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Too Connected to Being Connected? Adolescents’ Social Media Emotional Investment Moderates the Association between Cybervictimization and Internalizing Symptoms

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Abstract

This study examined whether the association between cybervictimization and internalizing symptoms was moderated by adolescents’ emotional connectedness to their social media. Participants were 288 adolescents (54.9% male participants) with (n = 151) and without (n = 137) attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) between the ages of 13 and 15 years (M = 14.09, SD = 0.36). Adolescents reported on social integration and emotional connection (SIEC) to social media and parents reported on their impression of their adolescent’s SIEC to social media. Adolescents also reported on cybervictimization experiences and internalizing symptoms. Adolescents with ADHD had higher cybervictimization scores than adolescents without ADHD and were also more likely to report multiple experiences of cybervictimization over the past month. Emotional investment in social media moderated the relations between cybervictimization and internalizing symptoms such that cybervictimization was associated with higher anxiety and depression symptoms at higher levels of emotional investment in social media. Results were consistent across both parent and adolescent report of social integration and emotional connection to social media. These findings indicate that cybervictimization may be associated with negative outcomes specifically among adolescents with a strong emotional connection to their social media use.

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  1. We also tested the three-way interactions of cybervictimization, SIEC to social media, and ADHD group status were also tested to explore whether any moderating effect of emotional connectedness to social media is further moderated by ADHD group status. None of the four analyses indicated a significant three-way interaction (all ps > .05), indicating that the interaction between cybervictimization and SIEC to social media was not different for adolescents with or without ADHD. Furthermore, all findings were unchanged when study site was also included as a covariate (all ps > .05).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by award number R305A160126 from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), U.S. Department of Education. Stephen Becker is supported by award number K23MH108603 from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the IES or the NIMH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Nicholas P. Marsh & Stephen P. Becker

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Maryland College Park, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Nicholas P. Marsh

  3. The Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carrboro, NC, USA

    Nicholas D. Fogleman

  4. Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Joshua M. Langberg

  5. Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Stephen P. Becker

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  1. Nicholas P. Marsh
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Correspondence to Stephen P. Becker.

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The Institutional Review Boards at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Virginia Commonwealth University approved this study.

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Parents and adolescents provided informed consent and assent, respectively, for participation in this study.

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Marsh, N.P., Fogleman, N.D., Langberg, J.M. et al. Too Connected to Being Connected? Adolescents’ Social Media Emotional Investment Moderates the Association between Cybervictimization and Internalizing Symptoms. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 50, 363–374 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00867-0

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