Love in Cyberspace: Swedish Young People with Intellectual Disabilities and the Internet.
By L. Löfgren-Mårtenson. 2008
118 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The Internet has become an increasingly common way for people to contact each other, to flirt, fall in love and start relationships. How does this development influence today's young people with intellectual disabilities? The article presents a picture of the Internet experiences of some young adults with intellectual disabilities and discusses how others view this usage. It is based on a qualitative study in Sweden where 10 young people with intellectual disabilities and 12 staff members were interviewed. The interviews show that young people with intellectual disabilities also use the Internet, mainly for social and romantic reasons. They view the Internet as a positive arena where they can be “like everybody else” and therefore generally present themselves without mentioning their disabilities. However, people around them tend to worry considerably and focus mainly on the risks involved in this usage of the Internet.
Subfields: Communication, Education, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e280e97fb48a72160d9e2fe9b94ba208d4987e89
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Citations in the corpus
- The role of supporters in facilitating the use of technologies by adolescents and adults with learning disabilities: a place for positive risk-taking? (2014, background): “For example, Löfgren-Mårtenson (2008) interviewed 10 young people with intellectual disabilities and 12 staff members about their use of the Internet.”
- Perceptions of the risks and benefits of Internet access and use by people with intellectual disabilities (2017, background): “This finding also indicates that the nondisabled participants in this study appear to have worries and concerns akin to some of those reported by caregivers in previous research (Lofgren-Martenson, 2008).”