Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28
https://doi.Org/10.1007/S10964-022-01697-z
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Czech Adolescents' Face-to-Face Meetings With People from the
Internet: The Role of Adolescents' Motives and Expectations
Vojtech Mylek 1
• Lenka Dedkova©1
• Gustavo S. Mesch 2
Received: 1 July 2022 / Accepted: 24 October 2022 / Published online: 8 November 2022
© The Author(s) 2022, corrected publication 2022
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Abstract
Research of face-to-face meetings between adolescents and people met online stands on untested assumptions that these
meetings are uniform, and adolescents attend them to expand their social circle. It is also unclear what makes such meetings
pleasant or unpleasant. This study examined meetings of 611 Czech adolescents (age 11-16, Mage = 14.04, SD= 1.67,
47.1% female). Face-to-face meetings attended with friendly, romantic, or instrumental motives differed from each other,
emphasizing the need to investigate them separately. Pleasantness of meetings is closely related to disconfirmation of
adolescents' expectations. Unmet expectations related to unpleasant meetings, exceeded expectations to pleasant ones. While
present findings uphold existing theories (e.g., social compensation), they also call for new theoretical perspectives for this
common adolescents' activity.
Keywords Adolescence • Online relationships • Face-to-face meetings • Motives • Expectation disconfirmation • Social
compensation
Introduction
Adolescents commonly make new social connections online.
Sometimes they meet these new contacts face-to-face. Such
in-person meetings with people met online may present
valuable opportunities to fulfill adolescents' developmental
needs (e.g., to form a new social or romantic relationship;
Pascoe, 2011), but it may also expose youth to significant
risks (e.g., sexual assault; Priebe & Svedin, 2012). Given the
popularity of these meetings and the high concerns regarding
their impact on adolescents' well-being, many studies have
focused on the correlates of this activity. These studies share
a crucial limitation - they treat all face-to-face meetings as a
uniform phenomenon and overlook the differences in adolescents'
motivations for attending them, or the length of the
SI Vojtech Mylek
mylek@fss.muni.cz
1
Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society, Faculty
of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Jostova 10, Brno 60200,
Czech Republic
2
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University
of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave. Mount Carmel, Haifa 3498838,
Israel
online interaction. Such an approach yields a limited picture
of the diverse set of situations that may vary in a number of
aspects, including how risky or beneficial the meetings may
be (e.g., meeting with a longtime online friend vs. a spontaneous
date after a quick chat on Tinder). It also raises the
question of the appropriateness of the theoretical explanations.
Moreover, the interest in this topic is largely driven by
public and media panic under the assumption that these
meetings are generally risky, but only a few studies have
considered adolescents' own reflections of how pleasant or
upsetting the experience actually was. While most European
adolescents reported feeling happy about their most recent
face-to-face meeting with online friends (Smahel et al.,
2020), it is not clear which meetings are more likely to be
pleasant and which are more likely to be upsetting. The
current study addresses these gaps in two ways. First, it
categorizes face-to-face meetings based on adolescents'
motives to attend them and investigates how the various
reasons differ in several key aspects. Second, the study
investigates the factors that relate to whether the offline faceto-face
meeting was pleasant, upsetting, or a neutral
experience for the adolescent. The study aims to contextualize
the existing findings about adolescents' face-toface
meetings, to provide input for their re-conceptualization
in future research, and to suggest theoretical frameworks that
are adequate for their examination.
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16 Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28
Who Attends Face-to-Face Meetings and Why?
In a recent survey, between 23% (Italy) and 57% (Norway)
of European 9-16-year-olds reported that they have been in
online contact with someone they had not met in person.
Meeting these online acquaintances in person is less common,
but not unusual — between 5% (France) and 25%
(Serbia) of adolescents reported going to an offline, face-toface
meeting with someone from the internet in the past year
(Smahel et al., 2020). The general public's perception of
children and adolescents' meetings with people from the
internet are closely connected to fears of sexual assault. The
possibility that a child becomes the victim of "cybergrooming"
consistently ranks at the top of parents' internet-related
concerns (e.g., Auxiere et al., 2020). The potential risks of
face-to-face meetings are commonly exaggerated in the
media and public debates (see Mýlek et al., 2021). This is
reflected in the existing research, which often adopts a riskfocused
perspective. Previous studies commonly conceptualize
face-to-face meetings as risk-taking behavior and
focus on the examination of which adolescents are more
likely to attend them (e.g., Bayraktar et al., 2016; Marret &
Choo, 2018) or on the assessment of the prevalence of risky
meetings and their adverse outcomes (e.g., Greene-Colozzi
et al., 2020; Priebe & Svedin, 2012).
The first of the two abovementioned research streams has
identified many factors associated with the likelihood that
adolescents will go to a face-to-face meeting. The adolescents
who attend these meetings tend to be older, have higher selfefficacy,
sensation seeking, or more psychological difficulties,
and use the internet more (e.g., Mýlek et al., 2020). They view
more online pornography and disclose more personal information
online (Marret & Choo, 2018). They have higher
digital skills, feel more confident online, and value the
anonymity of their online communication (Livingstone and
Helsper, 2007). Going to such a meeting once increases the
chances of going again (Van den Heuvel et al., 2012). On the
other hand, the lower likelihood of attending a face-to-face
meeting is associated with more parental supervision or
restrictions (e.g., Hasebrink et al., 2011), a higher quality of
parent-child communication, higher shyness, and higher
loneliness, but also higher self-esteem (Van den Heuvel et al.,
2012) and higher life satisfaction (Livingstone & Helsper,
2007). These studies iUuminate the adolescents who attend
these meetings but do not offer much information on what
kinds of meetings they attend or why. Consequently, it is
tricky to interpret their results and connect them to specific
behaviors (e.g., meeting friends, dating). Some findings also
seem contradictory (e.g., the positive effects of both shyness
and self-efficacy), which may indicate that they relate to different
kinds of face-to-face meetings.
Despite rarely being explicitly described, the kind of
meeting is often implicitly assumed in the previous
research. While many of the studies do not draw on one
specific theory, several use the social compensation
hypothesis to justify their arguments (e.g., Mýlek et al.,
2020) or interpret their results (e.g., Bayraktar et al., 2016).
This hypothesis proposes that adolescents who struggle to
form supportive and fulfilling social relationships offline
(because of their social anxiety or other inhibiting factors),
will turn to the internet to compensate for their unsatisfied
needs for social connections (see Mesch, 2019). In contrast,
the rich-get-richer hypothesis (also labeled as "social
enhancement hypothesis") proposes that adolescents who
are more socially apt offline (e.g., more extraverted) will use
the internet to further extend their social network and they
are more likely to form new social relationships online (see
Mesch, 2019). Thus, studies that invoke these hypotheses
essentially assume that face-to-face meetings are usually
attended for social motives, like to form new relationships.
The assumption is not unfounded because both the social
compensation and rich-get-richer hypotheses garnered
empirical support (e.g., Valkenburg and Peter, 2007).
