Aliciamento sexual de menores na Internet e mediação parental: Estudo exploratório

Abstract

Online sexual grooming is one of the risks to which minors are exposed in the virtual world. In order to mitigate this and other risks, parents and other caregivers apply a set of strategies to mediate Internet use - the term "parental mediation" was coined. Given the limited amount of existing research on the subject in Portugal, this study aims to: (1) understand the degree of familiarity of parents and other caregivers with online grooming; (2) understand the mediation strategies used by the participants; and (3) explore relationships between these two domains. To achieve this, an online questionnaire was created to assess the domains described above. The final sample consisted of 245 participants, whose data was treated by using multiple responses analysis (quantitative analysis) and thematic analysis (qualitative analysis). The results showed no significant relationship, suggesting that familiarity with the phenomenon does not influence parental mediation of the Internet. The results indicated that the majority of participants recognised the phenomenon. Despite this, the data showed a lack of understanding of the phenomenon. It is, therefore, crucial to invest in educational initiatives on online grooming and ways to protect children in the online spaces, in order to facilitate the prevention and detection of these cases. Furthermore, this study provides relevant data for the literature, as it is one of the pioneering studies in this field in Portugal. Guidelines for future studies are discussed.