Secondary Traumatic Stress as a Lens to Understand Vicarious Online Discrimination among Diverse Late Adolescents

• In Event: 3-172 - Online Discrimination and Adolescent Development: Better Understanding Mechanisms of Influence and Opportunities for Intervention

Integrative Statement

Racism is one of the leading contributors to health outcomes for youth of color in the United States (Priest et al., 2013). One context in which these youth report experiencing racism is online (Rideout et al., 2016) and research indicates that more vicarious online experiences of racism are associated with reduced well-being (Tynes et al., 2016). Yet, the processes by which vicarious online discrimination may be associated with adolescent well-being merit further investigation if we wish to disrupt their negative sequelae. The race-based traumatic stress process (Carter, 2007) is informative, yet race-based trauma research has largely focused on direct, rather than vicarious, experiences with racism. The present investigation examined secondary traumatic stress, operationalized as individually experienced trauma from indirect exposure to traumatic events, as one process linking vicarious online discrimination and adolescent well-being. The current investigation tested the following hypotheses: 1) secondary traumatic stress will mediate the association between vicarious online discrimination and well-being outcomes, and 2) the association between vicarious online discrimination and secondary traumatic stress will be stronger among adolescents of color compared to white adolescents. Data came from a larger study of 259 diverse late adolescents ages 18 - 22 (M age = 19.53; 65% female; 42% youth of color) attending a small private southeastern college. Participants completed an online survey between September 2016 and May 2018 in which they self-reported their experiences of vicarious online discrimination (Tynes et al., 2008; α = .84), psychosomatic symptoms (Harris et al., 2009; α = .85), symptoms of anxiety (Beck et al., 1988; α = .92) and depression (Poulin et al., 2005; α = .84), and the amount of secondary traumatic stress they experienced in response to seeing online discrimination utilizing a modified version of the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (Bride et al., 2004; α = .93). Data were analyzed using a moderated mediation path analysis model that employed maximum likelihood estimation (Figure 1). The model was a good fit to the data (CFI= .99, TLI =.97, RMSEA=.06). Results indicated that secondary traumatic stress mediated the association between vicarious online discrimination and psychosomatic (indirect effect = .09, p < .01), depressive (indirect effect = .10, p < .01), and anxiety (indirect effect = .09, p < .01) symptoms. Furthermore, race/ethnicity moderated the association between vicarious online discrimination and secondary traumatic stress (Figure 2) such that the association between discrimination and stress was stronger for youth of color (white: B = 2.09, p < .01, youth of color: B = 4.20, p <.001). Our results suggest that online racism may be viewed as an epidemic in that one person’s exposure to racist images, videos, and/or text may become a traumatizing event and that trauma may be multiplied exponentially across social network, especially among adolescents of color. The findings of this research, however, indicate that policies and practices aimed at reducing online racism will not just benefit adolescents of color as findings show that vicarious exposure to online discrimination may be harmful to white adolescents, as well.

Authors

• Vanessa Volpe, Ursinus College
  Presenting Author

• Athena Gainey, Ursinus College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alexa Beacham, Ursinus College
  Non-Presenting Author