Personal and social protective factors of cyberhate: A general strain theory approach

Abstract

Adolescents of today grow up in a connected world. While online communication offers great opportunities, it can also have negative impact on adolescents' life. In this work, we are interested in the use of online communication tools to share and create cyberhate content. Anchored in the general strain theory, we studied how social support (i.e., parental, peers and teacher support) may be related to cyberhate perpetration. We further tested how personal characteristics such as empathy, self‐esteem and anxiety could predict the propensity to be involved as cyberhate perpetrators. We collected self‐reported questionnaires of 1019 French young people (13.04 years; ranging from 9 to 17) and measured their perceived (a) parental, (b) peers and (c) teachers' support as well as their (d) empathy/benevolence, (e) self‐esteem and (f) anxiety. We also measured cyberhate perpetration and the association between perpetration, social support and personal characteristics. Our results highlight that parental and teacher support represent protective factors for cyberhate perpetration. Our results further suggest that self‐esteem is negatively linked to the propensity to cyberhate perpetration.