Risks and Challenges for Adolescents in Social Media and Social Networks.

Introduction

Social networks and social media have become indispensable platforms for communication, learning, and self-expression, especially among adolescents. However, their pervasive use also exposes young users to several risks that require interdisciplinary investigation. This Special Issue aims to analyze these risks and challenges, exploring their causes, consequences, and effective prevention strategies through both social science and technical approaches. We seek to understand how social norms, cultural influences, and institutional frameworks intersect with technological systems to shape the adolescent experience on social platforms, providing actionable insights for policymakers, educators, caregivers, and platform designers. The widespread use of social networks and social media generates vast amounts of data, including conversations, text, audio, and video, creating various challenges, ranging from the spread of fake news to security concerns. These issues can be tackled by utilizing methods and tools from fields such as human-machine interaction, artificial intelligence in social media, social network analysis, big data, and e-learning environments. Several methods and tools can be employed, including artificial intelligence, emotion recognition, fake news detection, social network analysis, and educational research to address these technical challenges. By addressing these issues from multiple angles, we will contribute to solutions that will improve the digital well-being of young users.

Keywords

Digital well-being, social media risks, cyberbullying, fake news, social network analysis, privacy risks, e-learning, online security

Sub-topics

• Cyberbullying on Social Media
• Grooming and Exploitation through Social Networks
• Sexting, Non-consensual Sharing, and Privacy
• Social Media Addiction
• Fake news and Disinformation
• Privacy Risks and Data Exploitation
• Exposure to Inappropriate Content
• Radicalization and Extremist Content
• The Perfection Culture on Social Media
• Artificial intelligence and social networks
• Human-machine interaction and social networks
• E-learning and social networks.