Adolescent Dating Violence

This book summarises the latest discussion about challenges in adolescent dating violence (DV) and digital dating abuse (DDA), emphasising the influence of digital tools and seeking to identify similarities and differences between online and offline types of abuse. The first introductory chapter presents an overview of outcomes and future challenges of dating abuse in adolescents, focusing on the recent studies and examining prevalence, risk and protective factors and consequences of DV. Chapter two addresses a research involving quantitative and qualitative complementary studies with participants involved in same-sex relationships, aiming to give a more complete portrait of another aspect involved in the dating violence problem. The third chapter discusses the psychological traits of the adolescents perpetrating dating violence in order to identify the problematic characteristics that are related to the abuse and provide the most accurate intervention in terms of prevention. Chapter four introduces the problematic use of digital tools, explaining how they can foster abuse in the context of dating relationships, focusing on the prevalence and impacts of this emergent important phenomenon. Chapter five discusses sexting, an emerging phenomenon in dating relationships, associated with new psychosocial and digital risks. This new form of online sexual violence may increase the vulnerability of adolescent at a crucial stage in their sexual-affective development. Accordingly, the practices of sexting and its meaning in the dating relationship are characterized. Cyberbullying is another abusive typology that has been related to DDA, which is given special focus and attention in chapter six. Finally, the last chapter intends to review evidence-based DDA intervention and prevention, considering the different variables related to them, specifically the sociodemographic, risk and protective factors.