ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the impact that new technologies have on adolescents’ social relationships and, specifically, on their peer and first romantic partner relations. Despite being an emerging topic in the literature, new technologies have shown to play a vital role in young people’s early romantic relationships (Fox & Warber, 2012; Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008; Van Ouytsel, Van Gool, Walrave, Ponnet & Peeters, 2016), not only in terms of the time they spend interacting online with their partners (Álvarez, 2012), but also because of the proven impact that these new devices have when initiating and maintaining first relationships (Juhasz & Bradford, 2016).
After describing the importance of peers and early romantic relationships in adolescence, young people’s main uses of the internet when it comes to communicating and interacting with their respective partners, namely cyberdating, are discussed. Its nature, most frequent uses, opportunities and risks are defined, exploring more closely the different manifestations of cyberdating abuse. In the second part of the chapter, an emerging phenomenon in the international literature is described: sexting. This represents a relatively recent and complex phenomenon that has garnered considerable interest and concern in social and scientific domains. Its conceptualisation is defined and its characteristics, prevalence and implications for the adolescent population are described, as well as the factors shown to be associated with sexting.
