Vulnerabilități și riscuri în exploatarea noilor tehnologii de informare și comunicare de către tineri Vulnerabilities and Risks in Youth's Use of New Information and ComunicationTechnologies Section Essays

Abstract

Abstract: The article is an extended essay on the subject of the impact of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) over important partitions ofeveryday life, stressing the influences on youth, considered the “digital generation” as they integrated ICTs in their lives and are now continuously connected to the computer-mediated communication as their main or secondary socializing option.The paper underscores the vulnerabilities of youth behaviour when using the ICTsand the virtual space that can generate risks to their personal safety or can have abad influence on the development of their identities or personalities. The article alsoillustrates how the interest for these topics is reflected both in theoretical papers and in empirical researches in the field of sociology, psychology or socialpsychology, and emphasizes the negative effects of ICTs on youth, considering the mentioned variables. The essay approach is inspired by the work of Ulrich Beck, in that it will include general references to the effects of the ICTs on the entire society, but it will underscore the negative ones and their influence over youth, especiallythe risks that cannot be isolated as in real life (Beck, 1992, 2), as they originate inan uncontrollable space, the virtual one. The essay represents the point of view of an adult that did not experimented a childhood or an adolescence connected to the  digital technologies (Weber and Mitchell, in Buckingham, 2008, 26), and the opinion of a novice researcher that tried to familiarize first with the previous theoretical and empirical background on the subject of the vulnerabilities of theonline behaviour of children before starting his own research project on a similar topic.