The Association between Online Vicarious Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Student Subjective Wellbeing

• In Event: Understanding and Mitigating the Effects of Discrimination During Adolescence

Abstract

Young people are known to spend a great deal of time in digital spaces (Odgers et al., 2020). Although youth may enjoy going online to visit social media sites and communicate with peers (Twenge et al., 2019), they may also be exposed to harmful virtual interactions and media.

Racial/ethnic online discrimination is defined as “denigrating or excluding an individual on the basis of race through the use of symbols, voice, video, images, text, and graphic representation … [which can occur] in social networking sites, chat rooms, discussion boards … text messaging, web pages, online videos, music, and online games” (Tynes et al., 2012, p. 344). The impact of online vicarious discrimination on academic outcomes among youth is an understudied area, especially during shifts to online learning during COVID-19. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of online vicarious racial/ethnic discrimination on student subjective wellbeing, as well as to examine whether that effect was exacerbated by online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

Data were collected by the Character Lab Research Network, an organization that collaborates with schools to collect data on behalf of researchers, during the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2021. Participants included 10-15-year-old 6th-8th grade adolescents (626 girls, 600 boys), who self-identified as Hispanic (40%), White (38%), Black (12%), Asian (6%), multiracial/ethnic (4%), and American Indian or Pacific Islander (> 1%).

Online Vicarious Discrimination (adapted from Tynes et al., 2008). Participants were first presented the following definition: “When we refer to digital media, this includes text messaging, online chat, discussions forums, online games, social network sites, and other digital spaces.” Then, participants responded to seven questions about online vicarious discrimination on a scale from 0 (Never) to 3 (Very often) (α = .93).

Student Subjective Wellbeing. Four subscales derived from the Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (Renshaw et al., 2014) were used to measure student perceptions of wellbeing in the school context. Subscales included joy of learning (α = .85), school connectedness (α = .80), educational purpose (α = .81), and academic efficacy (α= .91).

Control variables included age, gender (girls = 0, boys = 1), learning context (online = 1, in person = 0), free or reduced-price lunch (1 =Yes, 0 = No), English Language Learner (1 = ELL, 0 = Not an ELL), Racial/Ethnic Minority (non-Hispanic White = 0, all other participants = 1), and language spoken at home (language other than English = 1, English =0).

Results

Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that online vicarious discrimination was negatively associated with all four dimensions of student subjective wellbeing (i.e., joy of learning, school connectedness, educational purpose, academic efficacy). Online learning was positively associated with joy of learning, educational purpose, and academic efficacy. The interaction between online vicarious discrimination and online learning significantly predicted only joy of learning and educational purpose, suggesting the online context may exacerbate the effect of online vicarious discrimination on some aspects of wellbeing.

The findings provide insight into how experiences of online discrimination and learning context contribute to students’ subjective wellbeing.

Authors

• Diana Meter, Utah State University
  Presenting Author

• Justin Worley

• Alysha Ramirez Hall, University of California, Davis

• Tyler Renshaw