Adolescents’ online self-disclosure: the opinions of generation Z

Paluckaite (Ugne)¹, Zardeckaite-Matulaitiene (Kristina)^1
1Vytautas Magnus University

 

Submission type

Poster only

Scheduled

Hallway, 10-07-2019, 15:30 - 17:00

Keywords

online self-disclosure, focus group, generation Z

Summary

Adolescents online self-disclosure is important aspect of their social and psychological development which gained a lot of attention of researchers around the globe. However, it is important to mention that online self-disclosure isn’t stable and changes among adolescents as the abilities to use the Internet is just growing and the new areas to disclose online are developing. Thus, having in mind that generation Z is called to be “developing online”, it is important to understand how they understand online self-disclosure. According to this, the aim of this research is to find out what, according to generation Z, online self-disclosure refers to. In order to reach this goal, four focus groups have been organized. During the focus groups adolescents were asked to discuss their opinions on online self-disclosure: what generation Z thinks about the phenomenon of online self-disclosure. Twenty-one students (18 females and 3 males, 11-17 years), have participated in the study. The content analysis has shown that generation Z opinions on online self-disclosure can be grouped in two main categories: results of the study have shown that, according to the generation Z, online self-disclosure can be both, verbal (self-presentation, person identifiable information, opinions/ideas, communication) and non-verbal (posting photos and videos).

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