However, it remains necessary to directly test whether
adolescents meet people from the internet predominantly to
form new social connections or whether there are other
motives at play (and how prevalent they are).
Research to investigate the motivations for "cyber relationships"
shows that interactions with unknown people
(i.e., chatting online with unknown people, using dating
apps, making online friends) can be driven by a variety of
motives, including escapism, entertainment, romance seeking,
and social approval (Peter et al., 2006; Timmermans &
De Caluwé, 2017; Wang & Chang, 2010). However, none
of these studies directly focused on in-person meetings and
only one focused on adolescents (Peter et al., 2006). To the
authors' knowledge, only one qualitative study asked adolescents
about their motives for attending face-to-face
meetings with people they met online (notably, the study
exclusively examined upsetting meetings). Adolescents
reported two main motives - going on a romantic date and
making a new friend (Dedkova et al., 2014). Both activities
can lead to the establishment of a new relationship and fall
under "social motive", but they differ in the type of desired
relationship. This can affect aspects of the meeting (e.g.,
how long adolescents talk to the person online before
meeting them offline) and the selection of the person to
meet. Adolescents may also meet with others for pragmatic
reasons (e.g., to buy/sell/swap something). Such instrumental
meetings likely differ from those focused on forming
a relationship. For instance, adolescents may put less effort
into getting to know the person before the meeting. From a
theoretical standpoint, these kinds of instrumental meetings
would also fall outside the above-mentioned hypotheses
that drive the current research in online interactions (i.e.,
social compensation, rich get richer) and they would
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Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28 17
unlikely be explained by the individual characteristics
typically examined under these theoretical lenses (e.g.,
shyness). Therefore, the motives for attending the meeting
(i.e., friendly, romantic, instrumental) may provide a useful
way to categorize different kinds of face-to-face meetings.
This also allows for a more specific evaluation of which
meetings are more likely to be pleasant or unpleasant for
adolescents. Notably, an unpleasant meeting does not have
to be risky or harmful. Likewise, what is reported as a
pleasant meeting by the adolescent does not have to be safe
and it can include engagement in a number of risk-taking
behaviors. However, considering adolescents' reflections of
which meetings were (un)pleasant for them can be the first
step towards better-directed prevention and safety advice.
Pleasant and Unpleasant Face-to-Face Meetings
Although researchers agree that the interactions with people
from the internet can be both beneficial and potentially
risky for adolescents (e.g., Smahel et al., 2020), the existing
research is dominantly focused on the negative impacts.
Since the fears about potential harm usually revolve around
the possibility that the adolescent will be assaulted (sexually
or otherwise) by the person they meet (Auxiere et al.,
2020), previous studies often focused on the prevalence of
such an assault. Two Scandinavian studies of older adolescents
suggest that the rates of sexual assault are low,
though not negligible. In both, approximately 6% of the
adolescents (ages 14-17 and 16-22) who went to a face-toface
meeting reported some sexual assault (Helweg-Larsen
et al., 2012; Priebe & Svedin, 2012). A wider panEuropean
study shows that 11% of youth from across
Europe (i.e., approximately 1% of all of the sampled
children and adolescents aged 9-16) reported feeling
bothered after a face-to-face meeting. Among them, 22%
reported verbal harm, 11% sexual harm, and 3% physical
harm. Notably, most youth who were bothered did not
report any of these - 64% reported something else happened
or provided no answer (Livingstone et al., 2011).
Results from the United States also suggest that unpleasant
meetings are uncommon (Dowdell, 2011). These studies
come with important limitations. First, they are more than a
decade old, and their results might be outdated. Second,
they do not ask about positive experiences. Among more
recent studies, E U Kids Online IV more broadly examined
adolescents' own reflections of the meetings. The results
indicate that most European children and adolescents (aged
9-16) who went to a face-to-face meeting reported feeling
happy about it (between 52% in Slovakia and 86% in
Romania), and less than 5% in all of the countries, except
for France (11%), reported feeling fairly or very upset
(Smahel et al., 2020). While the findings are reassuring, the
study does not examine the kinds of face-to-face meetings
that are more likely to be upsetting or have positive
experiences for adolescents.
Mismatched and Exceeded Expectations
To the authors' knowledge, no study has quantitatively
examined which factors determine how pleasant the meeting
will be for an adolescent. Qualitative results suggest that
adolescents have negative feelings about the meeting when
the other person was not who they expected (Dedkova et al.,
2014). This is in line with the expectation-disconfirmation
theory, which was originally developed to explain consumer
satisfaction (Oliver, 1980). The theory proposes that consumers
compare their pre-purchase expectations to the
outcomes of their purchase of a product or a service. Disconfirmation
happens when the reality does not match the
expectations - it can be either negative (i.e., an outcome,
like the purchased product, is worse than expected), or
positive (i.e., the expectations are exceeded). Positive disconfirmation
is thought to cause consumer satisfaction,
while negative disconfirmation leads to dissatisfaction
(Pizam & Milman, 1993). More recently, the theory has
been used in various fields to investigate things like trust in
technology (Lankton et al., 2016) and satisfaction with
remote work (Carraher-Wolverton, 2022).
While the expectation-disconfirmation theory is not
usually used in the context of interpersonal interactions, its
central propositions are relevant for investigating which
face-to-face meetings are pleasant or unpleasant for adolescents.
The online communication, which precedes the
meeting, allows for careful control of one's anonymity and
self-presentation (e.g., Nesi et al., 2018). This is at the core
of the fears about "online predators" who can mislead
children and adolescents by pretending to be their peers.
The rate at which such deception occurs varies across
studies. Among Malaysian adolescents (aged 12-18) who
met with someone from the internet, 26.7% met with an
adult when they expected a peer (Marret & Choo, 2018).
Out of Dutch adolescents (aged 11-18) who went to a faceto-face
meeting, only 3.8% met with someone who lied
about their identity (Van den Heuvel et al., 2012).
Demographics are also not the only source for mismatched
expectations. A qualitative study shows that female adolescents'
negative feelings about face-to-face meetings
stemmed from deviations from expected appearance (i.e.,
lower physical attractivity) and behavior (e.g., unwelcomed
attempts at physical contact, overconfidence,
aggressiveness) (Dedkova et al., 2014). It is important to
note that such deviations do not always have to be caused
by malicious intentions, nor do they always need to be
negative (i.e., the person who comes to the face-to-face
meeting can also exceed the adolescent's expectations).
Based on the expectation-disconfirmation theory, positive
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18 Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28
disconfirmation should make the meeting more pleasant,
and negative disconfirmation more unpleasant.
The same qualitative study also pointed out an additional
source for negative feelings: the participants reflection of
their own behavior. They reported feeling remorse, guilt, or
anger toward themselves, and they were unsatisfied with
how they handled the meeting, especially if they were not
able to stand up for themselves when the other person
behaved inappropriately (Dedkova et al., 2014). Thus,
social self-efficacy, which reflects adolescents' confidence
in their ability to handle social challenges (Muris, 2001),
can be another important predictor for the meeting evaluation.
