Online and social media resilience in young people in vulnerable contexts

This Australian study explored the resilience to online abusive activity and enticements to violence amongst a cohort of young people in vulnerable contexts. The vulnerable contexts were defined as those where family disruption, domestic violence and subsequent geographical dislocation were present in the young person’s environment. The young people, aged 12 to 19 years, were interviewed to elicit the prevalence of abusive or violent online and social media behaviours and were invited to discuss the resilience strategies they used to deal with such behaviours. Whilst resilience to online abusive activity has been studied in some depth, the prevalence of such activity and its effect upon young people in domestic violence or other abusive contexts has not. This study which examined the first-hand responses of a small number of young people in domestic violence contexts, found that the resilience strategies were dependent upon the maturity of the individual, the perceived support mechanisms available to the young person, the peer group attitude and the emotional attachment to the peer group. The results broadly match resilience strategies evident in the existing literature but add new knowledge about the significance of the maturation process and its effect upon resilience strategies for vulnerable youth. The study provides new insights into the development of resilience in online or social media contexts for young people in vulnerable contexts.