Protected in Many Ways: Social Support and Multiple Victimizations in Diverse Racial-Ethnic Minority Adolescents

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

Victimization experiences like bullying/harassment and racially/ethnically targeted discrimination —occurring online and/or offline— have been linked with poorer youth adjustment outcomes (Tynes et al., 2014). We have recently shown (Weinstein, Jensen, and Tynes, 2020, same dataset) that youth who are victimized in one domain are more likely to be victimized in others, and to continue being victimized over multiple years. In light of the harmful and persistent nature of victimization, it is important to identify factors that reduce victimization experiences over time (Zych et al., 2019). Social support is one such protective factor which has been shown to reduce the frequency of being victimized or bullied offline (Lereya et al., 2013) as well as reduce experiences of cybervictimization (Kowalski et al., 2014). However, less is known about what source of support is most protective for multiple types of victimization in online and offline contexts.

The present study examines whether family and peer support decrease risk for online and offline victimization experiences over time. Specifically, we employed auto-regressive cross-lagged panel modeling to examine concurrent and longitudinal associations between online and offline bullying/harassment, online and offline racial discrimination, and social support from family and peers. Models used MLR estimation with standard errors robust to non-normality, FIML to account for missing data, and controlled for relevant demographic covariates: gender, grade level, parental education, and race/ethnicity. Data were drawn from the Teen Life Online Survey (Tynes et al., 2008) which followed diverse teens over three waves beginning in 2010 (N = 735; Avg Age at wave 1= 14.47 years; 54% female; 46% Black; 32% Latinx, 22% other non-white race/ethnicity).

As seen in Figure 1 and Table 1, family support is protective both cross-sectionally and longitudinally: youth who reported receiving more family support at Wave 1 reported lower levels of multiple types of victimization (online bullying/harassment, online and offline racial discrimination) concurrently, with longitudinal associations to Wave 2 for online and offline bullying/ harassment as well as online racial discrimination. Youth who reported more family support at Wave 2 also reported less offline bullying/harassment at Wave 3. Although family and peer support co-occur frequently (correlation = .56 at Wave 1), youth who reported more peer support did not report lower levels of victimization over time (though they did report fewer concurrent Wave 1 experiences of offline bullying/harassment, and both online and offline racial discrimination). In fact, the only longitudinal association which did emerge was opposite the hypothesized direction: youth with more Wave 1 peer support reported more Wave 2 online racial discrimination experiences.

Overall, family support seems to be more protective than peer support in reducing perceived victimization experiences over time in adolescence. The lack of evidence here for peer support as a protective factor may be because family and peer support often co-occur, and peer support alone may be insufficient. Future research should also examine whether positive online support experiences may provide additional benefit, particularly against online victimization.

Authors

• Mariani Weinstein, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Michaeline Jensen, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brendesha Tynes, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Author