Adolescents with higher social self-efficacy find it
easier to initiate small talk, make new friends, and express
disagreement (Muris, 2001). Thus, even when the other
person has no malicious intentions and behaves in line with
expectations, self-efficacy can co-determine the course of
the meeting and make it more pleasant.
Current Study
The existing research of in-person, face-to-face meetings
between adolescents and people they met on the internet
does not differentiate between the different possible types of
these meetings. This reduces the phenomenon, complicates
the interpretation of the results, and raises questions about
the adequacy of the commonly applied theories. The current
study aims to address this gap by categorizing face-to-face
meetings based on whether adolescents attended them with
friendly, romantic, or instrumental motives. To test if this
categorization is meaningful and to investigate how various
kinds of meetings differ from each other, the categories of
the meetings are compared in several key factors - which
adolescents attended them (i.e., gender, age); how long they
were in contact online before meeting offline; who they met
(i.e., gender of the person, congruence of their age, behavior,
appearance with adolescents' expectations); how
afraid they were of getting harmed; and whether they stayed
in touch after the meeting. The second aim of this study is to
investigate the factors that relate to the (un)pleasantness of
the face-to-face meeting. Based on the expectationdisconfirmation
theory, negative disconfirmation of adolescent's
expectations (i.e., meeting someone of differentthan-expected
age or gender, or someone who looks or
behaves worse than expected) should make the meeting
more likely to be unpleasant. On the other hand, positive
disconfirmation (i.e., meeting someone who looks or
behaves better than expected) should make the meeting
more likely to be pleasant for adolescents. Since expectation
disconfirmation may depend on the length of online contact
(i.e., longer contact may be conducive to more accurate
expectations), this factor is controlled for in the analysis.
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It is also expected that higher social self-efficacy makes
pleasant meetings more likely because it can help adolescents
handle difficult or awkward situations.
Methods
Participants
The current study uses data from a survey of 2,500 Czech
adolescents (age 11-16, Mage= 13.43, 5D=1.70; 50.0%
female) that were collected in June 2021 as the first wave of
a wider three-wave longitudinal study to investigate various
aspects of the use of digital technologies and the well-being
of adolescents and their parents.
The current study examines adolescents who experienced
a face-to-face meeting with someone from the
internet in the preceding two years. This timeframe was set
for two reasons. First, this includes meetings from before
the COVID-19 pandemic, when contact restrictions and
potential fears of infection might have led to less meetings
and, in turn, a small sample size. Second, it excludes
meetings that happened too long ago, because a prolonged
amount of time since the experience may cause inaccurate
recall. From the original sample, 1,643 (65.7%) adolescents
reported no face-to-face meetings and 93 (3.7%) did
not provide an answer. Among those who reported
attending at least one meeting (n = 764), 66 (8.6%)
experienced their last meeting more than two years ago
(87, 11.4% missing). After excluding these participants,
the final study sample comprised 611 of adolescents who
reported their experiences for the last meeting they attended
(age 11-16, Mage= 14.04, SD = 1.67, 47.1% female;
24.4% of all the sampled adolescents).
An external survey agency, STEM/MARK, handled
sampling and data collection. Eligible participants were
parents/caregivers who lived with an 11-16-year-old adolescent.
Both the parent and the adolescent participated in
the survey. The sample was recruited from a combined pool
of three established online panels (i.e., ivyzkumy.cz,
MNforce epanel, Kantar; together comprising approx.
165,000 panelists) and 980 newly recruited households.
Quota sampling was used to ensure that the sample was
proportionally representative of Czech households with
children in terms of socioeconomic status (i.e., highest
achieved education of the head of the household); region of
residence based on the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for
Statistics (NUTS3), which divides the country into 14
regions (see European Commission and Eurostat, 2020);
and municipality size (five categories, 1 = less than 999
inhabitants - 5 = more than 100,000 inhabitants). Quotas
were also used to achieve the equal representation of adolescents
based on gender, age, and their combination.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28 19
The agency invited eligible panelists via e-mail. At the
beginning of the survey, the parent provided demographic
information. If they matched the set quota, they were asked
to consent to their and the adolescent's participation. The
parent could look at the questions for the adolescents
before providing their consent. Then they were instructed
to call the adolescent and give them privacy. The adolescent's
questionnaire started with a brief introduction and
asked for consent. After filling in their part, the adolescent
returned the device to the parent to complete the parental
survey. Parents could not access the adolescents' replies,
and vice versa. Each question included a response "Prefer
not to answer", which was treated as a missing response.
As an incentive, each dyad received reward points
redeemable for approx. €4 ~ $4. The agency checked the
data quality (i.e., questionnaire completion time, the consistency
of the answers across the questionnaire, overall
number of missing data). Only questionnaires that passed
the quality checks were provided to the researchers.
Researchers conducted additional data quality checks (e.g.,
checking response sets), and found no need to omit any
questionnaires from the dataset. The survey was approved
by the university's ethical review board.
Measures
All response scales included verbal anchors for each
answer. For brevity, only the first and the last anchor are
described here. The full wording of all of the items is
available through Open Science Framework (OSF): https://
osf.io/ub5sn/.
Participation in Face-to-Face Meetings
The participants were first given explanations for face-toface
meetings with people from the internet (i.e., On the
internet, people can have conversations with other people
whom they do not knowfrom real life - they have not met in
person. These conversations can happen at various places
(e.g., on social networks, in games, on dating sites, in
internet discussions). We are not talking about "professional"
communication (e.g., with e-shop, tutor, helpline).
[...] Some also meet people they know only from the
internetface to face - in reality), and then asked how many
such meetings they had participated in during their lifetime
(0 = none - 4 =four or more) and how long ago had their
last such meeting took place (7 = this year [in 2021] -
4 = about three or more years ago [before 2019]). From
the 2,500 surveyed adolescents, 65.7% reported never
having participated in a face-to-face meeting, 11.8%
experienced one such meeting, 9.6% two, 3.8% three, 5.3%
four or more, and 3.7% did not want to respond. Among
those who experienced at least one meeting (n = 764),
21.6% experienced their last meeting in the year of data
collection (2021), 39.7% in the preceding year, 18.7% about
two years prior, 8.6% three or more years prior, and 11.4%
did not want to respond. As explained in the Participants
section above, the analysis included only the meetings that
happened within the previous two years.
All of the following measures (except for the measure of
social self-efficacy) asked about the adolescents' most
recent first-time meeting with someone they knew only
from the internet.
Length of Prior Online Contact
Length of prior online contact was assessed by asking how
long adolescents had been in touch with the person over the
internet before they met face-to-face (1 =a couple of
days or less - 5= for longer than six months, M= 3.21,
SD= 1.23, 2.6% missing).
