The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way people live, work, and socialize, and has perhaps even altered the reasons why they harass one another. To our knowledge, the present study is one of the first studies to address cyberbullying among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional objectives were to reveal the causes and types of cyberbullying that university students from East and Southeast Asia have experienced because of COVID-19, and to explore the relationship between cyberbullying and self-esteem. Of the 525 university students from different East and Southeast Asian countries and varied academic backgrounds who were invited to participate in the study, 310 students agreed and were included. Moreover, a sample of 400 Jordanian undergraduate students, who participated in cyberbullying against East and Southeast Asian students on social media, answered a questionnaire to reveal their reasons for engaging in bullying during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also examined the relationship and differences between sex and nationality. The findings revealed that cyberbullying contributed to low self-esteem in students of East and Southeast Asian descent who were victims of bullying. Men were more likely to be bullies and cyberbullies than women. The bullies admitted that the main reason for cyberbullying was humor, and that they were unaware that their harsh or aggressive behaviors could be categorized as bullying. This study aimed to make a positive contribution to the scant literature on cyberbullying/cyber racism among university students in an Arab country. We believe our findings can help guide the formulation of policies and solutions that address cyberbullying, especially between resident and foreign students.

Gender stereotypes can influence electronic dating violence (EDV) because the victims’ experiences with abusers depict crucial social mechanisms concerning relational dependency and unequal power relations between men and women, making it difficult for women to resist, report, or escape cyber abuse. In the Arab context, cyber abuse in romantic relationships has not been sufficiently examined. This study investigated female experiences of EDV through a qualitative exploratory descriptive approach. Participants experienced several short- and long-term negative psychological and emotional behavioral responses. Our findings validate that EDV heightened the probability of intimate partner violence definitively via psychological, emotional, verbal, and physical abuse. Their resistance strategies differed according to the extent and nature of the abuse. None of the participants sought help from family due to fear of being killed or forced out of university, and realizing that they would continue to experience multiple forms of abuse. Rather, they either sought help from female professors at the university or paid the abuser to be left alone. Further, they engaged in protective behaviors to block their abusive partner’s access to them, consulted an Information Technology expert, and secretly requested assistance from the police. Preference for controlling and dominant roles, gaining monetary benefits, sexual exploitation, peer pressure, and revenge and anger due to abandonment were the leading motivations for abuse. Female students in their first year of university, those who lived in a disjointed family environment, or those who suffered abuse from their families were particularly susceptible to being victimized. Moreover, passwords shared with others or accounts left open on others’ devices also enabled EDV. Hence, universities must conduct awareness sessions, for female students, on how to manage emotions and safe communication on social media and build healthy friendships and relationships. Curricula, seminars, workshops, and courses in the Jordanian educational sector should include programs and interventions that challenge perceived gender norms. These results have significant practical and clinical implications that help understand EDV in a poorly understood context and provide the groundwork for further research on the EDV problem in Jordan, addressing a lacuna in the literature on violence against Jordanian women.

Battered husband syndrome has not been investigated in an Arab context, despite evidence of a significant increase in violence against men by women. This study investigated male victims' experiences of female-perpetrated domestic abuse in Jordan using a qualitative exploratory descriptive approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 33 married men from Amman and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five themes were identified: 1. causes of domestic abuse against men; 2. types of domestic abuse against men; 3. effects of domestic abuse against men; 4. men's perception of reducing or stopping abuse by their wives; and 5. abusive wives' characteristics. Participants experienced psychological, emotional and verbal abuse, coercive control, emotional neglect, and physical violence with varying degrees of severity, which affected both them and their families. Abusive wives used numerous tactics, including sex, children, isolation, and money to enable abuse. Moreover, clan and traditional thinking, societal structures, and norms led participants to divorce, stay in an abusive relationship, or use violence against their wives. The leading causes of abuse against the husband were wives' neglecting the house, children, appearance, and personal hygiene; wasting money; wives' family interfering in the couple's private marital affairs; the wife's betrayal; and traditional thinking. New perspectives toward domestic abuse in Jordan need to be developed to help us better understand the nature of abuse against men, provide resources and support for them, reduce the prevalence of domestic abuse, and protect Jordanian families.

Background: When the spouses are aware of the fact that each one has emotional needs that must be fulfilled, it will lead to decrease the marital satisfaction, such as the lack of awareness which will lead to marriage burnout in a long-term period. Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the impacts of the spouses' age, years of marriage, and the nature of marriage burnout dimensions, especially the emotional exhaustion. Methods: The researcher of the present study applied a Maslach burnout inventory (MBI) scale to 392 families whose ages were within the range of (23-67) years. Those spouses were married for (1-35) years and had children. Results: Descriptive statistics showed a higher marriage burnout level among the spouses who work in a full-time job and the ones who do not work in comparison to the ones who work in a part-time job. Emotional exhaustion is mostly influenced by the increase in the spouses' ages and years of marriage. Although there was no impact for the years of marriage on depersonalization, personal accomplishment and depersonalization were mostly influenced by the spouses' nature of work. Conclusions: Marriage burnout is a painful state of emotional exhaustion and physical and emotional depletion experienced by spouses. This state results from emotional exhaustion, work exhaustion, and failure to fulfill the requirements of their marital relationships, especially the emotional requirements. Spouses having children are more exposed to experience marriage burnout.

Though emotional abuse is one of the worst and most common types of intimate partner violence, it has not been investigated in Arabic literature. Thus, this study explored the prevalence of emotional abuse among married Jordanian men. Furthermore, the moderating roles of marriage length, marriage motivation, age, and area in the path to emotional abuse were investigated. An online survey was conducted using a random sample of Jordanian married men in Amman. A total of 1,003 participants with an average age of 42.51 and a marital relationship duration ranging from 1 to 53 years were selected. The results revealed that isolation was the most prevalent emotional abuse domain, followed by degradation, property damage, and sexual coercion. However, all emotional abuse domains were more prevalent among rural rather than urban men, in both traditional and love marriages. Emotional abuse was higher among men who married for love. Younger men reported experiencing higher emotional abuse levels, which declined with age and increasing marriage length. Further research is required to explore the nature of emotional abuse forms and their underlying reasons among married men, as differences in sociodemographic characteristics could affect the identification and understanding of emotional abuse and contribute to developing an intellectual framework capable of finding solutions for abusive marital relations in the Jordanian context.