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When Social Media Traumatizes Teens: The Roles of Online Risk Exposure, Coping, and Post-Traumatic Stress
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which negative online risk experiences (information breaches, explicit content exposure, cyberbullying and sexual solicitations) cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in adolescents. The study also explores whether teens’ short-term coping responses serve to mitigate PTSD or, instead, act as a response to stress from online events.
Design/methodology/approach
The study utilized a web-based diary design over the course of two months. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling with repeated measures.
Findings
The study confirmed that explicit content exposure, cyberbullying and sexual solicitations (but not information breaches) evoke symptoms of PTSD. Analyses also indicated that teens engage in active and communicative coping after they experience post-traumatic stress, regardless of risk type or frequency.
Practical implications
The authors found that teens took active measures to cope with online risks soon after they felt threatened (within a week). Actively coping with stressful situations has been shown to enhance adolescent resilience and reduce long-term negative effects of risk exposure. If these early coping behaviors can be detected, social media platforms may be able to embed effective interventions to support healthy coping processes that can further protect teens against long-term harm from exposure to online risks.
Originality/value
This is the first study to examine situational PTSD symptoms related to four types of adolescent online risk exposure within the week exposure occurred. By applying two competing theoretical frameworks (the adolescent resilience framework and transactional theory of stress), the authors show empirical evidence that suggests short-term coping responses are likely a stress reaction to PTSD, not a protective factor against it.
... Aspectos relacionados a problemas em saúde mental tiveram destaque na amostra. É importante dar luz ao fato de que em alguns estudos a relação entre exposição à mídia violenta e o envolvimento em cyberbullying foi associada a problemas de saúde mental (MCHUGH et al., 2018;PRZYBYLSK, 2018;BABVEY et al., 2020;TUDKUEAA;LAEHEEMB;SITTICHAIC, 2019;WACHS et al., 2018;LI et al., 2018). Tais resultados implicam na necessidade de investigar se problemas em saúde mental, como transtornos mentais comuns, podem mediar ou moderar essa relação em outros contextos, já que adolescentes, expostos a jogos violentos, que já lutam com problemas em saúde mental, são os mais propensos a relatar envolvimento com comportamentos de cyberbullying (PRZYBYLSK, 2018;LI et al., 2018;MCHUGH et al. 2018). ...
... É importante dar luz ao fato de que em alguns estudos a relação entre exposição à mídia violenta e o envolvimento em cyberbullying foi associada a problemas de saúde mental (MCHUGH et al., 2018;PRZYBYLSK, 2018;BABVEY et al., 2020;TUDKUEAA;LAEHEEMB;SITTICHAIC, 2019;WACHS et al., 2018;LI et al., 2018). Tais resultados implicam na necessidade de investigar se problemas em saúde mental, como transtornos mentais comuns, podem mediar ou moderar essa relação em outros contextos, já que adolescentes, expostos a jogos violentos, que já lutam com problemas em saúde mental, são os mais propensos a relatar envolvimento com comportamentos de cyberbullying (PRZYBYLSK, 2018;LI et al., 2018;MCHUGH et al. 2018). ...
... Não se pode deixar de discutir que o crescimento de conteúdo abusivo durante a pandemia de COVID-19 implica que o aumento da exposição a conteúdos violentos online está ocorrendo em todo o mundo e, com isso, tem-se verificado um grande aumento no índice de cyberbullying (BABVEY et al., 2020). Isso pode apontar para a importância de se investigar como outros fatores, como o efeito do estresse, pode atuar como mediador ou moderador durante a pandemia (BABVEY et al., 2020;MCHUGH et al. 2018). ...
para o comportamento de cyberbullying. Com base nisso, o objetivo do presente estudo se constitui em analisar a relação entre exposição à diferentes tipos de mídia violenta e o comportamento de cyberbullying à luz da literatura internacional. Para tanto, foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura seguindo os critérios PRISMA para revisões sistemáticas e meta-análise. Foram incluídos estudos empíricos publicados no intervalo entre 2017-2021 e escritos em português ou inglês. As bases de dados utilizadas para a busca dos estudos foram Scopus, PsycInfo e Scielo. Os artigos foram analisados em três passos, alcançados de forma geral através de uma síntese qualitativa, a saber: caracterização da amostra, aspectos psicossociais da relação estudadas e lacunas na literatura. Dos 1584 estudos identificados através dos termos de busca, 27 eram adequados para compor a amostra (taxa de retenção de 1,7%). De modo geral, todos os anos incluídos no intervalo contaram com algum estudo representante, com 2018 tendo o maior número de estudos (n=10) e 2021 o menor (n=2). Tais amostras foram compostas por participantes de mais de 40 países, sendo Ásia, América do Norte e Europa os continentes com maior número de representantes. As formas de mensuração variaram desde escalas já validadas (e.g. The Positive Attitudes Toward Cyberbullying Questionnaire) até itens desenvolvidos pelos autores para aquele estudo em específico. Os resultados encontrados podem contribuir para criação de programas voltados para a discussão e prevenção do cyberbullying, especialmente na escola, ambiente no qual os estudos de nossas amostras estiveram focados. É importante destacar o papel de toda a comunidade escolar. Pais, professores, colegas de classe, são todos atores fundamentais tanto no sentido do apoio social, quanto no reforço dos comportamentos pró-sociais.
... Andre studier viser en sammenheng mellom barns eksponering for medier og traumatiserende symptomer (Weems et al., 2012;McHugh et al., 2018). McHugh et al. (2018) ba 75 13-17 åringer om å skrive en dagbok over to måneder om deres erfaringer med risiko på nett. ...
... Andre studier viser en sammenheng mellom barns eksponering for medier og traumatiserende symptomer (Weems et al., 2012;McHugh et al., 2018). McHugh et al. (2018) ba 75 13-17 åringer om å skrive en dagbok over to måneder om deres erfaringer med risiko på nett. Forskerne viser at ungdommer som har opplevd nettmobbing, seksuell oppfordring, eller vokseninnhold på nett kan utvikle PTSD-symptomer. ...
... Studiene viser blant annet at eksponering for medieinnhold har en viss sammenheng med utfordringer knyttet til hvordan barn utvikler sin identitet (Valcke et al., 2011). Andre studier viser en sammenheng mellom barns eksponering for eller bruk av medier og traumatiserende symptomer (Weems et al., 2012;McHugh et al., 2018). Forskerne viser også positive sammenhenger mellom bruk av tid på digitale medier og mindre trivsel og velferd (Ruest et al., 2018), samt eksponering for bakgrunns TV og utfordringer med hvordan barn forstår verdenen rundt dem (Nathanson et al., 2013). ...
... Andre studier viser en sammenheng mellom barns eksponering for medier og traumatiserende symptomer (Weems et al., 2012;McHugh et al., 2018). McHugh et al. (2018) ba 75 13-17 åringer om å skrive en dagbok over to måneder om deres erfaringer med risiko på nett. ...
... Andre studier viser en sammenheng mellom barns eksponering for medier og traumatiserende symptomer (Weems et al., 2012;McHugh et al., 2018). McHugh et al. (2018) ba 75 13-17 åringer om å skrive en dagbok over to måneder om deres erfaringer med risiko på nett. Forskerne viser at ungdommer som har opplevd nettmobbing, seksuell oppfordring, eller vokseninnhold på nett kan utvikle PTSD-symptomer. ...
... Studiene viser blant annet at eksponering for medieinnhold har en viss sammenheng med utfordringer knyttet til hvordan barn utvikler sin identitet (Valcke et al., 2011). Andre studier viser en sammenheng mellom barns eksponering for eller bruk av medier og traumatiserende symptomer (Weems et al., 2012;McHugh et al., 2018). Forskerne viser også positive sammenhenger mellom bruk av tid på digitale medier og mindre trivsel og velferd (Ruest et al., 2018), samt eksponering for bakgrunns TV og utfordringer med hvordan barn forstår verdenen rundt dem (Nathanson et al., 2013). ...
Norske barn bruker i gjennomsnitt litt under fire timer per dag på internett og digitale medier
(Staksrud & Ólafsson, 2019). Deres hverdagsliv er i økende grad preget av å bruke disse mediene, enten det er hjemme, på skolen eller i kombinasjon med andre fritidsaktiviteter. Barn bruker digitale medier alene, eller sammen med venner og familie. Det å ha tilgang til internett gir barn og unge mange muligheter til å være sosiale, å finne ny informasjon og kunnskap, å utvikle digital kompetanse og andre ferdigheter, og å være kreative. Det fører også med seg en viss risiko for å oppleve ting som kan være skadelig, som for eksempel å eksponeres for skadelig eller alvorlig skadelig innhold (cf. Bildeprogramloven, 2015).
Samtidig må tiltak som rettes mot beskyttelse for slike skader veies opp mot barns rettigheter til å delta i samfunnet ved å bruke disse medier. Disse rettighetene til tilgang, deltakelse og beskyttelse er sørget for av blant annet FNs barnekonvensjon
(1989), EØS-avtalens direktiv om audiovisuelle medietjenester (AVMSD, 2018), Grunnloven § 100 (Grunnloven, 1814), bildeprogramloven (Bildeprogramloven, 2015), samt den europeiske menneskerettskonvensjon artikkel 10 (ECHR, 1950).
Denne rapporten kartlegger og sammenstiller nyere forskning på skadelige medieeffekter knyttet til barn og unges mediebruk. Forskningen inkluderer internasjonale og norske studier på dette området publisert mellom 2007 og 2020. Den er basert på tre hovedproblemstillinger som er utviklet på bakgrunn av Medieskadelighetsutvalgets mandat og beskrivelsen av oppdraget vi har fått. Problemstillingene er:
– Hvordan operasjonaliseres og brukes skadelighetsbegrepet i ulike forskningstradisjoner og forskningsprosjekter mellom 2007 og 2020?