Motives for Participation
Adolescents were asked why they wanted to meet someone
from the internet using three yes/no items that represented
three types of motives: romantic (/ wanted to go on a date,
find myself a boyfriend/girlfriend, 33.6% yes, 3.8% missing);
friendly (/ wanted to have a chat with someone, get to
know someone new, 81.2% yes, 2.1% missing); and
instrumental (/ wanted to get tutoring or exchange, sell, or
buy something [e.g., collectibles, games, clothes], 44.5%
yes, 1.6% missing). Since the adolescents could choose
more than one motive, a variable with eight categories was
constructed to correspond to all of the response combinations
(i.e., 2.0% romantic-only, 33.4% friendly-only, 6.9%
instrumental-only, 11.9% friendly & romantic, 16.2%
friendly & instrumental, 1.8% romantic & instrumental,
17.0% all three, 5.7% none, 5.1% missing).
Pleasantness of the Meeting
One item was used to assess how pleasant the last meeting
was for the adolescents (And how was the meeting for
you? l = very unpleasant - 5 = very pleasant, M=3.83,
SD = 0.92, 0.8% missing).
Fear of Harm
One item measured how afraid the adolescents were of
being harmed by the other person (During the meeting,
were you afraid that the person wanted to hurt you in any
way? 1 = definitely not -4 = definitely yes), including a
response that denoted uncertainty (5 = 1 am not sure). Not
enough adolescents chose the uncertainty response (n = 32,
5.2%) to include them as a specific group in the analysis.
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20 Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28
Thus, the response was treated as missing (M = 1.70,
SD = 0.84, 5.9% missing).
Expectation Disconfirmation
To capture the disconfirmation of expectations with reality,
adolescents were first asked about their expectations (From
what you knew about the person from the internet, who did
you expect to meetface to face?) about the person's gender
(That they would be: 1 = a girl/woman, 49.8%, 2 = a boy/
man, 48.8%, 1.5% missing) and age (That they would be:
1 = a bit younger than me - 5 = older [than 30], M = 2.16,
SD = 0.70, 0.7% missing). They were then asked who
came to the meeting (And who actually showed up to the
meeting?), using the same response options (gender:
48.9% female, 2.0% missing; age: M=2.22, SD = 0.79,
0.8% missing). The responses were recoded into two
variables that capture expectation disconfirmation of gender
and age (7 = different, 2 = as expected, gender: 3.3%
different, 2.9% missing; age: 15.9% different, 1.1%
missing). Furthermore, two items measured the expectation
disconfirmation of appearance and behavior of the
person met on a five-point scale (They looked / They
behaved: 1 = much worse than I had expected - 5 = much
better than I had expected). For easier interpretation, the
items were recoded so that zero indicates that appearance/
behavior of the person met matched the adolescent's
expectations (i.e., expectation confirmation), negative
values indicate their appearance/behavior was worse than
expected (i.e., negative disconfirmation), and positive
values indicate their appearance/behavior was better than
expected (i.e., positive disconfirmation) (appearance:
M=0.08, SD = 0.78, 1.3% missing; behavior: M=0.27,
SD = 0.85, 0.5% missing).
Continued Contact
Adolescents were asked whether they talked to the person
or met them again after their first face-to-face meeting
(7 = no, we met just once, 22.9%, 2 = yes, we had met or
talked, but we don't anymore, 31.3%, 3 = yes, we still
meet or talk, 44.4%, 1.5% missing). For easier interpretation,
a dichotomized variable was used in the analysis
(7 = no continued contact, 22.9%, 2 = some contact after
meeting, 75.6%).
Social Self-efficacy
Social self-efficacy was measured with four of the seven
items that comprise the social self-efficacy subscale of the
Self-efficacy Questionnaire for Children (Muris, 2001). The
original items were generalized by replacing "classmates"
with "peers" (e.g., How easy or difficult has it been for
you to: ...express your opinions when other peers disagree
with you?, .. .become friends with other people your age?).
The instructions were also shortened and the items and the
response scale modified accordingly (7 = very difficult -
5 = very easy). The final score is an average across the
items (M=3.38, SD = 0M, 0.3% missing). Confirmatory
factor analysis (CFA) suggested that the scale was unidimensional
(%2
(2) = 0.05, p = 0.973, CFI=1.00,
TLI=1.01, RMSEA = 0.00 with 90% CI =[0.00, 0.00],
SRMR = 0.00) and had good reliability (© = 0.80).
Analysis
The analysis was conducted with IBM SPSS v28.0.1.1 and
with R v4.2.0, using the packages lavaan vO.6-12 for CFA
and semTools vO.5-6 for reliability analysis.
First, face-to-face meetings were categorized based on
the adolescents' motivation to attend them, and the differences
between these categories were examined. Meetings
for which the adolescents reported that neither of the
provided motives were true for them (n = 35) or did not
respond to the questions (n = 31) were omitted. Differences
in ordinal variables (i.e., adolescents' age, length of
prior online contact, expectations-reality congruence
regarding the behavior and appearance of the person met,
fear of harm), were assessed with Kruskal-Wallis tests and
Dunn-Bonferroni post-hoc tests. Differences in categorical
variables (i.e., adolescents' gender, gender homophily,
expectation disconfirmation regarding age, contact
after meeting) were assessed with a chi-square test of
independence with Bonferroni corrected z-tests. The
expectation disconfirmation regarding gender was not
examined because too few adolescents reported incongruence
(n = 20 across all of the meetings) to warrant any
substantiated conclusions.
Second, multinomial logistic regression was used to
examine associations between adolescents' motives for
attending, social self-efficacy, and the expectation disconfirmation
and pleasantness of the meeting, while controlling
for adolescents' age, gender, and the length of prior
online contact. To achieve enough cases in each category of
the outcome variable, the responses were collapsed into
three categories: pleasant (i.e., responses rather pleasant
and very pleasant; n = 387); neutral (i.e., response neither
pleasant nor unpleasant, n=\ 17); and unpleasant (i.e.,
responses rather unpleasant and very unpleasant; n = 43).
The same regression was run twice - first with neutral
meetings as the reference category and then with pleasant
meetings as the reference. This enabled a better examination
of the differences between each pair of (unpleasant, neutral,
pleasant) meetings.
The complete dataset and analysis scripts are available
through OSF: https://osf.io/ub5sn/.
