Cyber-crime in online videogames and its reporting by school-aged children

Cyber-crime is a large and growing issue. The problems presented by cyber-crime will not be addressed unless its true extent is known and an important factor in this is the reporting of cyber-crime events by its victims. Children are particularly vulnerable to cyber-crime due to their inexperience and the amount of time they spend on the internet, particularly playing online videogames. There has been limited attention in the literature to the reporting of cyber-crime by school aged children and the reasons why they may not choose to report an incident of cyber-crime. This research involved a group of 47 participants, aged 18 to 25. Participants were surveyed about their video game playing habits, cyber-crime experience and the reporting of those experiences while they were of school age. The age range of participants was chosen so that they would have sufficient recall of their experiences of cyber-crime while of school age but would have the emotional maturity to deal with the recall of potentially traumatic events. Frequency of experience of cyber-crime showed variation depending on the type of cyber-crime. Participants reported a low level of reporting of cyber-crime experiences, for reasons that included guilt, embarrassment and not considering the event important enough to report. Gender differences were found in the frequency of experience of cyber-crime and reporting of some categories of cyber-crime, including hacking and cyber-pornography --abstract.