– Hva er overordnende forskningsfunn knyttet til barn, mediebruk og skadelig effekter mellom 2007 og 2020?
– Hvilke forskningshull kan identifiseres fra forskning om barn, mediebruk og skadelige
effekter utført mellom 2007 og 2020?
... Mental intangibility is also conceptualized as consumer risk because of the intangible nature of online services(Li, Wang, Lin, & Hajli, 2018). Similarly, information breaches, cyberbullying, sexual solicitations, and explicit content exposure are also new forms of social media risks(McHugh, Wisniewski, Rosson, & Carroll, 2018). ...
... Third, comparative studies are hardly conducted in the given domain.Finally, the casual or experimental research design was employed in few cases.The review discovered a significant number of future research directions. Few studies suggested investigating traditional and emerging PR along with different cultural groups and media types(Amaro & Duarte, 2015;Hussain et al., 2017;James et al., 2017;Kowalczuk, 2018;Liebana-Cabanillas, Munoz-Leiva, & Sanchez- Fernandez, 2018;McHugh et al., 2018). Some articles suggested to conduct longitudinal studies, control group experiments, manipulation and causal studies to assess the differential effects of PR on consumer intentions and behaviors(Farivar et al., 2017;Hansen, Saridakis, & Benson, 2018;Loiacono, 2015;Saridakis et al., 2016; W. L.Wu & Li, 2018). ...
The social media has become an integral part of the marketing strategy. Marketing activities are now more inclined to online social networks (OSNs) than ever before in the history of the business. More and more consumers are joining OSNs for the sake of fun, socialization, and online buying. Every user perceives some degree of risk while joining and using OSNs. The current systematic literature review gathers and synthesizes research records of the last 9 years (2010–18) on consumer perceived risks concerning OSNs. We used PRISMA as a protocol to conduct this systematic literature review. The synthesis provides a detailed account of the perceived risk factors, their antecedents and consequences, risk‐reducing strategies, and future research potential in the said domain.
... First, while there are many studies looking at the privacy management of adults (ages 18 and older) on social media [16,33,45,61,66,72], there has been less of a focus on teenagers (ages [13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. This age group is particularly at risk for privacy violations on social media platforms such as being sent explicit content [5,49,68]. Second, for works that do focus on younger users [12,47], we aim to update our understanding of teenagers' privacy perceptions and take into account changes in social media practices, such as the shift to more visual content-sharing platforms [6]. ...
As teenage use of social media platform continues to proliferate, so do concerns about teenage privacy and safety online. Prior work has established that privacy on networked publics, such as social media, is complex, requiring users to navigate not only the technical affordances on the platform but also interpersonal relationships and social norms. We investigate how teenagers think about privacy on the popular image-sharing platform, Instagram. We draw on an online survey (N=144) and semi-structured interviews (N=21) with teenagers, ages 13-19, to gain a better understanding how teenagers configure privacy on the popular image-sharing platform Instagram and why they make these privacy decisions. Finally, based on our findings, we provide design recommendations towards the design of better privacy controls for promoting teenage safety online.
... Para i is denoted as ParaAf, and the parameter related to Extn is the output parameter ParaðeÞ. Cond i is the behavior constraint of the ith endpoint; Cond i init, preCond, postCond, and effect represent the initial condition, precondition, postcondition, and service of the endpoint behavior, an event that will be fired after successful execution [23]. ...
Big data is an unprecedented approach, in line with the development trend of today’ s era of rapid technological development; the ultimate purpose is to analyze and process the corresponding software and data of the huge data collected. This paper is aimed at studying the higher education management of big data application in the context of Internet + and at providing comprehensive optimization and development of Internet + and higher education management services. On the whole, the article first conducts a series of detailed analysis on the concepts of Internet +, big data, and higher education management based on the understanding of the general background, followed by an in-depth study of big data service methods and then the experimental design of higher education management cases based on big data. By comparing the two test scores of the two groups, the experimental results show that the average score of the two groups has changed from a difference of only 1.1 to a difference of 5 points, 58% of the students in the experimental group were satisfied with higher education management.
... Examples include increase of self-esteem through social media use (Burrow & Rainone, 2017), improved educational outcomes (Mayo, 2009), feelings of happiness and enjoyment during use (hedonic effects) (Bründl, Matt, & Hess, 2017), elevated convenience (Wang, Minor, & Wei, 2011) and support for people with limitations (Pollack, 2005), as well improved health (Wang et al., 2015). Negative effects can include, but are not limited to, cognitive strain (McHugh, Wisniewski, Rosson, & Carroll, 2018), dependence and addiction (especially with social media and online games) (Lee, Cheung, & Chan, 2020), deception (e.g., fake news) (Lazer et al., 2018;Pennycook & Rand, 2019), reduced academic performance (Adelantado-Renau et al., 2019), sleep loss (Woods & Scott, 2016), consumption of unhealthy foods and drinks (Bradbury, Turel, & Morrison, 2019), aggressive behaviours (Chan, Cheung, & Wong, 2019), feelings of being observed (Matt, Becker, Kolbeck, & Hess, 2019), and stress (Lim & Choi, 2017). Notwithstanding the contributions of such studies, we suggest that important research question to address in this domain are: What are the outcomes of successful, partially successful or failed interactions between technology affordances and SDT-based needs? ...
... It allows a perpetrator to trawl back through a target's history, gleaning information from shared photos and statuses and eventually using them to create harassing materials or even to impersonate the person identified as a suitable target [13]. Past studies have also shown that individuals who did not restrict access to their online profiles or who disclosed too much sensitive personal information online were considered more attractive and vulnerable by perpetrators [65,73]. Therefore, we hypothesize that: ...
Cyberbullying on social networking sites (SNS bullying) is an emerging societal challenge related to the deviant use of technologies. To address the research gaps identified in the literature, we draw on crime opportunity theory and the affordance perspective to propose a meta-framework that guides our investigation into SNS bullying. The meta-framework explains how SNS affordances give rise to the evaluation of favorable SNS environmental conditions for SNS bullying, which, in turn, promote SNS bullying. The research model was empirically tested using a longitudinal online survey of 223 SNS users. The results suggest that the evaluation of SNS environmental conditions predict SNS bullying, and SNS affordances influence the evaluation of these environmental conditions. This work offers a new theoretical perspective to study SNS bullying, highlighting the critical impacts of environmental conditions in shaping such behavior. It also provides actionable insights into measures that combat SNS bullying.
... where positive attitudes toward social media, shaped by adverse family context, increased reports of overall social media use and cyberbullying victimization, while general social media use was only marginally tied to sexting behavior. With more online exposure, exposure to risk also increases, sometimes to the level of traumatic experiences (McHugh et al., 2018). Youth with a history of one or more ACEs (particularly those with high ACE scores) are already at risk for behavior problems (Greeson et al., 2014) and, relatedly, future trauma (Barnett et al., 1996;Ogle et al., 2013). ...
The present study investigated the process by which family context shapes social media use and relationship violence. Qualtrics online panel data was self-reported by a representative sample of 18-year-old men and women (n = 702). Results show that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are significantly associated with youth feeling disconnected from parents. ACEs were also associated with higher-risk online behaviors (such as sexting and cyberbullying). In turn, cyberbullying victimization was associated with recent experiences of relationship violence. Parent-youth disconnectedness also contributed to less positive attitudes toward social media and hindered future-oriented thinking among youth. This lack of future orientation was directly associated with increased reports of relationship violence. Findings illustrate how childhood patterns of interpersonal difficulties can perpetuate into youth peer and romantic relationships. This is consistent with a toxic stress response where sources of strain, such as negative family or online experiences, can elicit negative emotions and affect, contributing to emotional, behavioral, or interpersonal problems.
... Teens also engage in active and communicative coping after they experience post-traumatic stress, regardless of risk type or frequency. Actively coping with stressful situations has been shown to enhance adolescent resilience and reduce long-term negative effects of risk exposure (McHugh, 2018;Kennedy, 2019). ...
Social media provides a sense of community, where people share beliefs, ideas and knowledge. It has become increasingly popular in different countries across the globe since their invention because of its benefit in the passage of critical and vital information especially during times of emergencies but the disadvantages almost outweighs the benefits. Immorality is a serious antisocial behaviour posing threat to education, life and well-being of Nigerian youths. Cyberbullying, lesbianism, homosexualism, pornography, derogatory and disparaging remarks usually leading to violent acts have been traced to improper use of social media. A morally decadent society is on its way to ruins. This article focuses on how social media affects the morality of individuals despite its benefits as well as the role of religion in curbing this menace bedeviling human race. It also provides solutions on a saner way of using social media. Research design used to gather information includes survey, review of different literatures and observation. The study shows that social media has undoubtedly been a large promoter of vices and has led to moral decadence in our society and there is also the need to keep shared contents positive. Technology and application designers, policy makers, parents, religious leaders and youths themselves have a responsibility to act ethically in order to limit the range of immoral and inappropriate materials that young people engage with in the social media in other to ensure a proper use and a tilt towards a more responsible and morally upright society.