Springer
Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28 21
Table 1 Comparison of face-to-face meetings based on adolescents' motives for participation
Romantic Friendly Instrumental Friendly & Romantic & Friendly & A l l Three
(n — 12) (n — 204) (n = 42) Romantic Instrumental Instrumental (n = 104)
(n = 73) (n = H ) (n = 99)
Ordinal Variables
Adolescent's Age N= 545, H(6) = 7.82, p = 0.252, s2
= 0.01
M(SD), range 11 to 16 14.58 (1.08) 14.12 (1.66) 13.71 (1.69) 14.41 (1.42) 14.45 (1.97) 13.81 (1.83) 14.11 (1.68)
Length of Prior Online N= 533, H(6) = 19.08, p = 0.004, e2
= 0.04
Contact
M (SD), range 1 to 5 3.08 (0.90) a > b
3.44 (1.21) a
2.77 (1.33) a > b
3.14 (1.11) *b
2.91 (1.14) a
' b
3.22 (1.27) a , b
2.98 (1.11) b
Appearance N= 539, H(6) = 7.75, p = 0.257, s2
= 0.01
Disconfirmation
M (SD), range —2 to 2 0.00 (0.95) 0.18 (0.66) -0.12 (0.55) 0.10 (0.96) 0.00 (0.78) 0.02 (0.78) 0.06 (0.84)
Behavior N= 543, H(6) = 16.44, p = 0.012, s2
= 0.03
Disconfirmation
M (SD), range —2 to 2 0.08 (1.08) a > b
0.43 (0.81) a
0.21 (0.61) a
- b
0.25 (0.93) * b
-0.45 (0.82) b
0.27 (0.83) a , b
0.17 (0.83) a , b
Fear of Harm iV=517, H(6) = 65.94, p = <0.001, s2
= 0.13
M (SD), range 1 to 4 2.33 (1.15) c
1.42 (0.63) a
1.58 (0.76) a
' b
1.61 (0.82) *b
2.50 (0.53) c
1.70 (0.85) a
' b
2.17 (0.96) c
Categorical Variables
Adolescent's Gender N= 545, x2
(6) = 22.99, p = 0.001, V = 0.21
Female (%) 2 5 . 0 a , b
59.3 b
42.9 a , b
49.3 * b
63.6 a , b
3 9 . 4 a
36.5 a
Male (%) 75.0 40.7 57.1 50.7 36.4 60.6 63.5
Gender Homophily /V=538, x2
(6) = 87.45, p<0.001, V = 0.40
Same-gender 3 3 . 3 a , b , c , d
64.4 d
90.0 e
19.4 c
18.2 ^ 60.2 b
- d
35.0 a , c
meeting (%)
Cross-gender 66.7 35.6 10.0 80.6 81.8 39.8 65.0
meeting (%)
Age Disconfirmation N=5A0, x2
(6) = 26.03, p< 0.001, V = 0.22
Age as expected (%) 75.0 a , b
91.6 b
87.8 a , b
84.9 *b
60.0 a
84.8 a , b
71.8 a
Different than 25.0 8.4 12.2 15.1 40.0 15.2 28.2
expected (%)
Contact After Meeting /V=538, x2
(6) = 26.09, p<0.001, V = 0.22
N o ( % ) 2 5 . 0 a , b , c
17.0 c
51.2 b
23.3 ^ 3 6 . 4 a
- b
- c
17.3 a , c
21.4 a
- c
Yes (%) 75.0 83.0 48.8 76.7 63.6 82.7 78.6
The table omits meetings where adolescents indicated no motive (n = 35) or did not answer (n = 31). Different letters in superscript indicate
significant differences at a = 0.05. Differences were tested using Kruskal-Wallis tests with Dunn-Bonferroni post-hoc tests for ordinal variables
and a chi-square test of independence with Bonferroni corrected z-tests for categorical variables
Results
Comparison of Face-to-Face Meetings Based on
Motives
Among the seven categories of face-to-face meetings (based
on adolescents' motivation to attend them), the friendlyonly
motive were most frequent, followed by those with all
three motives, friendly & instrumental motives, and friendly
& romantic motives. By contrast, meetings attended with a
romantic-only motive or romantic & instrumental motives
were the least common. Table 1 shows the means and
standard deviations of the ordinal variables, the proportions
for the categorical variables for each category of the
meetings, and the test results and effect sizes.
There were no significant differences among the categories
of meetings in terms of the age of the adolescent
and in the expectation disconfirmation regarding the
appearance of the person met. In all of the other factors at
hand, at least some categories of meetings differed from
one another. For brevity, only the statistically significant
differences are described further.
Meetings attended with friendly-only motives were
significantly more often attended by female adolescents
(59.3%) than meetings attended with friendly & instrumental
or all three motives (39.4% and 36.5%, respectively).
The reported online contact prior to the meeting
was ongoing for significantly longer among friendlyonly
meetings than among meetings attended with all
three motives.
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22 Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28
The categories of meetings differed in the number that
were with the person of the same or opposite gender (i.e.,
gender homophily). Almost all of the instrumental-only
meetings were same-gender (90%), significantly more
than any other category. Friendly-only meetings were also
predominantly same-gender (64.4%), significantly more
than meetings attended with romantic & instrumental,
friendly & romantic, and all three motives. Similarly,
meetings attended with friendly & instrumental motives
were mostly same-gender (60.2%) and differed significantly
from meetings attended with friendly &
romantic or all three motives in this regard. A l l other
categories of meetings (i.e., romantic-only, friendly &
romantic, romantic & instrumental, and all three motives)
were predominantly cross-gender.
The proportion of meetings where adolescents reported
a mismatch between the expected and the real age of the
person met was lowest among friendly-only meetings
(8.4%). The category significantly differed from meetings
attended with romantic & instrumental motives (where the
proportion was highest - 4 out of 10) and with all three
motives (second highest - 28.2%). Similarly, there was a
significant difference in the behavior of the person met (in
relation to the adolescent's expectation) between friendlyonly
meetings and meetings attended with romantic &
instrumental motives. Friendly-only meetings had the
highest positive disconfirmation (i.e., the person behaved
better than expected) of all of the categories, while
romantic & instrumental motivated meetings had the
highest negative disconfirmation (i.e., the person behaved
worse than expected).
In friendly-only meetings, adolescents, on average,
reported the lowest fear that the other person would harm
them. They significantly differed from meetings attended
with all three motives, romantic-only, or romantic &
instrumental motives, where this fear was the highest.
Instrumental-only, friendly & romantic, and friendly &
instrumental meetings also had a significantly lower average
fear of harm than meetings attended with all three motives
or romantic & instrumental motives.
Lastly, the categories of meetings differed in how
common it was for further contact to occur after the
initial meeting. This was least common for instrumentalonly
motivated meetings (48.8%), which differed significantly
from meetings attended with friendly-only,
friendly & instrumental, or all three motives (83.0%,
82.7%, and 78.6%, respectively), where further contact
was the most common.
Factors Associated with Pleasantness of the Meeting
The results of multinomial logistic regression indicate
which factors are associated with the likelihood that the
meeting was rated as pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant by the
adolescent (Table 2).
First, the likelihood that the meeting was pleasant,
rather than neutral, was examined. Adolescents with
higher social self-efficacy and those who communicated
online for longer were more likely to report a pleasant
meeting than a neutral one. Attending with a friendly
motive increased the likelihood of a pleasant meeting,
while other motives had no effect. Regarding expectation
disconfirmation, when the person met behaved better than
expected (i.e., positive disconfirmation), the meeting was
more likely to be pleasant. When their behavior or
appearance was worse than expected (i.e., negative disconfirmation),
the meeting was less likely to be reported as
pleasant. There was no effect for better-than-expected
appearance or a mismatch in age or gender.
