[Adolescent Use of Digital Media and Parental Mediation - A Research Review]. / Jugendliche Nutzung digitaler Medien und elterliche Medienerziehung ­ Ein Forschungsüberblick.

Adolescent Use of Digital Media and Parental Mediation - A Research Review Digital media are wide spread, frequently used, and highly relevant in the lives of children, adolescents and their parents. Because parents aim to reduce or prevent potential risks of media use for their children, many parents apply different strategies of parental mediation of children's media use: restrictive parental mediation, active parental mediation, co-media use, technical monitoring, and participatory learning. These forms of parental mediation have differential impact on children and adolescents. Different types of media (e. g. television, video games, internet, and mobile phones) have common features but also specific characteristics that lead to partially inconsistent research findings that are not only due to age differences of children and adolescents. Concerning an impact model of parental mediation, the current contribution presents overarching and divergent empirical findings, approaches the effectiveness of parental mediation for cyberbullying, and discusses practical implications as well as research gaps in the analysis of parental mediation.

Bystanders' responses to offline bullying and cyberbullying: The role of empathy and normative beliefs about aggression.

Cyberbullying often takes place with the virtual presence or knowledge of bystanders. While we have some evidence about the determinants of bystanders' responses to offline bullying, we lack empirical studies concerning the variables that influence bystanders' responses to cyberbullying. The current study examines bystanders' responses to offline bullying and cyberbullying incidents. Two types of responses were captured: support toward the victims and the reinforcement of bullies' actions. Using data from 321 German adolescents (ages 12-18; M = 14.99; 44% girls), the association between bystanders' responses and normative beliefs about verbal aggression and cyberaggression, and affective and cognitive empathy, were tested in a path model. Both types of normative beliefs positively predicted the reinforcement of bullies, and normative belief about verbal aggression also predicted support for the victims of offline bullying. Both types of empathy predicted support in offline bullying, but only affective empathy predicted support in cyberbullying. There was no link between affective or cognitive empathy to the reinforcement of bullies. Moreover, bystanders' tendencies to respond supportively to the victim or to reinforce the bully were rather consistent in both cyber- and offline bullying, but there was no link between support and reinforcement. The findings are discussed with regard to implications for prevention and intervention efforts.

[Coping of cybervictimization in adolescence - emotional and behavioral reactions to cyberbullying ]. / Bewältigung von Cyberviktimisierung im Jugendalter - Emotionale und verhaltensbezogene Reaktionen auf Cyberbullying.

The experience of cybervictimization is related to health, psychological, and behavioral problems among children and adolescents. Up to today research is scarce, how the persons affected by cybervictimization react and which determinants influence the choice for social, problem-focused, technical, or helpless coping behavior. The current online study with 428 adolescents considers age, sex, mean internet use, frequency of victimization, roles in cyberbullying, and emotional reactions to cybervictimization as potential determinants of the mentioned coping strategies. Based on the participant role approach, roles of cyberbullies, cybervictims, defenders or outsiders are frequently changing. Logistic regression analyses point out the important relevance of emotional reactions like anger or helplessness and the roles as cyberbully-victim or outsider. Further, younger participants reported cybervictimization more often, while the frequency of cybervictimization and sex did not and internet use only partially predict coping strategies. These findings corroborate the relevance of emotional reactions and the roles in the process of cyberbullying. As a starting point for prevention and intervention of cybervictimization, we suggest emotion regulation, teaching of technical coping behaviors as well as reflexion of roles in the context of cyberbullying. If feasible, different stakeholders should be engaged in this process: adolescents, parents, educational staff inside and outside of schools, experts from counseling and therapy as well as internet and mobile phone service providers.

Can Acting Out Online Improve Adolescents' Well-Being During Contact Restrictions? A First Insight Into the Dysfunctional Role of Cyberbullying and the Need to Belong in Well-Being During COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Contact Restrictions.