... Dark sides of technology use refer to negative, typically unplanned consequences of the use of technologies (D'Arcy et al., 2014a;Tarafdar et al., 2015b). Such issues permeate in adult workers (Tarafdar et al., 2013;Tarafdar et al., 2015a;Turel and Serenko, 2010;Turel, 2017), young-adult students (Turel and Bechara, 2017;Turel and Qahri-Saremi, 2016;Turel and Qahri-Saremi, 2018) and children alike (McHugh et al., 2018;Turel and Bechara, forthcoming;. They can include a variety of issues pertaining to security and privacy, addiction, technostress, distraction, sleep hygiene, physical health, mental health and wellbeing, all of which may affect the use of digital technologies in the personal life domain and may be influenced by the Digitization of the Individual. ...
Digital technologies have diffused into many personal life domains. This has created many new phenomena that require systematic theorizing, testing and understanding. Such phenomena have been studied under the Digitization of the Individual umbrella and have been discussed in the Digitization of the Individual (DOTI) pre-ICIS workshop for the last three years. While prior years have focused on a variety of issues, this year we decided to put special emphasis on negative effects of the digitization of the individual, i.e., "the dark sides" of the digitization of the individual. This manuscript reports on a panel of three experts (in alphabetical order: John D'Arcy, Hamed Qahri-Saremi, and Monideepa Tarafdar) who presented their past research in this domain, as well as their outlook for future research and methodologies in research on the digitization of the individual. We introduce the topic, chronicle the responses of the panelists to the questions we posed, and summarize and discuss their response, such that readers can develop a good idea regarding next steps in research on dark sides of the digitization of the individual.
Technological developments and increased use of the internet created some risks for adolescents, such as online sexual solicitation (OSS). The aim of this study is to examine the sociodemographic risk factors of OSS and the association between OSS and psychiatric disorders in a psychiatric clinical sample. The study was conducted with 189 adolescents. The psychiatric evaluation was performed with DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed.) based psychiatric interviews and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire was used. OSS was defined by questions that are used in previous studies and that predict exposure to OSS. The participants were divided into two groups and compared. In addition, the Child Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index was answered by the participants who exposed to OSS. The prevalence of OSS was determined as 21.1%. Depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and secondary psychiatric diagnosis are significantly higher in adolescents who exposed to OSS. The rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) development after exposure to OSS was determined as 57.8%. These results indicate that OSS is a severe trauma that occurs at a high rate, and it is associated with psychiatric problems, especially PTSD.
The present study aims at identifying the mediator role of the self-perception and the moderator role of locus of control in the relationship between cyberbullying and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. Seventy-two emerging adults between 20 to 25 years old were included in the study, filling in a series of measuring instruments for cyberbullying, self-perception, locus of control and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. The results were statistically significant in terms of the role of self-perception as mediator in the relationship between cyber-victimization and depressive symptoms. Moreover, statistical results show that the global self-worth dimension of the self-perception construct and the school competence dimension are also mediators of the relationship between cyber-victimization and depressive symptoms. An increased level of cyber-victimization causes a low level of self-perception, which will cause an increased level of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. As regards the moderator role of locus of control, the results were not statistically significant in the case of the sample included in the study, locus of control does not moderate the relationship between cyberbullying and depression, anxiety and stress symptoms.
As youths engage in different activities on the Internet, it is inevitable that they are exposed to risky online contents that might bother or upset them. Previous research has shown that online resilience, or the ability to effectively cope with online risks and to deal with their negative consequences, protects youths against these feelings of harm that sometimes emerge after a risk experience. However, knowledge about the role of resilience in protecting youths' overall wellbeing seems rather limited. The current study analyzes new EU Kids Online data using structural equation modeling to fill this gap. The findings corroborate earlier findings that the more opportunities youths take up online, the more they are exposed to risky content. These risk encounters are negatively associated with wellbeing. Online resilience moderates this association and protects youths' overall wellbeing from being harmed by online risk exposure. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.
Using systematic review of the literature, we investigated how empirical studies have conceptualized at-risk or vulnerable youth digital information practices. A search for empirical studies published between January 2009 and December 2018 was carried out using keyword search. The results were filtered using a set of selection criteria, and 58 articles were selected for analysis. Using a codebook, each article in the corpus was read independently by two researchers. Ten areas of vulnerability were identified, together with the geographical and disciplinary origins of these studies. The study contributes a landscape view of key focal interests in studying the vulnerable, paying particular attention to where these studies are conducted as well as the disciplinary origins of these researchers. This work also highlights vulnerability areas that are missed or exhausted in specific countries and regions around the world, paving the way forward for specific future research agendas involving at-risk or vulnerable populations.
This study examined why people voluntarily left social media and organised their reasons into perceptional typology. Additionally, it explored relationships among perceptional types, self-esteem, motivation, and personality traits. This study utilised Q methodology, a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods that is ideal for analysing subjective elements like complex human perceptions or opinions in any situation. Fifty persons in their twenties who voluntarily closed or deactivated their social media account(s) for more than six months were recruited in Korea. Those who left social media of their own accord were sorted into four types. Significant differences in self-esteem and personality traits between cognitive types were also found. This study gave novel descriptive stories of those who quit social media, and categorised the opinions of those who voluntarily closed their accounts. This study extended previous research on social media fatigue and systematically analysed actual quitters’ perceptions based on ample discourse; it will theoretically contribute to the development of measuring scales and an understanding of the complexity of social media fatigue. For practical application, social media companies should pay a lot of attention to social media fatigue and quitters, come up with ways to minimise adverse effects and establish growth strategies.
Prior studies demonstrated that cyberbullying victimization is associated with mental health in adolescent samples. The purpose of this study was to examine the mediational roles of intrusive and deliberate rumination in the association between cyberbullying victimization, depression, and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) among Chinese adolescents in two-wave longitudinal data. A total of 661 Chinese junior high school students completed the measures at Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2). Adolescents' self-reports of cyberbullying victimization, rumination, depression, and PTSS were used in the analyses. The results showed that cyberbullying victimization was a positive predictor of depression and PTSS through the mediating variable of intrusive rumination, and revealed that deliberate rumination partially mediated the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and depression.
The present study aims at identifying the mediator role of the self-perception and the moderator role of locus of control in the relationship between cyberbullying and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. Seventy-two emerging adults between 20 to 25 years old were included in the study, filling in a series of measuring instruments for cyberbullying, self-perception, locus of control and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. The results were statistically significant in terms of the role of self-perception as mediator in the relationship between cyber-victimization and depressive symptoms. Moreover, statistical results show that the global self-worth dimension of the self-perception construct and the school competence dimension are also mediators of the relationship between cyber-victimization and depressive symptoms. An increased level of cyber-victimization causes a low level of self-perception, which will cause an increased level of depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms. As regards the moderator role of locus of control, the results were not statistically significant in the case of the sample included in the study, locus of control does not moderate the relationship between cyberbullying and depression, anxiety and stress symptoms.
The methods in which we study the online experiences of adolescents should be evidence-based and informed by youth. This is especially true when studying sensitive topics, such as the online risk behaviors of minors. We directly engaged 20 adolescents (ages 12-18) in the co-design of two different research methodologies (i.e., diary studies and analyzing social media trace data) for conducting adolescent online safety research. We also interviewed 13 of their parents to understand their perspectives. Overall, teens wanted to share their personal experiences and benefit society, while parents wanted researchers to tackle a topic that they felt was a prevalent problem for teens. Yet, they both had significant concerns regarding data privacy of the sensitive disclosures made by teens during such studies. Teens' feared getting in trouble. Participants emphasized the importance of developing a trusting relationship with the researcher to overcome these concerns. Participants also saw the potential for using the research study as a tool for risk-reporting and mitigation, where researchers could act as liaisons between the teens and other parties (e.g., counselors, law enforcement, parents) to share pertinent risk details and facilitate resources or even help teens directly by giving them strategies for mitigating online risks they encountered during the study. Our research delves into important ethical considerations for conducting risk-focused research with adolescents and uncovers the critical need for designing risk-based research for youth protection. We provide researchers with heuristic guidelines for conducting ethical research with vulnerable populations (i.e., adolescents) and keeping participants safe while doing so.
Visual presentation is a critical factor in ascertaining the purchase decision and behavior of mobile consumers. However, whether a simple or a complex interface is more effective in promoting purchase intentions remains inconclusive. This study combines task-technology fit (TTF) theory and technology acceptance model (TAM) to propose a comprehensive model suitable for mobile shopping circumstances to investigate the mechanism of implementation intentions of online shopping under visual and technical stimulation. We obtained 504 valid samples through questionnaire surveys and used structural equation modeling (SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methods to elucidate the complex causal patterns of implementation intentions of online shopping. The SEM results revealed that security precautions and user experience directly affected the implementation intentions of online shopping behavior, while interface visual complexity, visual search efficiency, and mobile payment indirectly affected the implementation intentions of online shopping. In addition, the fsQCA results revealed a causal asymmetric relationship between the driving mechanism of high and non-high implementation intentions of online shopping. All factors must be combined to play a role, and there exist three overall solutions to attain high implementation intentions of online shopping. Among them, we found neutral permutations of one solution, suggesting that the combination of high visual search efficiency and high security precautions is the core configuration that results in high implementation intentions of online shopping. Overall, this study broadens the application perspective of TTF and TAM, and provides certain practical enlightenment for e-commerce enterprise marketing.
This Element presents original research into how young people interact with violent extremist material, including terrorist propaganda, when online. It explores a series of emotional and behavioural responses that challenge assumptions that terror or trauma are the primary emotional responses to these online environments. It situates young people's emotional responses within a social framework, revealing them to have a relatively sophisticated relationship with violent extremism on social media that challenges simplistic concerns about processes of radicalisation. The Element draws on four years of research, including quantitative surveys and qualitative focus groups with young people, and presents a unique perspective drawn from young people's experiences.