Second, the likelihood of the meeting being unpleasant,
rather than neutral, was examined. None of the predictors
significantly related to this likelihood. This may have been
because of the low statistical power caused by the lower
number of unpleasant and neutral meetings. Despite not
being significant, some results indicate medium-sized effects
(OR>2, OR<0.5) with relatively low p-values (p<0.101).
These suggest that the dating motive, mismatch in age or
gender, worse-than-expected appearance or behavior, and
better-than-expected behavior all related to a higher likelihood
for the rating of the meeting to be unpleasant.
Lastly, to overcome issues with low power, the likelihood
that the meeting was unpleasant, rather than pleasant,
was examined. Longer online communication and the presence
of social motive decreased the likelihood of a negative
meeting. When the person behaved or looked worse or
was of a different gender than expected, the meeting was
more likely to be negative. Different-than-expected age and
better-than-expected appearance or behavior did not relate
to the likelihood of adolescents rating the meeting as either
pleasant or unpleasant. Adolescents' age, gender, social
self-efficacy, and other motives also had no effect.
Alternative Models
Initially, relationships between predictors and the pleasantness
of the meeting were tested using an ordinal
regression. However, the test of parallel lines suggested
that the assumption of proportional odds was violated
(X2
(42) = 73.12, p = 0.002). A sequence of binomial
regressions at each cumulative threshold showed large
differences in the odds ratios. Thus, ordinal regression was
not suitable and multinomial logistic regression was used
instead. Three versions of the multinomial regression were
tested. In Model 1, social self-efficacy was not included
and the variable to capture expectation disconfirmation in
age had three categories (i.e., age as expected, person
Springer
Table 2 Results of the multinomial logistic regression to predict the pleasantness of face-to-face meetings (N= 547)
Pleasant Unpleasant Unpleasant
(Reference Category: Neutral) (Reference Category: Neutral) (Reference Category: Pleasant)
Predictors B (SE) P OR 95% C I B (SE) P OR 95% C I B (SE) P OR 95% C I
Intercept -1.95 (1.17) 0.095 -5.78 (2.04) 0.005 -3.83 (1.98) 0.053
Gender (male) 0.14 (0.24) 0.554 1.15 [0.72, 1.83] 0.29 (0.40) 0.462 1.34 [0.61, 2.94] 0.15 (0.39) 0.691 1.17 [0.55, 2.50]
Age -0.01 (0.07) 0.867 0.99 [0.86, 1.14] 0.21 (0.12) 0.092 1.23 [0.97, 1.57] 0.22 (0.12) 0.069 1.25 [0.98, 1.58]
Online Communication Length 0.38 (0.10) <0.001 1.47 [1.21, 1.78] -0.14 (0.18) 0.427 0.87 [0.62, 1.23] -0.52 (0.17) 0.002 0.59 [0.43, 0.83]
Social Self-efficacy 0.38 (0.15) 0.011 1.46 [1.09, 1.95] 0.30 (0.26) 0.232 1.36 [0.82, 2.23] -0.07 (0.25) 0.773 0.93 [0.57, 1.51]
Motives"
Romantic 0.14 (0.26) 0.599 1.15 [0.69, 1.90] 0.71 (0.41) 0.084 2.03 [0.91, 4.54] 0.57 (0.40) 0.148 1.77 [0.82, 3.85]
Friendly 1.10 (0.28) <0.001 3.00 [1.72, 5.23] -0.40 (0.44) 0.364 0.67 [0.29, 1.58] -1.49 (0.44) 0.001 0.23 [0.10, 0.53]
Instrumental -0.38 (0.24) 0.119 0.69 [0.43, 1.10] -0.16 (0.41) 0.703 0.86 [0.38, 1.92] 0.22 (0.40) 0.580 1.25 [0.57, 2.72]
Expectation Disconfirmationb
Gender -0.65 (0.69) 0.353 0.53 [0.14, 2.05] 1.16 (0.71) 0.101 3.18 [0.80, 12.66] 1.80 (0.76) 0.017 6.06 [1.38, 26.69]
Age 0.06 (0.33) 0.869 1.06 [0.55, 2.03] 0.86 (0.44) 0.052 2.35 [0.99, 5.58] 0.80 (0.43) 0.063 2.23 [0.96, 5.17]
Appearance (positive) 0.21 (0.37) 0.565 1.24 [0.60, 2.54] 0.38 (0.65) 0.564 1.46 [0.41, 5.26] 0.17 (0.59) 0.779 1.18 [0.37, 3.78]
Appearance (negative) -0.85 (0.36) 0.017 0.43 [0.21, 0.86] 0.69 (0.48) 0.149 1.99 [0.78, 5.08] 1.54 (0.48) 0.001 4.67 [1.83, 11.92]
Behavior (positive) 0.88 (0.31) 0.005 2.42 [1.31, 4.45] 1.02 (0.56) 0.067 2.76 [0.93, 8.19] 0.13 (0.51) 0.794 1.14 [0.42, 3.07]
Behavior (negative) -0.82 (0.40) 0.041 0.44 [0.20, 0.97] 0.97 (0.51) 0.057 2.63 [0.97, 7.11] 1.79 (0.52) 0.001 5.99 [2.17, 16.56]
Likelihood ratio test: %2
(26) = 166.39, p< 0.001; Pseudo R 2
: Cox & Snell = 0.26, Nagelkerke = 0.33. Results sij*nificant at a = 0.05 are in bold
"Reference category: No (i.e., motive absent)
b
Reference category: As expected (i.e., expectation confirmation)
24 Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28
younger than expected, person older than expected). In
Model 2, the age-disconfirmation variable was collapsed
into two categories. In Model 3 (reported above), social
self-efficacy was included. Apart from a negligible variation
in the size of the odds ratios, the overall pattern of
results remained equivalent across the three models. The
only differences were in the effects of the age disconfirmation,
which were not significant in Model 3
(reported in Table 2). In Model 1, the person being younger
than expected increased the likelihood of an unpleasant
(rather than a pleasant) meeting (OR = 4.03, p = 0.030). In
Model 2, the person being of a different age than expected
increased the likelihood of an unpleasant (rather than a
neutral) meeting (OR = 2.43, p = 0.042).
Discussion
The existing body of research about in-person, face-to-face
meetings between adolescents and people they met on the
internet is founded on the assumption that these meetings
are motivated by the desire to form new social relationships.
This study aimed to test this assumption by categorizing the
meetings based on the adolescents' motives. There were
significant differences in most of the considered factors
(which are detailed in the first part of the Discussion), which
support the idea that it is necessary to differentiate between
the types of face-to-face meetings in both research and
public discourse. Moreover, while previous studies examined
how often these meetings are pleasant or unpleasant for
adolescents, the factors and mechanisms that may explain
adolescents' experiences were largely left untested. The
present findings suggest that the pleasantness of the meeting
is closely related to (dis)confirmation of the adolescents'
expectations about the person they met. Furthermore,
meetings attended with friendly motives and those preceded
by a longer period of online contact were more likely to be
pleasant and less likely to be unpleasant.
