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Do adolescents compromise their identity when chatting on the Internet?
Author(s) -
Larraín M. Elena,
Zegers Beatriz,
Trapp Alejandro
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
international journal of applied psychoanalytic studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.314
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1556-9187
pISSN - 1742-3341
DOI - 10.1002/aps.126
Subject(s) - compromise , identity (music) , psychology , the internet , social psychology , relation (database) , sociology , computer science , world wide web , social science , physics , database , acoustics
This research project intended to explore the relation between internet chat room use and adolescent identity. The subjects of this research project were 124 first‐year university students of the Universidad de los Andes, Santiago, Chile. State of identity was measured by the Identity Consolidated Inventory (ICI) and identity‐compromise in chat rooms by the Phase Completion Test (TCF) scale. Gender differences were analyzed and men showed higher total scores in both instruments. The relation between identity‐integration and identity‐compromise project in chat rooms was confirmed. Some 11.3% of the subjects who had identity‐diffusion also compromised their identity while chatting. The causal relation between the two variables needs further research, and new definitions of identity require more study. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.