A cross-sectional survey examined social-media use, online risks, classroom group chats and help-seeking among 442 Austrian teenagers aged 12–16.
What researchers studied
A cross-sectional survey examined social-media use, online risks, classroom group chats and help-seeking among 442 Austrian teenagers aged 12–16.
The participants attended schools in Carinthia and Upper Austria and were in grades seven and eight.
Researchers compared reported experiences across school grades and gender groups, with different numbers of usable responses for individual questions.
The questionnaire was designed to describe experiences rather than evaluate a particular digital-safety intervention.
What they found
Social-media use was reported by 98.6% of respondents.
Among those answering the relevant question, 54.1% reported a contact request from an unknown adult, while 45.7% had encountered problematic content.
Classroom group chats were used by 86.7%, and spam was the most common nuisance.
When upset by online experiences, teenagers more frequently named friends and parents as sources of help than teachers or formal counselling services.
Platform preferences varied by gender, although not every exploratory group difference remained significant after adjustment for multiple testing.
Some respondents wanted more guidance on recognising AI-generated images and deepfakes.
What it means
The findings point to the importance of discussing everyday online contact and harmful content alongside cyberbullying.
Schools may want to make trusted adult support more visible and explain how pupils can seek confidential assistance.
Digital literacy could also include recognising manipulated media and knowing when to report unfamiliar contact requests.
Those are possible responses to the survey findings, not proven solutions.
The data do not demonstrate that using a particular platform causes distress or that school programmes would reduce exposure.
Important limitation
This regional school sample cannot represent all Austrian adolescents.
The survey was cross-sectional and self-reported, making recall bias and causal ambiguity important concerns.
The new questionnaire had not undergone external validation, and gender-diverse respondents were too few for reliable subgroup comparisons.
Researchers also cautioned that several exploratory findings did not withstand correction for multiple comparisons.
Source Information
Study: Digital risks, gendered patterns: social media use and help-seeking among Austrian adolescents
Authors: Marina Unterweger, Pia Cukic, Corinna Hörmann, Eva Schmidthaler, Lena Katzinger and Barbara Sabitzer
Journal / Source: Frontiers in Education
Published: 11 November 2026
