Poland

In brief: Polish findings from EU Kids Online 2020

Polish children aged 9 to 17 are mostly mobile internet users. They usually connect to the internet via a mobile phone or smartphone – about eight in ten (84%) do this daily or more often. Interestingly, girls turned out to use mobile internet more often than boys. The internet is mostly used for entertainment and peer communication.

Older students and girls use the internet more often for learning and social engagement. At school the internet is used for passive learning, e.g. more than 80% of the students never post the content on a school discussion group or blog. Still, the internet is involved more often in older students’ learning.

A minority of young people are exposed to serious risks. For instance, about 14% of older students had received sexual messages and 9% of the whole sample had sent hurtful or nasty messages online. Only about 7% of participants carried out cyberbullying or hate speech. Unfortunately, the percentage of passive recipients is higher, reaching one-third.

Young people generally assess their online competences critically – only about 60% highly evaluate their ability to decide which content may be published on the internet, and a third are totally sure they can install mobile applications. About 12% admit not being able to set privacy settings (e.g. on social networking sites).

Polish national report: Pyżalski, J., Zdrodowska, A., Tomczyk, Ł. & Abramczuk K. (2019) Polskie badania EU Kids Online 2018. Najważniejsze wyniki i wnioski. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM
Cyberbullying in Polish children overlaps with traditional bullying where technologies are not used (physical violence, verbal violence and exclusion). It rarely happens that someone is a victim or a perpetrator online without being involved in traditional peer violence.
Using the internet moderately when it comes to time online only slightly affects involvement in online risks. Those using the internet for half an hour or less a day experienced online risks almost as often as the rest of the sample.

Safety guide

Publications

Tomczyk, Ł. (2024). Digital transformation and digital competences of urban and rural Polish youths. Politics and Governance, 12.

Pyżalski, J., Walter, N., & Tomczyk, Ł. (2022). Problematic Internet Use: Pre-Pandemic Scale of the Phenomenon Among Adolescents in the Three Visegrad Countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia). The New Educational Review, 69, 65–81.

Pyżalski, J., Zdrodowska, A., Tomczyk, Ł. & Abramczuk K. (2019) Polskie badania EU Kids Online 2018. Najważniejsze wyniki i wnioski. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM

Presentations

Kirwil, L. (2012). Kilka mitów o dzieciach w internecie. Wyniki EU Kids Online II. Dzień Bezpiecznego Internetu, 7.02.2012.

Kirwil, L. (2011). Jak dzieci korzystają z serwisów społecznościowych (SNS)? Wyniki badań EU Kids Online II. V Międzynarodowa Konferencja Bezpieczeństwo dzieci i młodzieżyw Internecie", Warszawa, 20-21 września 2011

Kirwil, L. (2011). Jak rozumieć negatywne skutki korzystania z internetu przez dzieci w świetle wyników badań EU Kids Online II? V Międzynarodowa Konferencja Bezpieczeństwo dzieci i młodzieżyw Internecie", Warszawa, 20-21 września 2011

Kirwil, L. (2011). Ryzykowne zachowania dzieci i młodzieży w siecioraz ich konsekwencje, VIII Ogólnopolska Konferencja „Pomoc dzieciom-ofiarom przestępstw" 24-25 października 2011, Warszawa.

Kirwil, L. (2012). „Internet to więcej niż zabawa. To Twoje życie"

Questionnaires

The EU Kids Online fieldwork involved several questionnaires. First, a face to face interview with one parent. Second, a face to face interview with the child. Then a self-completion interview for sensitive questions, with one version for 9-10 year olds and one version for 11-16 year olds.

Questionnaire for parent

Questionnaire for child

Self-completion questionnaire for child (Children age 9-10)

Self-completion questionnaire for child (Children age 11-16)

The former EU Kids online team in Poland was Lucyna Kirwil (Ph.D.), Małgorzata Wójcik (Ph. D) and Aldona Zdrodowska (M.A.).

Jacek Pyżalski
Coordinator of Polish EU Kids online team.

Professor of Education, Faculty of Educational Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. He is the author of numerous publications, the expert in the field of media education. His research interests are related to the issues of: electronic aggression and cyberbullying, online gambling and prosocial online behaviours.

He is the author of the first monograph on the Polish regarding electronic aggression, entitled “Agresja elektroniczna wśród dzieci i młodzieży” [“Electronic aggression among children and adolescents”] (GWP, Sopot 2011), as well as the co-ordinator and team member of more than fifty scientific projects and manager of over a dozen national and international projects, including, among others: ACERISH 2, Adults Mentoring, ROBUSD and ECIP.

He was a representative of Poland in the European Science Foundation COST IS 0801 [European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research] Action IS0801: Cyberbullying: coping with negative and enhancing positive uses of new technologies, in relationships in educational settings, COST IS 1210 Appearance Matters and also the recent COST Action CA16207 European Network for Problematic Usage of the Internet. More info at: https://scholar.google.pl/citations?user=NAkI88UAAAAJ&hl=en

Contact: pyzalski@amu.edu.pl

Aldona Zdrodowska (M.A.)

Social Psychologist specializing in Media Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction. Currently working as a researcher in the Interactive Technologies Laboratory (National Information Processing Institute, Warsaw). She also teaches Social Psychology, Internet Psychology and Statistics courses at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities. Participated in several nationally and internationally funded research projects, among them EU Kids Online - as a researcher for Polish team (since 2008).

Łukasz Tomczyk

PhD (adult education) Charles University in Prague – Czech Republic, PhD (media education, social pedagogy) Pedagogical University of Cracow, computer science engineer. Author of 4 monographs and 80 scientific articles, editor of 13 collective monographs, Member of Academic Association of Andragogy, lecturer at several universities (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany). His research interests concern media education, information society and lifelong learning. Reviewer textbooks in the Ministry of Education. Specialist in the field of quantitative analysis and methodology of educational research. Scholarship holder of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (young scientists). A member of the research network COST Action CA16207 European Network for Problematic Usage of the Internet.

Katarzyna Abramczuk

PhD (mathematical sociology) University of Warsaw – Poland. Data analyst and statistician at the National Institute of Processing Information – Warsaw, Poland. She specializes in interdisciplinary research on decision making, trust, reciprocity and ICT technologies in sociological and cognitive perspective. Expert in quantitative research methodology and data analysis. Author of 40 papers and presentations at well-established international conferences. She was a fellow at the University of the Basque Country, Free University of Berlin and at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. She taught a number of courses at the Warsaw University, the Collegium Civitas in Warsaw, and the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology. The topics of her courses included statistics, SPSS, methodology of social research, game theory, theories of rationality, formal modelling in social sciences and experimental design.

Faculty of Educational Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University

Orange Foundation

National Information Processing Institute

Faculty Of Educational Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, 60-568 Poznan, Szamarzewskiego 89

Email: pyzalski@amu.edu.pl