The difference in mediated effect between cyberbullying and cybervictimisation under the influence of problematic social media use

Abstract

The influence between cyberbullying (CB) and cybervictimisation (CV) is known to be two-way, but the prominence of the two directions remains unclear especially under the influence of another factor. Uncovering the mystery helps policy makers decide how to allocate the limited resource between interventions against children CB and CV. Since social media becomes increasingly relevant to children cyberaggression, this study utilises two independent mediation models to examine how problematic social media use (PSMU) potentially influence CB-induced-CV (Model 1) and CV-induced-CB (Model 2) and the difference in the proportions of mediated effect between models. As a part of Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, this study included a total of 11178 children (2643 from Hong Kong and 8535 from Netherland). Results showed that the paths in the models did not differ between culture. In Model 1, CB was a significant partial mediator between PSMU and CV, βindirect = .08, p < .001, and CV was a significant partial mediator between PSMU and CB in Model 2, βindirect = .06, p < .001. However, CB mediated 52.78% whilst CV mediated only 28.06% of the total effect from PSMU in respective models. The ratio of mediated effect proportions between models is 1.88:1, indicating that under the influence of PSMU, CB-induced-CV is nearly twice as prominent as CV-induced-CB in a relative sense. Implications on cyberaggression research assumptions are discussed.