Different Motives, Different Meetings
The results of this study indicate that four out of five
adolescents participated in a face-to-face meeting with
someone from the internet at least partly with a friendly
motive (i.e., to meet someone new, make a new friend).
The frequent presence of a friendly motive supports the
assumption that adolescents use online communication
primarily to expand their social circle, which underlies both
the social compensation and the rich-get-richer hypotheses
(Mesch, 2019), and the studies that rely on those hypotheses
(e.g., Bayraktar et al., 2016). However, every fifth
adolescent goes to the meeting with other motives (i.e.,
specifically to find a girlfriend/boyfriend, for instrumental
purposes like to buy or sell something, get tutoring) or for
some other reason not captured in this study. For these
types of meetings, the aforementioned theories might need
to either be adapted or replaced by more fitting ones. Thus,
future research, especially when driven by hypotheses that
presume socially motivated interactions, should carefully
differentiate between the motives for such interactions.
The need to differentiate between meetings attended with
varying motives is emphasized by the differences within
these types of meetings. Based on the results, the seven
examined categories of meetings can be sorted into three
types that seems to be structurally more similar - friendlyonly
meetings; meetings with instrumental component (i.e.,
instrumental-only, instrumental & friendly); and meetings
with romantic component (i.e., romantic-only, friendly &
romantic, romantic & instrumental). Friendly-only meetings
were by far the most common in this sample. In comparison
to the other categories, online contact prior to these meetings
was the longest and, most adolescents stayed in touch
with the person after friendly-only meetings. Meeting
someone who is unexpectedly older or younger was the
rarest occurrence for these meetings and, on average, the
person met behaved better than expected and the adolescents
had the lowest level of fear.
Compared to friendly-only meetings, meetings with
instrumental component are more often attended by male
adolescents. At these meetings, adolescents also mostly
meet with someone of the same gender. However, instrumental
meetings are not completely uniform. The proportion
of same-gender meetings is much higher for the
instrumental-only motive (significantly higher than in any
other category). Most adolescents stay in touch with the
other person after a friendly & instrumental meeting, but
less than half stay in touch after an instrumental-only
meeting. Thus, instrumental-only meetings seem to be
mostly one-off encounters that are focused on the instrumental
goal (e.g., buying/selling something), while friendly
& instrumental meetings represent encounters where adolescents
bond over shared interest (e.g., exchanging collectibles).
Considering the higher participation of male
adolescents, the present findings fit the research that shows
that female adolescents spend more time using social media
and texting and male adolescents spend more time gaming
(Twenge & Martin, 2020). This suggests that, when female
adolescents form new relationships over the internet, they
tend to rely on interpersonal communication, while male
adolescents rely on shared activities and hobbies.
Meetings that had some romantic component are more
often cross-gender than other meetings. Assuming that most
adolescents are heterosexual, this result is not novel, but it
supports the plausibility for the presented categorization of
face-to-face meetings. Friendly & romantic meetings, which
are the most common type of romantic meetings, do not
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Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28 25
significantly differ from other types of meetings in any other
aspect. However, adolescents who attended romantic-only
meetings felt more afraid that the person they were meeting
would harm them (compared to friendly-only meetings).
This is even more pronounced for romantic & instrumental
meetings, where adolescents' fear of harm is higher than in
most other meetings (including friendly & romantic ones).
Moreover, encountering someone who was of a different
age or who behaved worse than expected was more common
at romantic & instrumental meetings, than at friendlyonly
ones. These results are in line with a qualitative study
that showed that upsetting meetings were mostly
romantically-motivated and the adolescents who attended
them reported that the other person made unwelcome
attempts at physical contact or behaved in an aggressive or
overconfident manner (Dedkova et al., 2014) (i.e., behaved
worse than expected). The higher rate of age disconfirmation
supports the notion that misrepresenting one's age may
be more common in dating as part of strategic misrepresentation
(Huang & Yang, 2013). Overall, the comparatively
high levels of the fear of harm and expectation
disconfirmation indicate that the romantic & instrumental
meetings (and, to a lesser degree, the romantic-only ones)
have a higher risk potential. It is necessary to emphasize
that only a few adolescents in the currently analyzed sample
reported these types of meetings, which complicates any
generalizations. It is also hard to interpret the specific
situations that are represented with the combination of
romantic and instrumental motives. Future research should
focus on a deeper understanding of romantically motivated
face-to-face meetings, and testing whether they are indeed
more risky than other meetings.
Meetings attended for all three examined motives stand
apart from the above-mentioned three main groups of
meetings as it is less clear what their dominant "driving
force" is. In several aspects, these meetings resemble those
with romantic component (they are mostly gross-gender,
age disconfirmation is more common, fear of harm is
higher). However, they also differ from other meetings in
ways that meetings with romantic component do not - they
are more frequently attended by male adolescents and prior
online contact is shorter compared to friendly-only; further
contact after the meeting is more common than for
instrumental-only meetings. Meetings attended for all three
represent substantially large category, which warrants more
detailed examination in future studies.
The aforementioned results demonstrate that going to a
face-to-face meeting with someone from the internet is far
from a uniform experience. Nevertheless, the results
support some more general conclusions. Despite the
common fear of deceptive online predators (boyd et al.,
2009), the current results show that adolescents usually
met whom they expected. This confirms and expands
upon the results from the Netherlands, where the mismatch
between expectations and reality was also rare
(Van den Heuvel et al., 2012). Only a few studies focused
on this topic, and they are quite outdated (a decade old).
The current study provides evidence that the changes in
ICT landscape (e.g., more prevalent usage of smartphones
generally as well as location-based dating apps specifically)
did not substantially shift the occurrences of misrepresentation
of one's identity.
Except for romantic & instrumental meetings, the
appearance and behavior of the person mostly conforms to
the adolescents' expectations. Any disconfirmations were
more likely to be positive (i.e., the person behaving and
looking better) than negative. Consistent with previous
studies (e.g., Smahel et al., 2020), meeting someone from
the internet is usually a pleasant experience and unpleasant
meetings are relatively rare. Similarly, in most types
of meetings, adolescents seldom feel afraid that the person
would harm them. Together with a previous study that
showed that sexual abuse by people met online is less
prevalent than by people met elsewhere (Priebe & Svedin,
2012), the current results challenge the widespread notion
that meeting people from the internet increases the likelihood
of sexual or other abuse (see Holmes, 2009;
Mascheroni et al., 2014). Instead, this study suggests that,
rather than a threat, these meetings are an opportunity to
make new social connections. Not only are the meetings
predominantly pleasant, but, for most meetings (especially
friendly motivated ones), the relationships continue after
the meeting. Černíkova et al. (2018) showed that, on the
internet, children and adolescents evaluate new people
(e.g., based on SNS profile), select those with whom they
want to communicate, and continue their evaluation during
online communication. When the interaction is negative,
they discontinue it. Thus, people considered for an
in-person meeting, had already "passed" several evaluation
thresholds. This contributes to the overall high proportion
of pleasant experiences.
