Peer victimization, schooling format, and adolescent internalizing symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic: Between- and within-person associations across ninth grade

Abstract

The current longitudinal study examined how between-person (BP) differences and within-person (WP) fluctuations in adolescents’ peer victimization and schooling format across ninth grade related to changes in their internalizing symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 388 adolescents (61% female; M age = 14.02) who completed three online surveys, administered 3 months apart, from November 2020 to May 2021. Multilevel modeling revealed BP (time-invariant) and WP (time-varying) effects of peer victimization and school instructional format (i.e., in-person; hybrid; online) on internalizing symptoms while accounting for potentially confounding demographic (e.g., gender) and contextual (e.g., COVID-19 positivity rates) factors. Results indicated that adolescents who experienced higher overall levels of peer victimization across the school year, compared to those who experienced lower victimization, reported more severe internalizing symptoms. Whereas relative WP increases in peer victimization predicted corresponding increases in adolescents’ depressive and somatic symptoms regardless of schooling format, WP increases in peer victimization only predicted elevated anxiety during months when students attended fully in-person, but not online, school. Adolescents who spent a greater proportion of their school year attending online school also reported less peer victimization across the year. Findings highlight WP fluctuations in the effects of peer victimization on internalizing and contextual variations depending on schooling format.

The development of adolescents’ loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of peer status and contact with friends

“…Students who were victimized prior to the pandemic experienced more teacher support and liked remote schooling more than other students did [52]. Victimization was less prevalent among students who spent more time in online schooling during the pandemic compared with offline schooling, and victimization-related anxiety was lower when students attended online schooling [53]. Moreover, on average, the students in our sample felt less excluded, abandoned, and left out by peers during the school shutdown.…”

Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Cyberbullying and Cybervictimization Prevalence among Children and Adolescents? A Systematic Review

“…Twenty-six articles were excluded due to not meeting the inclusion criteria: two studies focused on wrong outcomes [64,65], ten were conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic [66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75], seven articles involved participants aged > 18 years [51,[76][77][78][79][80][81], two articles included participants aged > 18 years and examined the phenomenon before the COVID-19 pandemic [82,83], three did not report the period of data collection nor made any reference to the COVID-19 pandemic [84][85][86], and two studies were no empirical investigations, being a scoping review [87] and a systematic review [88] (Supplementary material, Table S2).…”

Seasonal suicide trends in adolescents in the US: Did they explain the apparent effect of the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why?

“…However, reports of bullying have declined in recent years (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2021), suggesting that if this were the source of the seasonal pattern, it should also have declined over time. Nevertheless, there is evidence that bullying declined as a source of stress for students who attended school online during the COVID pandemic (Schacter et al, 2022). Thus, the risk to students from school‐related bullying needs continued attention.…”