This study was conducted to see if the engagement variables from the TummySafe 2022 online course as well as the participants’ demographic variables were positively correlated with the TummySafe certification exam score. The study examined factors that explained participants’ exam performance. The results indicated that there was little to no correlation between demographics or engagement variables and the certification exam score. Findings indicated that 22.8% of the overall variance in certification exam performance was explained by number of prior certifications (10%), race (6.5%), gender (3.5%), ethnicity (.2%), days between last course activity and exam (1.7%), in-course assessment (1%), total activity (2.3%), and page views (.2%). Participants’ in-course assessments and number of prior certifications were good indicators to predict if a student would pass or fail the certification exam.

Contemporary research and industrial youth online safety solutions focus on the primary stakeholders in youth online safety, i.e. the youth, and their parents. However, the voices of secondary stakeholders in youth online safety have not garnered the same attention even though they play a pivotal role in protecting youth online. These secondary stakeholders in youth online safety perform various roles such as entrepreneurs creating technological solutions for youth online safety, educators, therapists, and clinicians, all sharing the goal of imparting youth with life skills needed to navigate online and offline modalities. This dissertation focuses on bringing into focus the views of secondary stakeholders in online safety and uncovers the minimum capabilities needed from technological systems to engage secondary stakeholders to work collaboratively on youth online safety solutions. Through a user study, we first examine the different sociotechnical approaches used by secondary stakeholders to keep youth safe online, while overcoming key challenges associated with these approaches. A closer look at the feasibility of using technological solutions for youth online safety is then presented through the unique perspectives of youth social service providers who work with underprivileged youth. Using these insights, a conceptual online community for secondary stakeholders is presented followed by its examination in a user study to uncover their views on using youth online safety communities for collaboration. The results show that, while technological solutions for youth online safety could help protect youth online and assist secondary holders in identifying when youth online risk exposure has occurred, serious privacy, data handling, and ethical concerns need to be addressed to make youth online safety solutions and communities more broadly accepted. Stakeholders have a preference for a trusted non-partisan organization to lead collaborative efforts using an open-innovation methodology to mitigate these issues.

Due to the continuous use and rise of social media sites among teens and worries about their safety while using these sites, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers have been working together with teenagers using methods such as participatory design/co-design to study their social media usage, along with the risks they encounter and their behavior online. However, this comes with several constraints such as power imbalances, conflicting schedules of teenagers, and lack of attendance. To work towards engaging teens in online safety research without being bound by these constraints, we recruited 7 teens between the ages of 15-17 years old to be a part of a year-long Youth Advisory Board (YAB) for the Socio-Technical Interaction Research (STIR) Lab. We conducted online activities with the teen participants in our YAB within an Asynchronous Remote Community (ARC), which is an online group where communication and activity participation occur asynchronously between researchers and participants. To collect our data, we first organized a synchronous Zoom meeting with the teens about the ARC research method, discussed how the method relates to them, and talked about the topics and activities that they would like to partake in within an ARC. Then, we conducted activities with the teens to discuss their social media usage and their perceptions of algorithms used to provide content on social media. Our participants were interested in discussing topics that were related to safety on social media platforms and doing research activities that could best be implemented through the ARC research method such as giving feedback on research design, suggesting solutions to online safety prompts, and designing apps based on an online safety prompt. We also found that our participants' social media platform usage heavily depended on their goals as users, and they were weighing the privacy affordances and risks that came with using the platforms to decide which platform is best for their goals. Finally, our teen participants were aware of the positive and negative impacts that algorithms on social media platforms have on their online safety. They were skeptical of social platform algorithms due to their safety and privacy concerns, though they understood the benefits and wanted to learn more about how these algorithms operate. Overall, our participants appreciated the ARC methodology for exploring online safety perspectives, as it does allow them enough time to take part in activities and collaborate in discussions with each other. Our findings suggest that ARC can be an effective method for co-designing research studies to understand teens' social media usage, the risks they encounter online, and ways to mitigate such risks on social media.

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.

The Socio-Technical Interaction Research (STIR) Lab at UCF intends to create a new participatory design program, called "Teenovate," where teenagers and adults work together to design technologies that keep teens safe online. Previous participatory design projects, however, commonly focus on younger children under the age of 13. Teens differ significantly from young children in how they develop, socialize, and perceive the world. To inform the design of Teenovate, so that their unique needs are appropriately met, we conducted a participatory design study with 21 teens using polls, open-ended response questions, and subsequent group discussions. The teens were intrigued by the idea of participating in the Teenovate program as designers, with some expressing a desire to expand to co-researching. However, their established external obligations often took priority over their internal desires to participate in the program. Teens were also wary of working with and contributing ideas to adults, and wanted to ensure that their contributions were respected, listened to, and used to make an impact in online safety solutions. Based on these findings, we propose an approach to adolescent online safety participatory design research through Teenovate that places teens into the role of an end-to-end solution developer on dynamic project-based teams that result in a real-world impact. Our findings helped create a framework for the logistics of involving teens onto an adolescent co-design team.

