Cyberbullying and depression among Chinese college students: A moderated mediation model of social anxiety and neuroticism

Exploring the Mediating Roles of State and Trait Anxiety on the Relationship between Middle Adolescents’ Cyberbullying and Depression

“…In line with previous findings reported by Na, Dancy, and Park [34], Wang, Xie, Wang, Lei, and Jiang [26] suggested that cyberbullying victimization predicts depression directly and indirectly, through the mediating role of social anxiety. Similarly, according to Martínez-Monteagudo, Delgado, Inglés, and Escortell [35], cyberbullying victims score highly for social avoidance and social distress.…”

“…Based on the earlier studies discussed, we assumed the following: (H1) a high prevalence rate among cyber victims in both boys and girls [13,14,52]; (H2) higher rates of cyber-aggression among older, male boys [13,53,54]; (H3) lower rates of cyber-victimization among older participants [13,53,54]; (H4) significant associations between cyber status (i.e., cyberbully, cyber victim, double role, or non-cyber), and depression, anxiety state, and anxiety trait. Concerning our fifth assumption (H5), we expected state anxiety and trait anxiety to mediate the relationships between cyber-victimization and cyber-aggression, in line with previous studies that confirmed partial or total mediation effects of anxiety [25,26,34]. However, we were also interested in exploring which of the two anxiety dimensions has a more substantial effect on the relationship between cyberbullying and depression.…”

“…Previous research suggested that cyberbullying perpetration is significantly associated with depression, and anxiety seems to partially or fully mediate this relationship in both clinical and non-clinical populations [25,26]. High levels of depression and stress were found to increase the probability of being both a cyberbullying victim as well as a cyberbullying perpetrator [27].…”

Cybervictimization, Depression, and Adolescent Internet Addiction: The Moderating Effect of Prosocial Peer Affiliation

“…This finding supports the self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders (Khantzian, 1985) that posits that addictive behaviors may be a compensatory behavior to deal with psychological problems such as depression and reduce psychological distress. Although extensive studies have investigated the association between cybervictimization and depression, as well as the association between depression and IA (Lee et al, 2014;Li et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2019), the present study is the first to highlight depression as a critical mediator of the negative impact of cybervictimization on adolescent' IA.…”

“…Specifically, since cybervictimization always involves verbal insults and attacks on one’s personal values, it often reduces adolescents’ self-esteem and increases their sense of inadequacy ( Gamez-Guadix et al, 2013 ; Cole et al, 2016 ), which in turn leads to depression. In addition, adolescents who suffer intentional and repeated harassment may have more social anxiety and difficulty adapting ( Cenat et al, 2018 ; Wang et al, 2019 ), which increases their risk of depression. Some previous studies provide evidence for this view ( Gamez-Guadix et al, 2013 ; Li et al, 2018 ; Wright, 2018 ).…”