Engl. transl.: ONLINE PORNOGRAPHY AND SEXUALITY: SOME RESULTS OF EU KIDS ONLINE SURVEY II IN THE ROMANIAN CASE

"The present article intends to analyze the exposure of Romanian children and teens to sexually explicit message and the so-called „sexting” activities they perform in the online environment. The main research topic to which we try to find some answers is: are young people more exposed to risks because they view sexually explicit content online and send sexual messages to others? Our results validate the risk migration hypothesis, the blurring boundaries between the online and offline worlds enabling the migration of risk from the real world to the internet and the reverse. At the same time, the date of EU Kinds Online II validate the vulnerability hypothesis, according to which the harm declared by the children following the exposure to sexually explicit images and the receiving the sexual messages is the result of their socio-demographic vulnerabilities."

The confirmation of the three proposed working hypotheses (usage hypothesis, risk migration hypothesis, vulnerability hypothesis) both for children exposure to sexual images (pornigraphy) and for sending or receiving online sexual messages (sexting) allow us to identify the main factors predisposing Romanian children and adolescents toward risky behaviour online. Alongside with the age, a main factor is in our data child’s gender, 13-16 years old Romanian girls being more likely to be involved in sexting. (...) the usage of the internet in a private space, longer online time , emotional and psychological weaknesses, a greater amount of risky online activities and a higher number of digital skills are too factors that predict children’s involvement in online sexual risks.” (Marinescu, 2014, p. 55, coder’s translation)