Meeting Pleasantness and Adolescents'
Expectations
Consistent with the expectation-disconfirmation theory
(Oliver, 1980), an incongruence between adolescents'
expectations and the real characteristics of the people met
closely relates to how pleasant the meeting was for adolescents.
Disconfirmed expectations about gender or age
increase the likelihood of an unpleasant meeting (rather than
a pleasant or neutral one) but it does not relate to the
likelihood of a pleasant meeting (rather than a neutral one).
In other words, disconfirmation of expectations related to
demographics can make a meeting less pleasant, but their
confirmation alone does not make the meeting more
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26 Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28
pleasant. Negative disconfirmation of adolescents' expectations
about the behavior or appearance of the other person
works similarly: unmet expectations are associated with
unpleasant meetings. This is in line with a qualitative study
that identified deviations from expectations as the primary
reason that adolescents did not enjoy face-to-face meetings
(Dedkova et al., 2014). As expected, behavior-related
positive disconfirmation (i.e., situations where the demeanor
of the person met exceeded expectations) was associated
with pleasant meetings (better-than-expected
appearance had no effect). This validates the usage of the
expectation-disconfirmation theory outside of its original
context (i.e., consumer satisfaction). The present findings
demonstrate that the pleasantness of a face-to-face meeting
largely depends on adolescents' expectations. Thus, when
adolescents rate a meeting as unpleasant, it does not
necessarily imply harm or abuse. It might be because the
person did not meet the adolescents' expectations. In the
cases of age and gender, expectation disconfirmation is
likely caused by deception. However, as proposed by the
hyper-personal model, computer-mediated communication
can lead to exaggerated perceptions and unrealistic expectations
about the other person (Walther, 1996; Walther &
Whitty, 2021). Therefore, unmet expectations about behavior
(and possibly appearance) may be caused by the specific
features of online communication. Future research
should investigate adolescents' expectations in more detail
to see whether they tend to be realistic.
According to the analysis, adolescents with higher
social self-efficacy are more likely to rate meetings as
pleasant rather than neutral, but social self-efficacy does
not relate to the likelihood of the meeting being
unpleasant. Thus, adolescents can use their social skills
to make the meeting more pleasant, but these skills do
not protect them from negative experiences. This is not
to say that social self-efficacy is not important. In this
study, unpleasant meetings likely included situations
where no severe harm was done. In situations where
harm occurred, social skills could play a protective role
or they could be important in coping with the aftermath
(Bijstra & Jackson, 1998).
Presented analysis suggests that when online contact is
longer, adolescents are more likely to rate the meeting as
pleasant. Perhaps, longer online contact allows adolescents
to better assess their online acquaintances and then meet
only those whom they like. Adolescents may also develop
a stronger bond through longer online contact. Since they
already know the person, the resulting meeting may be less
awkward and more enjoyable. Though more research
about the beneficial role of longer online contact is
necessary, getting to know the person better through
online conversations that span a longer time-period before
meeting them in person can be recommended.
Limitations and Future Directions
This study used data from a general sample of Czech adolescents.
Consequently, there were relatively few cases of
the rarer types of meetings (e.g., unpleasant ones, meetings
with a romantic-only motive), despite the large initial
sample size. While this approach allowed us to assess the
prevalence of various types of meetings, the results pertaining
to the rarer meetings should be generalized with
caution. Future research should specifically focus on adolescents
who experienced face-to-face meetings or oversample
the uncommon experiences.
While this study was the first to directly explore the
motives for participation, it relied on a broad categorization.
A qualitative approach could identify more nuanced
motives and illuminate the dynamics behind some of the
less common combinations of motives found in the study.
In quantitative research, it might be fruitful to ask about
the adolescents' primary motives. Future research could
also consider the specific online environments (e.g., social
networking sites, dating applications) where adolescents
meet their partners or investigate face-to-face meetings
with multiple people.
Lastly, the study focused on meetings that happened
between 2019 and 2021. This included a period of time
during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact restrictions may
have precluded adolescents from meeting online acquaintances
face-to-face. By contrast, limited contact with
schoolmates caused by periods of online education may
have motivated adolescents to compensate by meeting
people from the internet. Such dynamics must be considered
because they may have influenced the characteristics
of the examined meetings.
Conclusion
It is not unusual for adolescents to meet in person with
someone they know only from the internet. While such faceto-face
meetings encompass a variety of distinct situations,
they are usually studied as a uniform phenomenon. The
current study demonstrates that face-to-face meetings meaningfully
differ from each other based on the adolescents'
motives for attending them. On one hand, current findings
lend credibility to previous studies that built on the assumption
that adolescents attend face-to-face meetings primarily to
make new social connections. On the other hand, in one fifth
of the face-to-face meetings, adolescents' participation is
driven by different motives (e.g., romantic, instrumental).
Given the differences between meetings attended for different
motives, it is important to separate different types of face-toface
meetings in future research and public discourse. This
study also shows that the pleasantness of a face-to-face
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Journal of Youth and Adolescence (2023) 52:15-28 27
meeting is closely related to adolescents' expectations about
the person they are meeting. This demonstrates the utility of
the expectation-disconfirmation theory for the investigations
of interpersonal interactions and suggests that, when a faceto-face
meeting is labeled as unpleasant, it does not have to
mean that it was harmful for the adolescent.
Authors' Contributions V . M . developed the study concept, participated
in the survey design and coordination of data collection, curated
the final dataset, performed the statistical analysis, and drafted the
original manuscript; L . D . participated on developing the study concept,
oversaw the survey design and data collection, supervised the
interpretation of the analysis, participated on the original draft of the
manuscript, provided critical reflections to manuscript, and participated
in obtaining the funding for the study; G.S.M. participated on
developing the study concept, supervised the interpretation of the
analysis, and provided critical reflections to manuscript. A l l authors
read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation,
project no. 19-27828X.
Data Sharing Declaration The datasets generated and/or analyzed
during the current study are available in the Open Science Framework
(OSF) repository, https://osf.io/ub5sn.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
Conflict of Interest The authors declare no competing interests.
Ethical Approval The study was conducted in accordance with ethical
standards. The data collection was approved by the Ethics Board of the
Masaryk University.
Informed Consent Informed consent was obtained from all adolescents
and their parents/legal guardians participating in the study.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as
long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the
source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if
changes were made. The images or other third party material in this
article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless
indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended
use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted
use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Publisher's note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Vojtech Mylek is a junior researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research
Team on Internet and Society (IRTIS) and a Ph.D. student at the
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk
University. His research interests include adolescents' online
communication, meeting people from the internet offline, and the
impact of ICT usag on adolescents' well-being.
Lenka Dedkova is a researcher and a department vice-head at the
Interdisciplinary Research Team on Internet and Society (IRTIS),
Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University. Her research interests
include parental mediation, online relationships, meeting people from
the internet offline, online research methodology, and online security.
Gustavo S. Mesch is a professor of digital sociology (emeritus) at the
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of
Haifa. His research interests include technology and society, social
effects of new media, youth internet culture, and social networks
online and offline.
Springer