Impediments to and Affordances of Creating Trust over the Internet: The Case of Israeli Youth*

The Internet has been lauded for its ability to foster interaction among innumerable individuals. However, this interaction among strangers has been accompanied by apprehension and uneasiness. This concern has been magnified in the case of children and youth, who are often considered susceptible to adult harassment and are viewed as requiring adult and state protection. In spite of continuous warnings on the part of educators, parents and social movements about the dangers of unsupervised web surfing by children and adolescents, an avid culture of youth has emerged over the Internet, whose tracts have created spaces for trust-building. In sociological literature, trust1 has been perceived as a major building block of social solidarity ABsTRAcT