Purpose – Online Medical Teams (OMTs) are gaining popularity as a new form of online health service to provide patients with prompt and guaranteed treatment. While the effective development of an OMT depends on physicians’ active participation, there is insufficient research on how a doctor gains from the OMT, especially from the multilevel and cross-level perspectives. In attempting to narrow this knowledge gap, we hypothesize multilevel and cross-level professional capital determinants of physicians’ performance in online healthcare communities (OHCs) through the lens of social exchange theory.
Design/methodology/approach – This study develops a cross-level model to explain the effects of individual and team professional capital on physicians’ performance. To test the research model and hypotheses, we leverage data of 10,398 physicians engaged in 2,611 popular OMTs in China in conjunction with the hierarchical linear model approach.
Findings – The results indicated that physicians’ status capital (SC) and decisional capital (DC) are positively related to their performance. The SC and DC of an OMT not only increase physicians’ performance but also indirectly strengthen the positive effect of physicians’ SC on their performance. In contrast, OMTs’ SC and DC lessen the importance of physicians’ DC in promoting their performance.
Originality/value – By studying the mechanism between professional capital and physicians’ performance, this study provides several contributions to theory and practice. Specifically, this study contributes to the extant professional capital research by uncovering the influencing pathways of professional capital on physicians’ performance from a cross-level perspective. These findings suggest physicians pay close attention to the strength and mechanism of OMTs' professional capital in improving their online performance.
As healthcare shifts towards the digital realm and healthcare delivery steers to patient-centric solutions, new privacy risks emerge. Such risks are acknowledged, but understanding and addressing them with privacy-enhanced technologies is practically challenging. This chapter describes privacy concerns and risks that emerge with the digitization of healthcare services, the availability of Internet-of-care-things, and the usage of online services for medical data. To ensure patients’ privacy, collaborative efforts from stakeholders are necessary. Patients, practitioners, and family members play an important role, along with medical organizations, including hospitals, insurance companies, and clinics. Privacy-preserving mechanisms go beyond the protection of patients’ data to the infrastructure of medical devices, networks, and systems. The data life cycle, from collection to disposal, must be considered when implementing privacy protections. Principles, policies, and regulations addressing privacy are limited and costly to implement, failing to cover novel technologies that collect and transmit medical data. In the USA, HIPAA is the de facto policy standard. Nevertheless, HIPAA disregards data collected by wearable sensors, fitness trackers, and smartwatches. It does not consider social media networks, mobile applications, and discussion forums where users share medical information. Lastly, genetic data available through online profiles rises privacy issues that are neither known nor regulated.
Recent evidence suggests social media can have a negative effect on adolescents. Whistle-blower testimony before the United States Congress in Fall 2021 emphasized the knowledge that social media companies have about these effects and their lack of action to make their platforms safer for adolescents. Our pediatric nursing expert, Dr. Beal, covers this controversy and how pediatric nurses can help parents promote better use of social media for their children.
Previous studies suggest that online resilience, which is the capacity to bounce back from adversity by, for instance, coping with online risks in an effective way, and digital literacy serve as potential safeguards for young people against harmful consequences of negative online experiences. However, research on these factors largely resides in separate bodies of literature. By means of a systematic review, we aim to integrate the literature on young people’s online resilience, digital literacy, and well-being in the context of negative online experiences, and we examine the associations among them. The review of 30 empirical articles shows that negative online experiences undermine young people’s well-being but are also essential to developing online resilience. While a limited number of studies have focused on the protective roles of online resilience and digital literacy and on the link between these two factors, the review identified that more research is needed to establish whether this is truly the case. The review enables us to propose guidelines for further empirical research on the relations among young people’s digital literacy, online resilience, and well-being.
Background:
Sexual and gender minority (SGM; people whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual and/or whose gender identity varies from what is traditionally associated with the sex assigned to them at birth) people experience high rates of trauma and significant disparities in anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Exposure to traumatic stressors, such as news related to COVID-19, may be associated with symptoms of anxiety and PTSD.
Objective:
to evaluate the relationship of COVID-19 news exposure with anxiety and PTSD symptoms in a sample of SGM adults in the United States (US).
Methods:
Data were collected between March 23 and August 2, 2020 from The PRIDE Study, a national, longitudinal, cohort study of SGM people. Regression analyses were used to analyze the relationship between self-reported news exposure and (1) symptoms of anxiety using the General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) 7-item Scale and (2) symptoms of COVID-related PTSD using the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R).
Results:
Our sample included a total of 3,079 SGM participants. Each unit increase in COVID-19-related news exposure was associated with greater anxiety symptoms (OR=1.77,95% CI [1.63, 1.93], P<.001) and 1.93 greater odds of PTSD (95% CI [1.74, 2.14], P<.001).
Conclusions:
Our study found that COVID-19 news exposure was positively associated with greater symptoms of anxiety and PTSD among SGM people. This supports previous literature in other populations where greater news exposure was associated with poorer mental health. Further research is needed to determine the direction of this relationship and to evaluate for differences among SGM subgroups with multiple marginalized identities.
Clinicaltrial:
Although social networking sites (SNS) may have some positive aspects, for example, connecting family members and friends who no longer live close enough to each other to meet in person, or for connecting people with similar health conditions who may need the support of others who understand and can manage the condition, or for groups of people with similar interests to engage and plan events and activities, there are also some possible negative aspects of engaging with SNS, for example, addiction or addictive behaviour, child pornography, cyberbullying, fake news, fear of missing out (FOMO), social comparisons, stalking, amongst many others, which can all lead to neglect of other duties, sleep deprivation, loneliness, isolation, depression, and so forth. The possible negative effects of engaging with SNS on the surface web will perhaps be also relevant to users of the deep and dark web. This article explores the dark side of social networking sites.
Although social networking sites (SNS) may have some positive aspects, for example, connecting family members and friends who no longer live close enough to each other to meet in person, or for connecting people with similar health conditions who may need the support of others who understand and can manage the condition, or for groups of people with similar interests to engage and plan events and activities, there are also some possible negative aspects of engaging with SNS, for example, addiction or addictive behaviour, child pornography, cyberbullying, fake news, fear of missing out (FOMO), social comparisons, stalking, amongst many others, which can all lead to neglect of other duties, sleep deprivation, loneliness, isolation, depression, and so forth. The possible negative effects of engaging with SNS on the surface web will perhaps be also relevant to users of the deep and dark web. This article explores the dark side of social networking sites.
Purpose
Digital technologies have diffused into many personal life domains. This has created many new phenomena that require systematic theorizing, testing and understanding. Such phenomena have been studied under the Digitization of the Individual (DOTI) umbrella and have been discussed in the DOTI pre-International Conference on Information Systems workshop for the last three years (from 2015 to 2017). While prior years have focused on a variety of issues, this year (2018) we decided to put special emphasis on negative effects of the DOTI, i.e., “the dark side” of the DOTI.
Design/methodology/approach
This manuscript reports on a panel of three experts (in alphabetical order: John D’Arcy, Hamed Qahri-Saremi and Monideepa Tarafdar) who presented their past research in this domain, as well as their outlook for future research and methodologies in research on the DOTI.
Findings
The authors introduce the topic, chronicle the responses of the panelists to the questions the authors posed, and summarize and discuss their response, such that readers can develop a good idea regarding next steps in research on the dark side of the DOTI.
Originality/value
The authors introduce the topic of the dark sides of DOTI and point readers to promising research directions and methodologies for further exploring this relatively uncharted field of research.
Over the past decade, cyber-sexual assault (also known as "nonconsensual pornography" or "revenge porn") has gained the attention of legal experts, the media, and most recently, the counseling profession. Whereas this nonconsensual sharing of sexually explicit images online, through social medial, or other forms of technology has been demonstrated to have significant impacts on victims, researchers have focused heavily upon the legality of these actions (i.e. should there be consequences for posting nude/semi-nude photos of non-consenting adults to the internet), but there has been a lack of attention to the mental health consequences of cyber-sexual assault on victims. The purpose of this study was to provide empirical support to how the psychological aftermath of cyber-sexual assault mirrors that of sexual assault and thus should be taken as seriously as sexual assault (clinically and legally). This study was conducted to investigate the direction and strength of relationships among latent variables associated with trauma symptomology (i.e., emotional dysregulation, trauma guilt, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression) in a sample of survivors of cyber-sexual assault. This investigation specifically tested whether modeling latent variables emotional dysregulation as measured by the Brief Version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale [DERS-16] (Bjureberg et al., 2015) or trauma guilt as measured by the Trauma-Related Guilt Inventory [TRGI] (Kubany et al., 1996) as the independent variable, where the remaining latent variables of post-traumatic stress disorder as measured by the Impact of Events Scale Revised [IES-R] (Weiss & Marmar, 1996) and depression as measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale Revised [CESD-R] (Eaton et al., 2004) were modeled as dependent variables, was a good fit for data collected from cyber-sexual assault survivors. Furthermore, the secondary analysis investigated whether modeling the latent variables of emotional dysregulation and trauma guilt as mediating variables on the direction and strength of relationship on the dependent variables of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression was a good fit for data collected from cyber-sexual assault survivors. To test the hypotheses that cyber-sexual assault survivors would show increased trauma symptomology similar to physical sexual assault survivors a structural equation model was developed. The results of the structural equation model (SEM) analyses identified trauma guilt contributed to 14% of the variance of emotional dysregulation; which then served to mediate the outcome variables most significantly. In fact, Emotional Dysregulation contributed to 67% of the variance in the levels of PTSD symptomology, and 44% of the variance in the levels of Depression.
