can implement such a system given the recent move towards end-to-end encryption. We present an ensemble machine learning classifier to detect risks in private messages and how to incorporate child safety by design. In the second part of this thesis, we will explore ways to stay ahead of hate and toxicity, given the changing online behaviors. Toxic language changes over time, with aggressors inventing new insults and abusive terms that frequently target certain vulnerable communities, including women and minorities. We develop automated systems that, given an initial lexicon of toxic speech, can learn new and emerging toxic words by observing conversations on social networks. Lastly, we examine the cross-platform implications of employing risk detection systems online. Most of the research focuses only on malicious activity that occurs on one platform, which does not allow us to get a full picture of the problem. Users are obviously not bound to a single platform but can migrate to other online services for example, anecdotal evidence shows that once hateful users are banned from Twitter, they often move to Gab, an alternative social network with an open lack of moderation marketed as protection of "free speech". Consequently, we argue that moderation efforts should extend beyond safeguarding users on individual platforms and account for the potential adverse consequences of banning users from prominent platforms.

The continuous advancement of new technology, specifically in the area of internet technology, has led to an increase in concerns surrounding children and young people’s safety when online. The following thesis describes a study of protection and security on the internet from the perspective of children and young people and contributes and expands on the findings of my Masters Dissertation which examined parents’ perceptions of children at risk on the internet. The research focuses on young people’s perspectives about what risks they face and what would keep them safe and is set within literature on child sex abusers and internet grooming. The thesis is based on an online survey which gathered information about the behaviour and opinions of 859 children and young people living in Scotland. Findings were separated into four main topics: children and young people’s behaviour on the internet, children and young people’s perception of strangers both online and offline, children and young people’s opinion of education on internet safety and children and young people’s opinion of the government’s role in relation to their safety online. Respondents’ stated that they wanted to be protected when on the internet (whilst acknowledging their own responsibility when online), either by the government or through those responsible for the content of the internet. They also provided several suggestions on how schools and the government can do more to listen to their voices and improve internet safety education. There were a number of children and young people who reported that they disclosed personal information over the internet (their own and that of their friends and family) and that they were willing to meet people in the real environment whom they had been communicating with online: many respondents’ viewed internet ‘strangers’ as different from ‘strangers’ in the real environment. Vygotsky’s (1978) theory of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Wood et al.’s (1976) development of the concept of scaffolding, which has been developed in an educational rather than criminological context, were identified as offering some promise for explaining the behaviour of both the victims and the offender as other theories of sexual offending (either specific theories or explanations developed from general theories) are incapable of fully providing an explanation that will encompass grooming in general and online grooming in particular. It is argued that if these theories are applied to internet safety education they have the potential to empower children and young people and make grooming tactics and approaches less effective. The findings also indicated that more child and young people-oriented protection measures may be needed. Perceptions of protection and security on the internet were wide ranging but respondents were keen to provide possible solutions and examples of how to improve their safety when online. This would suggest that communicating with children and young people when developing policy, legislation, research and educational materials is the way forward if we wish to improve their safety and eliminate or reduce the dangers they face when using the internet.

The following diploma thesis deals, in accordance with its objectives and recommended primary literature, with addictive behavior in the Internet environment of adolescents, in the context of social services. The theoretical part resulted from the above mentioned primary literature, but due to its year of publication also from a variety of other up-to-date resources. The legislative frame and conditions necessary to diagnose addictive behavior. The social work with adolescents which has an addictive behavior on the Internet is primarily based on sector theories, but also points to multidisciplinary approaches. The empirical part, consisting of a questionnaire and subsequent analysis of the first grade, examines some aspects of adolescent behavior in cyberspace. The work is completed with a proposal for optimization measures.

My diploma thesis deals with the phenomenon of the internet and parents' supervision, particularly how parents supervise their children who are the active users of the Internet. This paper is divided into a theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part is further divided into two sections - one that looks at supervision and mediating strategies and other one that analyses the internet. Both those theoretical chapters explore their subjects with relation to children as the agents. The practical part of my dissertation is a qualitative research in form of interviews, which helps to understand the phenomenon from the parents' position.