Childhood emotional trauma and cyberbullying perpetration among emerging adults: a multiple mediation model of the role of problematic social media use and psychopathology

Kircaburun, K ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8678-9078, Demetrovics, Z, Király, O and Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524, 2020. Childhood emotional trauma and cyberbullying perpetration among emerging adults: a multiple mediation model of the role of problematic social media use and psychopathology. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 18, pp. 548-566. ISSN 1557-1874

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Abstract

Research suggests that a small minority of social media users experience problems as a result of their online use. The purpose of the present study was to examine the association of cyberbullying perpetration and problematic social media use with childhood emotional trauma, Cluster B (narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial, and borderline) personality traits, dissociative experiences (DEs), depression, and self-esteem in a nonclinical undergraduate sample. A total of 344 university students volunteered to complete a questionnaire that included measures on the aforementioned dimensions. Thirty-eight percent of the participants had emotional neglect and 27% had emotional abuse, while 44% of them demonstrated at least one cyberbullying perpetration behavior. Results indicated that cyberbullying perpetrators had higher scores on problematic social media use, dissociative experiences, Cluster B traits, depression and childhood emotional trauma, and lower on self-esteem. Path analysis demonstrated that, while adjusting for gender and age, childhood emotional trauma was directly and indirectly associated with cyberbullying perpetration via Cluster B traits. Moreover, depression and dissociation were directly associated with problematic social media use. The findings of this study emphasize the important direct role of childhood emotional trauma and pathological personality traits on cyberbullying perpetration.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
Creators:	Kircaburun, K., Demetrovics, Z., Király, O. and Griffiths, M.D.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	June 2020
Volume:	18
ISSN:	1557-1874
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s11469-018-9941-5 DOI 9941 Publisher Item Identifier
Rights:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	30 May 2018 10:51
Last Modified:	08 Sep 2021 11:12
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/33735

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