DeShame Croatia: Student Reactions and Consequences of Online Sexual Harassment in High Schools

Abstract

Online harassment and abuse present a contemporary phenomenon with potentially devastating effect on children’s lives. The aim of this paper is to explore the reactions and consequences of online sexual harassment. The data were collected within the DeShame project in Croatia in 2020. The probabilistic stratified cluster sample consisted of 2016 pupils of high schools in Croatia (53,8% M; Mean age 15,74). The results show that 20,3% of children witnessed or experienced online sexual harassment in the last year. The most occurring feeling to online sexual harassment was feeling upset (34,2%) and worried (31,1%). However, research identified group of children who didn’t want to go to school or see their friends and around every $6^{\mathrm{t}\mathrm{h}}$ child was worried that this incident will be mentioned again in the future that implies the shame they are feeling because of the involvement in such an event. Therefore, students choose independent problem-solving strategies. The most prevalent reaction after the incident was ignoring followed by blocking the perpetrators, seeking for the friend support or trying to speak to perpetrators or reporting to the platform. Seeking help from adults was significantly less prevalent with speaking to parents being the most salient. The results show that the prevalence of sexual harassment is high among adolescents and the future policies should build the activistic component among adolescents and cooperation to prevent the normalization of sexual harassment.