Social comparisons on social networking sites can be problematic for some individuals. However, this has never been examined in a parenting context, where the pressure for mothers to portray themselves as “perfect parents” may be high. The aim of the current study was to examine associations between making social comparisons on social networking sites with mothers’ parenting, mental health, and romantic relationship outcomes. In the iMom Project, 721 mothers completed a number of questionnaires regarding their social media use, parenting behaviors, and health outcomes. Results revealed that making social comparisons on social networking sites was related to parenting outcomes (in the form of higher levels of parental role overload, and lower levels of parental competence and perceived social support), relationship outcomes (in the form of more conflict over social networking sites and perceiving less positive coparenting relationships) and higher levels of maternal depression. This study adds to a growing literature suggesting that making social comparisons online may be associated with a number of negative outcomes, and extends it to the context of mothering. This study has implications for the way that mothers use social media, specifically in the use of social comparisons.
There is an increasing awareness that social networking site (SNS) use includes a socio-psychologically positive and a negative side. However, research remains largely silent on which side dominates in driving SNS use. To address this gap and to better understand the nature of SNSs we examine the positive and negative drivers of SNS use in parallel. We draw on the uses and gratifications theory and place social enhancement and interpersonal connectivity as the socio-psychologically positive gratifications and exhibitionism and voyeurism as the adverse gratifications predicting SNS use. We further link these gratifications to two key psychological needs, namely self-presentation and the need to belong. We conceptualize our dependent variable, SNS use, as a multi-dimensional second-order construct that consists of content production, content consumption, amount of usage, and comprehensiveness of one's profile information. We use longitudinal data from Facebook users to test our research model. The results show that exhibitionism, voyeurism and interpersonal connectivity predict SNS use. Furthermore, the number of friends in the SNS decreases the effect of exhibitionism and increases the effect of social enhancement. Altogether, the role of exhibitionism and voyeurism in predicting SNS use underscores the need for increased awareness of the socio-psychologically dark side of SNSs.
Organizational researchers are increasingly interested in model ing the multilevel nature of organizational data. Although most organi zational researchers have chosen to investigate these models using traditional Ordinary Least Squares approaches, hierarchical linear models (i.e., random coefficient models) recently have been receiving increased attention. One of the key questions in using hierarchical linear models is how a researcher chooses to scale the Level-1 indepen dent variables (e.g., raw metric, grand mean centering, group mean centering), because it directly influences the interpretation of both the level-1 and level-2 parameters. Several scaling options are reviewed and discussed in light of four paradigms of multilevellcross-level research in organizational science: incremental (i.e., group variables add incremental prediction to individual level outcomes over and above individual level predictors), mediational (i.e., the influence of group level variables on individual outcomes are mediated by individual perceptions), moderational (i.e., the relationship between two individ ual level variables is moderated by a group level variable), and sepa rate (i.e., separate within group and between group models). The paper concludes with modeling recommendations for each of these paradigms and discusses the importance of matching the paradigm under which one is operating to the appropriate modeling strategy.
Objective:
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often underdiagnosed and undertreated among adolescents. The objective of this analysis was to describe the prevalence and correlates of symptoms consistent with PTSD among adolescents presenting to an urban emergency department (ED).
Methods:
A cross-sectional survey of adolescents aged 13-17years presenting to the ED for any reason was conducted between August 2013 and March 2014. Validated self-report measures were used to measure mental health symptoms, violence exposure and risky behaviors. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to determine adjusted differences in associations between symptoms consistent with PTSD and predicted correlates.
Results:
Of 353 adolescents, 23.2% reported current symptoms consistent with PTSD, 13.9% had moderate or higher depressive symptoms and 11.3% reported past-year suicidal ideation. Adolescents commonly reported physical peer violence (46.5%), cyberbullying (46.7%) and exposure to community violence (58.9%). On multivariate logistic regression, physical peer violence, cyberbullying victimization, exposure to community violence, female gender and alcohol or other drug use positively correlated with symptoms consistent with PTSD.
Conclusions:
Among adolescents presenting to the ED for any reason, symptoms consistent with PTSD, depressive symptoms, physical peer violence, cyberbullying and community violence exposure are common and interrelated. Greater attention to PTSD, both disorder and symptom levels, and its cooccurring risk factors is needed.
A review of 2,647 studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) yielded 476 potential candidates for a meta-analysis of predictors of PTSD or of its symptoms. From these, 68 studies met criteria for inclusion in a meta-analysis of 7 predictors: (a) prior trauma, (b) prior psychological adjustment, (c) family history of psychopathology, (d) perceived life threat during the trauma, (e) posttrauma social support, (f) peritraumatic emotional responses, and (g) peritraumatic dissociation. All yielded significant effect sizes, with family history, prior trauma, and prior adjustment the smallest (weighted r = .17) and peritraumatic dissociation the largest (weighted r = .35). The results suggest that peritraumatic psychological processes, not prior characteristics, are the strongest predictors of PTSD.
Previous research has suggested that adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit internet material (SEIM) may result in sexual uncertainty because the content of SEIM may conflict with what adolescents have learned about sex. However, research on which type of adolescent is most susceptible to the relation between SEIM use and sexual uncertainty is lacking. This study therefore investigated whether the relationship between SEIM use and sexual uncertainty depends on within-gender differences in sexual dispositions (i.e., impersonal sex orientation and hypergendered orientation). Using data from a representative two-wave panel survey among 1765 Dutch adolescents (aged 13-17), I found that SEIM use predicted sexual uncertainty only among girls with a low hypergendered orientation and girls with a relatively high impersonal sex orientation.
In this research, we investigate consumers' motivations for disclosing personal information to relationship-seeking marketers. We explore the impact of consumers' relationship perceptions, the nature of benefits offered by marketers in exchange for requested information, and the type of information requested on consumers' disclosure willingness, focusing on consumers' forecasts of 2 types of potential disclosure-related loss (i.e., loss of privacy and loss of face), which are shown to mediate this decision. The results of an experiment revealed that although participants with relatively deep relationship perceptions were more likely to reveal " privacy-related" personal information, they were more reluctant to reveal embarrassing information. The findings also suggest that although loyal customers found the exchange of privacy-related personal information for customized benefit offerings (relative to noncustomized offerings) attractive, the reverse was true for embarrassing information; these participants seemed to find the exchange of customized offerings for this latter type of information unattractive. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings for consumer researchers and relationship-seeking marketing practitioners.
Additive transformations are often offered as a remedy for the common problem of collinearity in moderated regression and polynomial regression analysis. As the authors demonstrate in this article, mean-centering reduces nonessential collinearity but not essential collinearity. Therefore, in most cases, mean-centering of predictors does not accomplish its intended goal. In this article, the authors discuss and explain, through derivation of equations and empirical examples, that mean-centering changes lower order regression coefficients but not the highest order coefficients, does not change the fit of regression models, does not impact the power to detect moderating effects, and does not alter the reliability of product terms. The authors outline the positive effects of mean-centering, namely, the increased interpretability of the results and its importance for moderator analysis in structural equations and multilevel analysis. It is recommended that researchers center their predictor variables when their variables do not have meaningful zero-points within the range of the variables to assist in interpreting the results.
Previous studies have reported associations between aggression and Internet addiction disorder (IAD), which has also been linked with anxiety, depression, and impulsiveness. However, the causal relationship between aggression and IAD has thus far not been clearly demonstrated. This study was designed to (a) examine the association between aggression and IAD and (b) investigate the mediating effects of anxiety, depression, and impulsivity in cases in which IAD predicts aggression or aggression predicts IAD. A total of 714 middle school students in Seoul, South Korea, were asked to provide demographic information and complete the Young's Internet Addiction Test (Y-IAT), the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11, the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Conners-Wells Adolescent Self-Report Scale. Three groups were identified based on the Y-IAT: the usual user group (n=487, 68.2%), the high-risk group (n=191, 26.8%), and the Internet addiction group (n=13, 1.8%). The data revealed a linear association between aggression and IAD such that one variable could be predicted by the other. According to the path analysis, the clinical scales (BAI, BDI, and CASS) had partial or full mediating effects on the ability of aggression to predict IAD, but the clinical scales had no mediating effect on the ability of IAD to predict aggression. The current findings suggest that adolescents with IAD seem to have more aggressive dispositions than do normal adolescents. If more aggressive individuals are clinically prone to Internet addiction, early psychiatric intervention may contribute to the prevention of IAD.
The flag is now a common mechanism for reporting offensive content to an online platform, and is used widely across most popular social media sites. It serves both as a solution to the problem of curating massive collections of user-generated content and as a rhetorical justification for platform owners when they decide to remove content. Flags are becoming a ubiquitous mechanism of governance—yet their meaning is anything but straightforward. In practice, the interactions between users, flags, algorithms, content moderators, and platforms are complex and highly strategic. Significantly, flags are asked to bear a great deal of weight, arbitrating both the relationship between users and platforms, and the negotiation around contentious public issues. In this essay, we unpack the working of the flag, consider alternatives that give greater emphasis to public deliberation, and consider the implications for online public discourse of this now commonplace yet rarely studied sociotechnical mechanism.
