The Association of Cyber Victimization to Classroom Peer Social Competence

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Social Relationships

Abstract

Use of the internet dramatically affects children’s peer social relations with interactions increasingly being conducted online as well as face-to-face.  Virtual technologies have both positive and negative effects on the social lives of children. Some children may benefit from the ease and relative anonymity offered by virtual interactions. A substantial negative impact is the use of the technology to target other children to harm them. Cyber victimization is defined as being the recipient of an act of aggression through computers, cell phones, or other electronic devices. The present research extends understanding of cyber victimization in two ways. First, the design of this research allows for examining the extent of cyber victimization to traditional classroom peer social competence, controlling extent of traditional classroom victimization. Second, the preponderance of research on cyber victimization is conducted with adolescents. Much less is known about the effects of being a cyber victim during childhood; third through fifth graders were assessed here.
Participants include 193 students (Boys = 90; Girls = 103), Grades 3-5, attending a university-affiliated public elementary school in the midsouth. Children were tested in group sessions by classroom. A self-report questionnaire assessed cyber victimization. Traditional victimization was evaluated using the Class Play procedure with peer nominations (unlimited nominations). Dependent variables included social competence at the intra-individual level (global self-worth, loneliness, and peer optimism); at the relationship level (number of classroom mutual friends); and at the group level (classroom peer nominations of sociability behaviors and of popularity).
A multi-group (Group = Gender) path analysis was performed using peer nominations for traditional victimization and self-reports of cyber victimization to predict the other six, classroom social competence measures. Gender effects were revealed as depicted in Figure 1a for boys and 1b for girls. For both boys and girls, extent of cyber victimization was negatively related to peer optimism and positively related to loneliness, and extent of traditional victimization was negatively related to sociability behavior nominations. For boys, traditional victimization was negatively related to popularity nominations. For girls, cyber victimization was negatively related to popularity and to sociability nominations. In sum, the negative associations of cyber victimization to classroom peer relations was considerably more extensive for girls than for boys.  Importantly, cyber victimized boys showed classroom self or individual effects. Cyber victimized girls also showed these, but also experienced negative, group level classroom effects.
The present study evaluated the association of cyber victimization to classroom measures of peer social competence for a sample of elementary-school aged children. It should be noted that the model tested statistically evaluated the effects of cyber victimization on the social competence variables controlling for the effects of traditional victimization. Individual characteristics of both boys and girls were affected (i.e., peer optimism and loneliness). Girls were affected more generally than boys; effects related to peer group level evaluations (peer sociability behavior nominations and popularity). Neither global self-worth nor number of mutual friends was related to extent of being a cyber victim.

Authors

• Madeline Rae Salton, University of Memphis
  Presenting Author

• Robert Washington, University of Memphis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Robert Cohen, University of Memphis
  Non-Presenting Author