Online Quizzes Decide Is Boyfriend Controlling?
Web Questionnaires and Relationship Advice for Teen Girls
Sep 2, 2009
What teen girl wants to hear her friends or parents tell her that she has a controlling boyfriend? Sometimes it’s hard to take relationship advice from close friends and family. Online quizzes such as “Is Your Steady Too Controlling?” allow teens the opportunity to decide for themselves if they are in a healthy relationship or not. Social networking sites can actually serve as an educational tool for reaching teens.
Who is Making the Online Quizzes?
A variety of agencies and groups have created web questionnaires in an effort to help teen girls evaluate the dynamics of their romance. The National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline called Love is Respect has a checklist on its website as well as an online private chat line where girls can type questions.
A “Just for Teens” section on the Love is Not Abuse organization’s website has interactive resources including a quiz called, “Test Your Knowledge About Teen Dating Violence.” Magazines such as Cosmo Girl want to educate teens by offering relationship advice, online quizzes and facts about abusive or controlling boyfriends.
How Relationship Advice Online Can Help Teen Girls
Most teens have questions about their romantic relationships; however most teens want to appear confident, so they have trouble asking others, especially adults, for relationship advice. Teen girls talk to girlfriends nonstop but girlfriends often don’t want to be known for telling people what to do. Teen girls tend to highly value respect in a girlfriend relationship and don’t like to come across as bossy.
Because most teen girls log on to the internet on a daily basis and the internet is a semi-private way to get information, the world wide web can actually help teens answer some of their questions. Any kind of test or quiz is popular with adolescent girls. The media and educational organizations have caught on to the popularity of online quizzes and web questionnaires.
If a non-biased quiz tells a teen that her relationship has characteristics of a controlling or abusive one, she might hear the message better than if she was told by a parent or close friend. There are no guarantees that quizzes will get through to teens, but the web questionnaire results can plant a seed of thought for teens about their romantic relationship.
The Challenge to Get Girls to Take the Online Quizzes
It’s challenging to bring up the subject of a controlling boyfriend to a teen. Most girls in controlling relationships aren’t aware of the control issues apparent to others. Girls are more likely to take a quiz if the quiz is, one – suggested by a girlfriend (rather than a parent or teacher) and two – suggested to a group of people rather than singling out one person.
School newspapers are “invitation to all” places to print the names of quizzes and quiz web addresses. High school websites and church youth group websites can also link teens to web questionnaires. Social networking sites, with a high rate of use by teens, can be a great place for a girl to find a relationship advice tool like a “click to answer” quiz.
Using Social Networking to Share Quizzes
Quizzes in general are popular on social networking sites, such as Facebook©, so a “Does Your Relationship Need a Makeover?” link doesn’t look out of place. Plus it’s understood that members routinely share links with all of their “friends” on the networking site. Teens, parents and teachers can all share links to “Test Your Knowledge About Teen Dating Violence” type quizzes on social networking sites.
When a quiz lands in front of a teen on a networking site, it won’t seem like the quiz is specifically aimed at her. When posting a quiz, it helps to spread the message if posters add a personal line such as “Share this with your friends,” so girls who receive the quiz link will be prompted to share it with other teen girls.
It’s possible to use social networking sites, school websites and youth group websites to help educate girls about abusive or controlling boyfriends. Web questionnaires and quizzes are non-threatening and user friendly. Most of the quizzes conclude with a page of resources if girls want to seek help. Important relationship advice for teens needs to be where teens will see it – on a screen.
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