There is overwhelming research that demonstrates a positive correlation between various forms of adolescent bullying and subsequent and serious psychological repercussions such as anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and attempt as well as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; D’Augelli et al., 2005; Herek & Garnets, 2007; Mustanski, Garofalo, & Emerson, 2010). This study examines a particularly vulnerable adolescent and young adult population: lesbian, gay, and transgendered adolescents who have been bullied (Herek & Garnets, 2006). This study (n = 23) identifies which forms of bullying are more likely to manifest in subsequent symptoms of PTSD. Although there are numerous confounding variables, there are statistically significant findings that demonstrate which forms of bullying are more psychologically treacherous, and employing the PTSD checklist–civilian version (PCL) screening instrument, we learned who and what conditions might predict PTSD in our clients. Clinical implications for comprehensive PTSD screening and assessment are provided for mental health practitioners.
Delinquent and criminal behaviors are often the result of adverse conditions in the family and the neighborhood, or of affiliations with delinquent peers. However, case studies as well as large surveys have shown that even in adverse conditions, many children and adolescents do not engage in delinquency; they are “resilient.” In the explanation of criminal and antisocial behaviors, resilient individuals are those who have succeeded in overcoming at-risk circumstances. Resilience is also regarded as the process through which a person adjusts to at-risk situations in a successful manner. Promotive and protective factors stem from the community, family, school, peers, and individuals, and the configurations of these factors are important. In addition, protective factors are not universal. Risk factors and consequently, protective and resilience processes, may be different for children, adolescents, and adults, as well as for males and females. Finally, it is useful to distinguish primary resilience (i.e., as a preventive force in the onset of delinquency) from secondary resilience, which refers to a return to a crime-free life after a period of serious offending activity.
Online partner seeking is associated with sexual risk behavior among young adults (specifically men who have sex with men), but this association has yet to be explored among a probability sample of adolescents. Moreover, cell phone internet access and sexual risk taking online and offline have not been explored. A probability sample (N = 1,831) of Los Angeles Unified School District high school students was collected in 2011. Logistic regression models assessed relationships between specific sexual risk behaviors (online sexual solicitation, seeking partners online, sex with internet-met partners, condom use) and frequency of internet use, internet access points, and demographics. Students with cell phone internet access were more likely to report being solicited online for sex, being sexually active, and having sex with an internet-met partner. Bisexual-identifying students reported higher rates of being approached online for sex, being sexually active, and not using condoms at last sex. Gay, lesbian, and questioning (GLQ) students were more likely to report online partner seeking and unprotected sex at last sex with an internet-met partner. Additionally, having sex with an internet-met partner was associated with being male, online sexual solicitation, and online partner seeking. Internet- and school-based sexual health programs should incorporate safety messages regarding online sexual solicitation, seeking sex partners online, and engaging in safer sex practices with all partners. Programs must target adolescents of all sexual identities, as adolescents may not yet be "out," and bisexual and GLQ adolescents are more likely to engage in risky sex behaviors.
Abstract Cyberbullying victimization is associated with a range of emotional and behavioral outcomes for adolescents. However, previous research has shown that this type of victimization does not affect all individuals negatively. The factors that account for individual differences in reactions to the same online experiences are not well understood. Using a qualitative inductive approach, a set of strong themes relating to factors that either increased the severity of impact of cyberbullying victimization or buffered victims against the impact emerged from interviews with 25 adolescents aged 15-24 years. Themes related to publicity, anonymity of perpetrators, features of the medium, presence of bystanders, and individual level factors were identified as potential influences upon impact severity. The implications of these results for further research and for school/university cyberbullying prevention programs for victims, perpetrators, and bystanders are discussed.
Victimization on the Internet through what has been termed cyberbullying has attracted increased attention from scholars and practitioners. Defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the medium of electronic text” (Patchin and Hinduja 200653.
Patchin , J. W. and
S. Hinduja . 2006 . “Bullies Move Beyond the Schoolyard: A Preliminary Look at Cyberbullying.” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 4 ( 2 ): 148 – 169 . [CrossRef]View all references:152), this negative experience not only undermines a youth's freedom to use and explore valuable on-line resources, but also can result in severe functional and physical ramifications. Research involving the specific phenomenon—as well as Internet harassment in general—is still in its infancy, and the current work seeks to serve as a foundational piece in understanding its substance and salience. On-line survey data from 1,378 adolescent Internet-users are analyzed for the purposes of identifying characteristics of typical cyberbullying victims and offenders. Although gender and race did not significantly differentiate respondent victimization or offending, computer proficiency and time spent on-line were positively related to both cyberbullying victimization and offending. Additionally, cyberbullying experiences were also linked to respondents who reported school problems (including traditional bullying), assaultive behavior, and substance use. Implications for addressing this novel form of youthful deviance are discussed.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how WeChat addiction influences users’ physical, mental, and social health.
Design/methodology/approach
A national survey was conducted in China. A total of 1,058 responses were collected from 31 regions of China.
Findings
The regression results show that WeChat addiction is negatively associated with users’ physical, mental, and social health. The negative effects are significant even after adjusting for the effects of the Big Five personality traits, years of using WeChat, and demographic variables such as age, gender, education level, and monthly income. Years of using WeChat is not significantly related to users’ health. It is also found that the influence of WeChat addiction on health outcomes is sensitive to years of WeChat use. The influence is dormant when users have less than three years of WeChat usage, but starts to exhibit itself after three years.
Research limitations/implications
Addictive use of WeChat is associated with declining overall health among Chinese users. Given the cross-sectional nature of this study, definite causal relationship between WeChat addiction and health deterioration cannot be established. Controlled experiments are needed to further examine the causal effects of WeChat addiction.
Originality/value
WeChat is the most popular mobile social network service (SNS) in China, but its comprehensive impact on users’ health is rarely studied. This paper extends the extant research on SNS addiction by providing a deepened understanding of how mobile SNS addiction affects personal health in the unique context of WeChat, which provides an important contribution to the interdisciplinary research in public health, psychology, and information systems.
Purpose
Previous research has found support for depression and anxiety severity in association with both increased and problematic smartphone use. However, little research has explored transdiagnostic psychopathology constructs as mediators that may account for these relationships. Our primary aim was to test rumination as a possible transdiagnostic (cross-sectional) mediator in these relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
We recruited 296 college students to complete relevant web survey measures, including the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (for depression severity), Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (for social anxiety severity), Ruminative Thought Styles Questionnaire, Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (to measure levels of problematic smartphone use), and a measure of smartphone use frequency.
Findings
We found support for a structural model whereby the severity of depression and social anxiety accounted for variance in rumination, which in turn correlated with problematic smartphone use levels. Rumination accounted for relations between both depression and social anxiety severity with levels of problematic use.
Originality/value
We discuss the role of rumination as a possible mechanism between anxiety- and depression-related psychopathology levels with problematic smartphone use severity. This study is unique in exploring rumination in the context of problematic smartphone use.
We present a comprehensive and structured review of 132 peer-reviewed publications between the years of 2008 and 2015 to inform Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers and interaction designers about the current and multi-disciplinary knowledge on the topic of adolescent online safety and risks. Overall, we found that the existing literature has deeply studied the phenomena around adolescent online safety through an in-depth examination of the prevalence, perceptions, behaviors, characteristics, and outcomes associated with various online risk experiences. However, very few studies have moved beyond formative evaluations that inform design to novel design interventions or summative evaluations of new designs that serve to effectively change the status quo.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to draw on the elaboration likelihood model to examine location-based services (LBS) users’ privacy concern. Design/methodology/approach: Based on the 266 valid responses collected from a survey, structural equation modeling was employed to examine the research model. Findings: The results indicated that privacy concern receives a dual influence from both central cues and peripheral cues. Central cues include privacy policy and information quality, whereas peripheral cues include reputation and privacy seals. Privacy control moderates the effects of privacy policy and privacy seals on privacy concern. Research limitations/implications: The results imply that service providers need to consider both central and peripheral cues in order to mitigate users’ privacy concern associated with using LBS. Originality/value: Although previous research has found the effect of privacy concern on user adoption of LBS, it has seldom examined the influence processes of external factors on privacy concern. This research tries to fill the gap.
Social network profiles display individuals' posts and content left by their friends, such as wall posts and photo tags. Sometimes content posted and tagged by others is inconsistent with a person's desired self-image. One strategy that people use to increase the distance between their identity and content they don't like is to untag themselves. Tagging and untagging pose important questions for traditional theories of self-presentation, which describe the projection of one's own desired identity and others' response to that projection. Tagging reverses this role by allowing others to project a person's identity, and forcing that person to respond. Using de-identified, aggregated behavioral data from Facebook and a survey of 802 people, this paper aims to explore this shift by asking whether untagging occurs similarly to other self-presentation behavior and how people view this strategy. Results suggest that untagging differs from traditional self-presentation tactics in three key respects: it is used more by more experienced users, it occurs when there are gender and age differences between tagger and target, and it is seen as an easy way to mitigate the negative effects of annoying or embarrassing content.
Purpose
– Social capital has been identified as a valuable resource that can lead to various positive outcomes of social activities in both online and offline communities. The purpose of this paper is to argue that social capital can also be an important ingredient in the development of adverse outcomes, such as technology addiction.
Design/methodology/approach
– Based on social capital theory and prior research related to perceived integration, a research model that reflects the effects of online and offline social capitals as well as perceived integration on mobile social networking service (SNS) addiction was developed and empirically examined based on data collected from 458 mobile SNS users in China.
Findings
– The structural equation modeling analysis shows that online social interaction ties and online social supports positively affect mobile SNS addiction, whereas offline social supports and online social identification negatively affect mobile SNS addiction. In addition, perceived integration between online and offline channels by using mobile SNS positively influences online social interaction ties, offline social interaction ties, and mobile SNS addiction.
Practical implications
– From the practical perspective, the results of the study offer interesting implications for managing mobile SNS addiction. The study found that online social interaction ties and online social support positively influence mobile SNS addiction, whereas offline social support negatively influence mobile SNS addiction.