The opportunity for online engagement increases possible exposure to potentially risky behaviors for teens, which may have significant negative consequences (Hair et al., 2009). Effective family communication about online safety can help reduce the risky adolescent behavior and limit the consequences after it occurs. This paper contributes a theory of communication factors that positively influence teen and parent perception of communication about online safety and provides design implications based on those findings. Previous work identified gaps in family communication, however, this study seeks to empirically identify factors that would close the communication gap from the perspective of both teens and parents. I analyzed data from a survey of 215 teen-parent pairs with a cross-sectional design and examined the factors that contribute to increased family communication about online safety. For parents, active mediation, technical monitoring of their teens' devices, and a perceived positive affect schedule of the teen were associated with higher levels of family communication. Our results were similar for teens, except that parental monitoring and the teen's online safety concern were also positively associated with increased family communication, while restrictive mediation was associated with lower levels of family communication. A key implication of these findings is that teens do not want to be left alone, but desire active mediation and monitoring. Teens do not want technological based restriction. As the first study to explore specific mechanisms which may improve family communication between parents and teens regarding online safety, I am able to recommend design solutions that allow teens an active role in their own online safety and facilitate effective family communication from the perspectives of both parties by assisting parents to adopt active mediation techniques rather than developing technologies that encourage restrictive parenting. Many designs for parents and teen monitoring historically support a restrictive approach (P. Wisniewski et al., 2017). Rather than focus on parental control applications, I advance both analytical support for a more nuanced theoretical and practical applications.

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.

Yes / This paper draws on original research from a larger study of racism and Islamophobia online around football, particularly a set of interviews with staff at English football clubs whose responsibility is to manage social media. We use that information alongside our reflections on “platformed racism” to appraise how expressions of racism on social media differ from those in and around the grounds, and how clubs and others in football contest them. This involves a consideration of three themes commonly identified by those speaking on behalf of the clubs: The triggers that ignite racist posts; the partnerships necessary to counter them; and their proposed solutions. Hence this is not just a cue for a collective wringing of hands, but an effort to point the way forward. / This research was funded through a British Academy/Leverhulme Small ResearchGrant: SRG1819\190980.

abstract: Decades of research in cyberpsychology and human-computer interaction has pointed to a strong distinction between the online and offline worlds, suggesting that attitudes and behaviors in one domain do not necessarily generalize to the other. However, as humans spend increasing amounts of time in the digital world, psychological understandings of safety may begin to influence human perceptions of threat while online. This dissertation therefore examines whether perceived threat generalizes between domains across archival, correlational, and experimental research methods. Four studies offer insight into the relationship between objective indicators of physical and online safety on the levels of nation and state; the relationship between perceptions of these forms of safety on the individual level; and whether experimental manipulations of one form of threat influence perceptions of threat in the opposite domain. In addition, this work explores the impact of threat perception-related personal and situational factors, as well as the impact of threat type (i.e., self-protection, resource), on this hypothesized relationship. Collectively, these studies evince a positive relationship between physical and online safety in macro-level actuality and individual-level perception. Among individuals, objective indicators of community safety—as measured by zip code crime data—were a positive reflection of perceptions of physical safety; these perceptions, in turn, mapped onto perceived online safety. The generalization between perceived physical threat and online threat was stronger after being exposed to self-protection threat manipulations, possibly underscoring the more dire nature of threats to bodily safety than those to valuable resources. Most notably, experimental findings suggest that it is not the physical that informs the digital, but rather the opposite: Online threats blur more readily into physical domains, possibly speaking to the concern that dangers specific to the digital world will bleed into the physical one. This generalization of threat may function as a strategy to prepare oneself for future dangers wherever they might appear; and indeed, perceived threat in either world positively influenced desires to act on recommended safety practices. Taken together, this research suggests that in the realm of threat perception, the boundaries between physical and digital are less rigid than may have been previously believed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2017

Main topic of this thesis is safety of socio-culturally disadvantaged children on the Internet. It confirms a hypothesis that these children are not adequately equipped with skills to prevent possible risks and solve problems arising in particular from the use of social networks and modern communication tools on the Internet. The author of the thesis also aims to contribute to improving the mentioned skills of children by designing a teaching methodology. This methodology employs methods of experimental education and non-formal education as well. The thesis shall submit the theoretical background and research findings on child safety on the Internet, with an emphasis on cyberbullying, cybergrooming, cyberstalking and sexting. It also discusses the issues of socio-cultural disadvantage and exclusion as well as governmental and NGO sector's approach to the education of disadvantaged children. Final part of the thesis summarizes the results of the research, including its methodology. The designed teaching methodology for safe Internet usage is disclosed in the annexe. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)