Sexting and Risky Acquaintances Made by Czech Children in Cyberspace (research report)

In our research, we focused on whether Czech children practise sexting (share and spread their own intimate materials) in the online environment, what motivates them, with whom and how they communicate, and whether they perceive sexting as risky. We were also interested in how the children get acquainted, which tools they use for making acquaintance in the online environment, whether they are willing to go to personal meetings with unknown people from cyberspace, whether they are able to verify the identity of virtual friends, etc. The research was implemented by the Centre for the Prevention of Risky Virtual Communication at the Pedagogical Faculty of Palacky University in Olomouc in cooperation with the company O2 Czech Republic and involved 4878 children’s respondents from all over the Czech Republic as well as several hundred adults aged 18-25 who, however, were not included in the final report.

More than 15% of Czech children send their intimate materials to other persons. Almost 40% of children visit various types of video chats and within these chats they also meet with sexual content (confirmed by nearly 35% children; someone exposed himself/herslef in front of them over webcam). One fifth of children also confirm that they have received erotic or pornographic videos from their Internet friends. If children get into problems associated with sexting, they inform their parents about it only in 38% of cases; in 32.9% of cases, they do not tell anyone. Nearly 80 percent of children confirm that their parents that their parents do not limit their access to some websites. ( (Kopecky & Szotkowski, 2017)