Social implications
– The mobile SNS users should invest more time to participate in offline social activities and maintain good social relationships with their family, colleagues, and friends in the real world.
Originality/value
– The present study has both theoretical and practical implications. From a theoretical perspective, unlike many previous studies tend to regard social capital as the predictor of positive outcomes of users’ social activities, the study contributes to the extant information systems literature by exploring the potential negative consequences of social capital on users’ social lives. The results of the study indicate that social capital is a significant predictor of mobile SNS addiction.
In our study, 68 teens spend two months reflecting on their weekly online experiences and report 207 separate risk events involving information breaches, online harassment, sexual solicitations, and exposure to explicit content. We conduct a structured, qualitative analysis to characterize the salient dimensions of their risk experiences, such as severity, level of agency, coping strategies, and whether the teens felt like the situation had been resolved. Overall, we found that teens can potentially benefit from lower risk online situations, which allow them to develop crucial interpersonal skills, such as boundary setting, conflict resolution, and empathy. We can also use the dimensions of risk described in this paper to identify potentially harmful risk trajectories before they become high-risk situations. Our end goal is to find a way to empower and protect teens so that they can benefit from online engagement.
Purpose of the study:
Communication contributes to increased stress, mortality, and decreased quality of life (QOL) for persons with dementia (PWD) and caregivers. PWD use communicative coping behaviors (CCBs) to manage the demands of the disease. However, most assessments neither look for nor give credit to communication behaviors. This is the first study to examine CCBs in the home environment as measured by the Communicative Coping Behavior Checklist (CCBC).
Design and methods:
This cross-sectional quantitative study included 26 dementia and 18 cognitively normal control dyads. Raters observed their partners' CCBs at home, over several weeks and completed the CCBC. We analyzed the endorsement rates (how often behaviors were observed by a rater) of emotion and activity-focused CCBs in dementia and control dyads.
Results:
The primary outcome was rate of CCB endorsement. Secondary outcomes included dementia diagnosis, cognitive status, depressive mood, life satisfaction (SWL) and QOL. Dementia dyads endorsed 11 of 23 CCBs significantly more than control dyads. Action-focused CCBs (p < .001) were more frequent than emotion-focused CCBs (p = .004) in dementia dyads. Specific CCBs such as humor correlated with higher caregiver QOL (p = .019) and PWD's SWL (p = .003). Another CCB, general humor, correlated with lower PWD's SWL (p = .024).
Implications:
This was the first study to examine CCBs in the home environment comparing dementia and control dyads. Higher endorsement rates of action-focused than emotion-focused CCBs were seen in dementia dyads. We conclude that attention to CCBs during treatment and care will improve QOL and SWL of PWD and caregivers.
Social media web sites allow users to share information, communicate with each other, network and interact but because of the easy transfer of information between different social media sites, information that should be private becomes public and opens the users to serious security risks. In addition, there is also massive over-sharing of information by the users of these sites, and if this is combined with the increased availability of location-based information, then all this can be aggregated causing an unacceptable risks and unintended consequences for users.
Many existing studies of social media focus on only one platform, but the reality of users' lived experiences is that most users incorporate multiple platforms into their communication practices in order to access the people and networks they desire to influence. In order to better understand how people make sharing decisions across multiple sites, we asked our participants (N=29) to categorize all modes of communication they used, with the goal of surfacing their mental models about managing sharing across platforms. Our interview data suggest that people simultaneously consider " audience " and " content " when sharing and these needs sometimes compete with one another; that they have the strong desire to both maintain boundaries between platforms as well as allowing content and audience to permeate across these boundaries; and that they strive to stabilize their own communication ecosystem yet need to respond to changes necessitated by the emergence of new tools, practices, and contacts. We unpack the implications of these tensions and suggest future design possibilities.
Studied personality as a conditioner of the effects of stressful life events on illness onset. Two groups of middle- and upper-level 40-49 yr old executives had comparably high degrees of stressful life events in the previous 3 yrs, as measured by the Schedule of Recent Events. One group of 86 Ss suffered high stress without falling ill, whereas the other group of 75 Ss reported becoming sick after their encounter with stressful life events. Illness was measured by the Seriousness of Illness Survey (A. R. Wyler et al 1970). Discriminant function analysis, run on half of the Ss in each group and cross-validated on the remaining cases, supported the prediction that high stress/low illness executives show, by comparison with high stress/high illness executives, more hardiness, that is, have a stronger commitment to self, an attitude of vigorousness toward the environment, a sense of meaningfulness, and an internal locus of control. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Anonymity has been considered one of the constructs that differentiate traditional bullying from cyberbullying; however, few published studies have actually tested how and why anonymity influences cyberbullying behavior longitudinally. We posit that aggressor-perceived anonymity predicts cyberbullying behavior and positive attitudes toward cyberbullying. Additionally, positive cyberbullying attitudes would mediate aggressor-perceived anonymity and cyberbullying behavior. The current study used a 4-wave longitudinal design over the course of one academic year on college-aged participants (N = 146 [at Wave 1]; average age = 19.21). Specifically, participants completed measures of anonymity, cyberbullying attitudes, and cyberbullying behavior 4 times approximately every 2 months. Results using path analysis showed (a) strong stability over time for the variables and (b) several mediated paths between Wave 1 anonymity and Waves 3 and 4 cyberbullying behaviors through Wave 2 cyberbullying attitudes. These results remained using both maximum likelihood estimation and bootstrapping techniques. Overall, the results showed that aggressor-perceived anonymity is an important risk factor for later cyberbullying behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
Objective:
The aim of this study is to evaluate the relation between suicidal ideation, allergic diseases, and excessive Internet use in Korean youth using a national representative dataset.
Methods:
Data from the Korean Youth Risk Behavior Web-Based Survey (KYRBWS), conducted by the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were used in this study. Complex sample logistic regression and structural equation modeling were performed to define the relation between suicidal ideation, allergic disease and excessive Internet use.
Results:
A total of 73,238 students participated in this survey. In Korea, 19.3% of adolescents had suicidal ideation in the previous year. Asthma (OR=1.23, 95% CI=1.15-1.32, p<0.01) and allergic rhinitis (OR=1.17, 95% CI=1.11-1.22, p<0.01) were identified as risk factors for suicidal ideation after adjusting for school and family factors. Structural equation modeling showed that excessive Internet use interacted with the association between allergic diseases and suicidal ideation.
Conclusion:
Allergy problems could positively affect suicidal ideation in Korean adolescents. Excessive Internet use could be a mediating factor between allergic disease and suicidal ideation.
Cyberbullying is an established threat to the well-being of youth worldwide. How victims cope with cyberbullying has the potential to buffer against negative effects. The present study is a systematic review of research on coping with cyberbullying to identify whether the process of coping is being used to identify pathways to resilience. In this review the process of coping with cyberbullying, the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, and to what degree existing studies have examined the process of coping were considered. Findings indicated that much of the prior literature has identified components of the process but few studies have looked at the process itself. Understanding the process of coping with cyberbullying has important implications for how victims appraise the threat of cyberbullying, select coping strategies, and perceive their ability to enact those strategies (self-efficacy). The need for additional research and an explanation of how a better understanding of the process is needed to design effective cyberbullying interventions are discussed.
This paper explores young people's expressed concerns about privacy in the context of a highly mediated cultural environment, mapping social media practices against axes of visibility and participation. Drawing on interdisciplinary conceptual resources from both the humanities and social sciences, we use ‘spectacles of intimacy’ to conceptualise breaches of privacy, mapping an emergent moral landscape for young people that moves beyond concerns with e-safety to engage with the production and circulation of audiences and value. The paper draws on data from a methodological innovation project using multi-media and mixed methods to capture lived temporalities for children and young people. We present a model that captures a moral landscape shaped by emotional concerns about social media, the affordances of those media and affective discourses emerging from young people's use of the media.
Most of the published research on cyberbullying has been conducted with children and adolescents, so little is known about cyberbullying in other populations. This study examined cyberbullying within an emerging adult population in a university setting (N = 282), and explored what coping strategies these individuals intended to use in response to future cyberbullying incidents. Blocking of the sender of the bullying message was found to be the most frequent intention to cope with cyberbullying among these emerging adults. It was also found that both gender and victimisation status (i.e., whether the emerging adult had, in the preceding twelve months, been a victim of cyberbullying) influenced coping strategy intentions. The implications for practice and future research are discussed.
© The Author(s) 2015.
A picture might be worth a thousand words, but someone can also pinpoint your X and Y coordinates on a map-even if you'd prefer otherwise. Just ask Internet security mogul John McAfee, creator of the famous McAfee Virus Scan software. His story illustrates how data embedded in digital photographs can lead to big trouble.
Intense media and policy focus on issues of online child protection have prompted a resurgence of moral panics about children and adolescents' Internet use, with frequent confounding of different types of risk and harm and little reference to empirical evidence of actual harm. Meanwhile, within the academic literature, the quantity and quality of studies detailing the risks and opportunities of online activity for children and young people has risen substantially in the past 10 years, but this is also largely focused on risk rather than evidence of harm. Whilst this is understandable given the methodological and ethical challenges of studying Internet-related harms to minors, the very concept of risk is dependent on some prior understanding of harm, meaning that without efforts to study what harms are connected with children's online experiences, discussions of risk lack a strong foundation. This article makes a key contribution to the field by reviewing available evidence about the scale and scope of online harms from across a range of disciplines and identifying key obstacles in this research area as well as the major policy implications. The findings are based on a review of 148 empirical studies. Results were found in relation to main types of harms: health-related harms as a result of using pro-eating disorder, self-harm or pro-suicide websites; sex-related harms such as Internet-initiated sexual abuse of minors and cyber-bullying.
