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Journal of the Association for Information Systems

Abstract

While adolescents have embraced a variety of online tools in recent years, little attention has been devoted to examining cyberbullying through specific tools. Addressing this gap in the literature, the present study examines the moderating effect of parental mediation strategies (i.e., restrictive, coviewing, instructive) on the associations between cyberbullying victimization and adjustment difficulties (i.e., depression, anxiety) among 567 U.S. (52% female) adolescents in the eighth grade (age ranging from 13-15 years). I employed a longitudinal design, with assessments in the spring of seventh (Time 1; T1) grade and the spring of eighth grade (Time 2; T2). The findings revealed that T1 cyberbullying victimization was positively related to restrictive mediation and to T2 depression and anxiety. In contrast, coviewing mediation and instructive mediation were each negatively associated with cyberbullying victimization and T2 depression and anxiety. High levels of instructive mediation and low levels of restrictive mediation made the associations between T1 cyberbullying victimization and T2 depression more negative, while the reverse pattern was found for low levels of instructive mediation and high levels of restrictive mediation. Results of the study underscore the importance of parental involvement in adolescents’ social networking site use.

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