Survey: Large Number of Serbian Teens Exposed to Online Sexual Harassment

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High school students largely engage in sexting, with 27.5 percent of the respondents saying that they have received sexual content from an unknown person and 24 percent from known persons, according to a research on youth exposure to online sexual harassment, presented on April 18.  

Research coordinator Jovana Skoric described the results as “disturbing and dramatic,” noting that 9.4 of the teens spend more than eight hours on the Internet on a daily basis, 15.9 percent between two and three hours, and 17.4 percent between four and five hours.   

Skoric said that more than half of high school students used two or more accounts on the same social network, which indicated the intention to disturb peers or to perform some form of digital violence. She added that the reasons for sexting were very concerning as 20.2 percent of the surveyed were engaged in such activities under threat or blackmail.   

Center for Missing and Exploited Children Director Igor Juric stressed that only 22.8 percent of teens would seek help from their parents in case they encountered problems online. 

The survey, which encompassed 2,950 teens in 40 high schools across Serbia, was conducted by experts of the Novi Sad-based Center for Missing and Exploited Children in cooperation with a team of researchers of the Department for Psychology and Study Program at the Novi Sad Faculty of Philosophy. The research is part of large international Project DeSHAME, under which the same surveys have been conducted in the Great Britain, Denmark, Hungary, and Croatia.