Social Media and/or Street oriented? An Exploratory Survey Study Comparing Offline and Online Active Troublesome Youth Groups

This study employs a recent extension of the Eurogang survey instrument to compare online active troublesome youth groups with more traditional, physically ‘street-oriented’ troublesome youth groups. Data come from a survey study among 919 respondents, aged between 12 and 22, from schools in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. The results indicate that 31 of the 51 reported troublesome youth groups are active online as a group, including 5 groups that do not meet regularly in offline public places. In general, online active groups interact more often daily in physical places than offline only groups (90% versus 60%). They also have relatively more often group symbols (27% versus 0%) and opponent groups (55% versus 15%). Youths involved in online active troublesome youth groups report to commit a greater variety of offenses than youth in troublesome youth groups that are only active on the physical street (average of 2.74 versus 1.25), in particular with regard to violent (1.16 versus 0.45) and online offending (0.55 versus 0.10). These differences remain when demographic variables are taken into account as well as involvement in informal and troublesome youth groups in general. The findings support an expanded conceptualization of ‘street-oriented’ in the Eurogang definition and suggest that online visibility and activity have important implications for the group’s characteristics and delinquent activities of youths involved in these groups.