Connecting with peers online to overcome social isolation has become particularly important during the pandemic-related school closures across many countries. In the context of contact restrictions, feelings of isolation and loneliness are more prevalent and the regulation of these negative emotions to maintain a positive well-being challenges adolescents. This is especially the case for those individuals who might have a high need to belong and difficulties in emotional competences. The difficult social situation during contact restrictions, more time for online communication and maladaptive emotion regulation might lead to aggressive communication patterns in the form of cyberbullying perpetration. In an online study with N = 205 adolescents aged 14-19 (M = 15.83, SD = 1.44; 57% girls), we assessed the frequency of online and offline contacts, need to belong, emotion regulation problems, feelings of loneliness, and cyberbullying perpetration as predictors of adolescents' well-being. In particular, we explored whether cyberbullying perpetration might function as a maladaptive strategy to deal with feelings of loneliness and therefore predicts well-being. This effect was expected to be stronger for those with a higher need to belong and with higher emotion regulation problems. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis revealed that well-being was significantly predicted by less emotion regulation difficulties, less feeling isolated and more cyberbullying perpetration. We also tested whether the need to belong or emotion regulation problems moderated the association between cyberbullying and well-being. While the results for emotion regulation problems were not significant, the moderation effect for the need to belong was significant: For students with a high need to belong, well-being was more strongly related to cyberbullying perpetration than for students with a medium need to belong. For students with a low need to belong, cyberbullying was not significantly associated with well-being. That cyberbullying perpetration predicted well-being positively is rather surprising in the light of previous research showing negative psychosocial outcomes also for cyberbullying perpetrators. The moderation analysis provides a hint at underlying processes: In times of distance learning and contact restrictions, cyberbullying may be a way of coming into contact with others and to regulate loneliness maladaptively.

Empathic Skills and Cyberbullying: Relationship of Different Measures of Empathy to Cyberbullying in Comparison to Offline Bullying Among Young Adults.

Empathy, as the ability to understand and feel the emotions of others, is related to less bullying behavior. However, the link of bullying behavior with self-reports of empathy seems to be stronger than with behavioral measures of empathy (e.g., empathic accuracy). Few studies have analyzed the relationship of affective and cognitive empathy to cyberbullying behavior, especially among young adults. In a quasiexperimental dyadic interaction paradigm with 72 young adults, empathic accuracy was operationalized as the match of other- and self-reported emotions for the target, and emotional congruence as the match of the target's and the perceiver's self-reported emotions. Affective and cognitive empathy, offline bullying behavior, and cyberbullying behavior were measured using self-reports. Empathic accuracy and cognitive empathy were found to be negatively linked. Emotional congruence, self-reported affective and cognitive empathy did not correlate with offline bullying behavior or cyberbullying behavior. Only empathic accuracy was significantly negatively linked to offline bullying behavior. In group tests, higher empathic accuracy (but not emotional congruence) was connected to less offline bullying behavior. In a multiple regression analysis only emotional congruence was a predictor of cyberbullying behavior. Thus, while empathic accuracy might diminish offline bullying behavior, emotional congruence might diminish cyberbullying behavior.

Ethical media competence as a protective factor against cyberbullying and cybervictimization among german school students.

The use of digital information and communication technologies is an integral part of adolescents' everyday life. Besides various opportunities for information, entertainment, and communication, media use is associated with risks such as cyberbullying. Cyberbullying refers to aggressive behavior in the context of computer-mediated communication, characterized by repetition, an intention to harm, and power imbalance. Previous studies have shown that increased media use is a major risk factor for cyberbullying and cybervictimization. Given that restricting media use is not a practical way to reduce the negative effects inherent in media use, the present study examines the relevance of ethical media competence. We expected ethical media competence to buffer the effect of increased media use on cyberbullying and cybervictimization. A survey was conducted with 934 students (53% female) aged 10-17 years (M=13.26, SD=1.63). As expected, hierarchical regression analyses showed a positive main effect of media use, a negative main effect of ethical media competence, and a negative interaction effect of media use and media competence on cyberbullying and cybervictimization. Simple slope analyses revealed that at high levels of ethical media competence, media use has almost no effect on cybervictimization and a significant negative effect on cyberbullying. Consequently, promoting ethical media competence constitutes a potential measure to prevent the risks of increased media use for cyberbullying and cybervictimization.

Are cyberbullies less empathic? Adolescents' cyberbullying behavior and empathic responsiveness.

Meta-analyses confirm a negative relationship between aggressive behavior and empathy, that is, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Based on theoretical considerations, it was, therefore, hypothesized that a lack of empathic responsiveness may be characteristic for cyberbullies in particular. In the present study, 2.070 students of Luxembourg secondary schools completed an online survey that included a cyberbullying questionnaire(4) and a novel empathy short scale. According to the main hypothesis, analyses of variances indicated that cyberbullies demonstrated less empathic responsiveness than non-cyberbullies. In addition, cyberbullies were also more afraid of becoming victims of cyberbullying. The findings confirm and substantially extend the research on the relationship between empathy and aggressive behavior. From an educational point of view, the present findings suggest that training of empathy skills might be an important tool to decrease cyberbullying.