Third of young people have met someone in person they first encountered online

The results from the Growing Up in Ireland national longitudinal study of children highlight a marked difference between the genders with 37.1% of young men meeting an online acquaintance compared to 27.1% of young women.

More than a third of all young people in Ireland have reported meeting someone face-to-face who they originally got to know online.

A new study by the Economic and Social Research Institute has revealed that meeting online contacts in real life is commonplace among 20-year-olds in the Republic, with many doing it for recreation as well as “social compensation".

The research analysed data on almost 4,300 young people from the national longitudinal study of children, Growing Up in Ireland, to investigate the characteristics and behaviours of 20-year-olds who reported meeting someone in real life whom they first got to know on the internet in the previous 12 months.

Overall, the study — whose findings are published in the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth — found that 34.9% of young people reported meeting someone in person whom they had originally encountered online.

The results highlight a marked difference between the genders with 37.1% of young men meeting an online acquaintance compared to 27.1% of young women.

It also found that young adults who spend more time on the internet, as well as those who are LGBT+ and those use dating apps are more likely to have online-to-offline encounters.

Similarly, those who are sexually active at 17 years of age and those with a trait of “openness” also tend to have higher levels of real-life interactions with people they got to know over the internet.

In addition, those who have early exposure to information and communication technologies, measured as young people who had use of a mobile phone at the age of nine, are associated with increased rates of meeting online acquaintances face-to-face.

The study found young females had half the odds of a face-to-face encounter with someone they first met in a virtual setting than their male counterparts, when all other factors were held constant.

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No strong link was discovered between a young person’s employment or education status and their likelihood to meet an online friend in real life. Similarly, there was no significant association among those who live outside the family home, live in Dublin or who reported having a small number of friends.

The report’s author and ESRI economist, Gretta Mohan, said that while the development of online acquaintances which result in meeting up in real life can allow people to meet a broader range of individuals with similar interests, the use of technology to facilitate meet-ups has also been associated with increased harm through sexual violence, abuse, stalking and harassment.

Dr Mohan said insights derived from the study are intended to be useful for parents, educators and those involved in the lives of young people as well as policymakers responsible for the development of e-safety policies and procedures.

She claimed the gender differences with young males more likely to meet online contacts in person could reflect greater hesitation by females at meeting strangers due to greater safety concerns, societal norms or targeting of online safety awareness campaigns at females.

Dr Mohan said the findings also offer support for the hypothesis that some young people meet online contacts in person as “social compensation” for having a low number of friends in real life. However, she said this had only been evident in relation to females.