Social media platforms have emerged as prominent information sharing ecosystems in the context of a variety of recent crises, ranging from mass emergencies, to wars and political conflicts. We study affective responses in social media and how they might indicate desensitization to violence experienced in communities embroiled in an armed conflict. Specifically, we examine three established affect measures: negative affect, activation, and dominance as observed on Twitter in relation to a number of statistics on protracted violence in four major cities afflicted by the Mexican Drug War. During a two year period (Aug 2010 - Dec 2012), while violence was on the rise in these regions, our findings show a decline in negative emotional expression as well as a rise in emotional arousal and dominance in Twitter posts: aspects known to be psychological markers of desensitization. We discuss the implications of our work for behavioral health, facilitating rehabilitation efforts in communities enmeshed in an acute and persistent urban warfare, and the impact on civic engagement.
Purpose:
To examine the relation between "sexting" (sending and sharing sexual photos online, via text messaging, and in person) with sexual risk behaviors and psychosocial challenge in adolescence.
Methods:
Data were collected online between 2010 and 2011 with 3,715 randomly selected 13- to 18-year-old youth across the United States.
Results:
Seven percent of youth reported sending or showing someone sexual pictures of themselves, in which they were nude or nearly nude, online, via text messaging, or in person, during the past year. Although females and older youth were more likely to share sexual photos than males and younger youth, the profile of psychosocial challenge and sexual behavior was similar for all youth. After adjusting for demographic characteristics, sharing sexual photos was associated with all types of sexual behaviors assessed (e.g., oral sex, vaginal sex) as well as some of the risky sexual behaviors examined-particularly having concurrent sexual partners and having more past-year sexual partners. Adolescents who shared sexual photos also were more likely to use substances and less likely to have high self-esteem than their demographically similar peers.
Conclusions:
Although the media has portrayed sexting as a problem caused by new technology, health professionals may be more effective by approaching it as an aspect of adolescent sexual development and exploration and, in some cases, risk-taking and psychosocial challenge.
Purpose of review:
To examine cyber safety for adolescent girls, specifically issues around the definition, measurement, prevalence, and impact of cyberbullying, harassment, sexting, pornography, and solicitation.
Recent findings:
Despite some continuing disagreements about definition, especially around cyberbullying and cyber harassment, and about measurement, it is clear that a significant minority of adolescents have potentially or actually harmful experiences on the Internet. There are important sex differences, and those exploited by pornography are mainly women. On some measures, these dangers have increased in recent years, although the extent can be exaggerated. The nature of Internet grooming appears to be changing. Negative effects are well documented in a range of domains, although more longitudinal studies are needed. Individual coping strategies, family and school-based support, and legal actions, all have a role to play in minimizing these dangers.
Summary:
Cyber safety is an important issue. More research and action is needed, and interventions need to be evaluated for their effectiveness.
The ability to detect deceptive statements in predatory communications can help in the identification of sexual predators, a type of deception that is recently attracting the attention of the research community. Due to the intention of a pedophile of hiding his/her true identity (name, age, gender and location) its detection is a challenge. According to previous research, fixated discourse is one of the main characteristics inherent to the language of online sexual predation. In this paper we approach this problem by computing sex-related lexical chains spanning over the conversation. Our study shows a considerable variation in the length of sex-related lexical chains according to the nature of the corpus, which supports our belief that this could be a valuable feature in an automated pedophile detection system.
Aims and scope:
The usage of mobile phones and the internet by young people has increased rapidly in the past decade, approaching saturation by middle childhood in developed countries. Besides many benefits, online content, contact or conduct can be associated with risk of harm; most research has examined whether aggressive or sexual harms result from this. We examine the nature and prevalence of such risks, and evaluate the evidence regarding the factors that increase or protect against harm resulting from such risks, so as to inform the academic and practitioner knowledge base. We also identify the conceptual and methodological challenges encountered in this relatively new body of research, and highlight the pressing research gaps.
Methods:
Given the pace of change in the market for communication technologies, we review research published since 2008. Following a thorough bibliographic search of literature from the key disciplines (psychology, sociology, education, media studies and computing sciences), the review concentrates on recent, high quality empirical studies, contextualizing these within an overview of the field.
Findings:
Risks of cyberbullying, contact with strangers, sexual messaging ('sexting') and pornography generally affect fewer than one in five adolescents. Prevalence estimates vary according to definition and measurement, but do not appear to be rising substantially with increasing access to mobile and online technologies, possibly because these technologies pose no additional risk to offline behaviour, or because any risks are offset by a commensurate growth in safety awareness and initiatives. While not all online risks result in self-reported harm, a range of adverse emotional and psychosocial consequences is revealed by longitudinal studies. Useful for identifying which children are more vulnerable than others, evidence reveals several risk factors: personality factors (sensation-seeking, low self-esteem, psychological difficulties), social factors (lack of parental support, peer norms) and digital factors (online practices, digital skills, specific online sites).
Conclusions:
Mobile and online risks are increasingly intertwined with pre-existing (offline) risks in children's lives. Research gaps, as well as implications for practitioners, are identified. The challenge is now to examine the relations among different risks, and to build on the risk and protective factors identified to design effective interventions.
Malaysians were reported to have the most number of Facebook friends, spend more time on Facebook and might be addicted to Facebook as well. This paper explored Facebook usage pattern, motivations and psychological/behavioural factors affecting the users. A focus group study was first conducted to explore motives to use Facebook and symptoms related to excessive Facebook usage. The themes emerging from this were then used in addition to Uses and Gratifications theory and Brown’s Addiction framework to further explore Facebook usage pattern, motivations and behavioural issues among a large group of students. Results show that Malaysian students use Facebook actively, similar to other studies done worldwide. Factor analyses yielded five motives to use Facebook: Social Networking, Psychological Benefits, Entertainment, Self Presentation and Skill Enhancement. As for the behavioural symptoms, Salience, Loss of Control, Withdrawal and Relapse and Reinstatement emerged as the four main symptoms. These results show that in general Malaysian students use Facebook for similar motives as reported in literature. However, it is interesting to note that they also exhibited behavioural symptoms, such as Salience, Loss of Control, Withdrawal and Relapse and Reinstatement due to excessive Facebook usage.
To examine the relationship between nurses' exposure to workplace bullying and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptomology and the protective role of psychological capital (PsyCap).
Workplace bullying has serious organisational and health effects in nursing. Few studies have examined the relation of workplace bullying to serious mental health outcomes, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Even fewer have examined the effect of intrapersonal strengths on the health impact of workplace bullying.
A survey of 1205 hospital nurses was conducted to test the hypothesized model. Nurses completed standardized measures of bullying, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and PsyCap.
A moderated regression analysis revealed that more frequent exposure to workplace bullying was significantly related to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptomology regardless of the PsyCap level. That is, PsyCap did not moderate the bullying/PTSD relationship in either group. Bullying exposure and PsyCap were significant independent predictors of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms in both groups. Efficacy, a subdimension of PsyCap, moderated the bullying/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder relationship only among experienced nurses.
Workplace bullying appears to be predictive of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptomology, a serious mental health outcome.
Workplace bullying is a serious threat to nurses' health and calls for programmes that eliminate bullying and encourage greater levels of positive resources among nurses.
Prior research has utilized the Zung Depression Inventory (ZDI) and found that moderate to severe rates of depression coexist with pathological Internet use.1 Although the ZDI was utilized for its expediency with on-line administration, its limitations include poor normative data and less frequent clinical use. Therefore, this study utilized the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), which has more accurate norms and frequent usage among dual diagnostic patient populations. An on-line survey administered on a World Wide Web site utilized the BDI as part of a larger study. A total of 312 surveys was collected with 259 valid profiles from addicted users, which again supported significant levels of depression to be associated with pathological Internet use. This article discusses how a treatment protocol should emphasis the primary psychiatric condition if related to a subsequent impulse control problem such as pathological Internet use. Effective management of psychiatric symptoms may indirectly correct pathological Internet use. Prior research has identified the existence of addictive Internet use, which has been associated with significant social, psychological, and occupational impairment.2 Addicts in this study used the Internet an average of 38 hr per week for nonacademic or non-employment purposes, which caused detrimental effects such as poor grade performance among students, discord among couples, and reduced work performance among employees. This is compared to non-addicts who used the Internet an average of 8 hr per week with no significant consequences reported. Predominantly, the interactive capabilities of the Internet such as chat rooms or on-line games were seen to be the most addictive. This type of behavioral impulse control failure, which does not involve an intoxicant, was seen as most akin to pathological gambling. Therefore, a formal term utilized in this article is pathological Internet use (PIU) to refer to cases of addictive Internet use. Research in the addictions field has shown that psychiatric illnesses such as depression are often associated with alcoholism3 and drug addiction.4 Further, research has shown that other addictive behaviors overlap with depression-for example, eating disorders5'6 and pathological gambling.7-9 Although the concept of Internet addiction has gained credibility among mental health professionals both in academic and clinical realms, little research has been conducted to examine if similar underlying psychiatric illnesses may contribute to such Internet abuse.1 Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess depression and compare such results to other established dual diagnostic populations. Young1 utilized the Zung Depression Inventory10 (ZDI), which suggested that increased levels of depression are associated with moderate to severe levels of PIU. However, the ZDI yields limited clinical utility; therefore, this study used the Beck Depression Invento#1 (BDI) because it is a more psychometrically and clinically valid
