Cyberbullying Involvement and Psychological Distress among Chinese Adolescents: The Moderating Effects of Family Cohesion and School Cohesion

Abstract

Cyberbullying and its consequences is a little-investigated public health issue. We investigated the correlations between cyberbullying involvement, either being a victim or being a preparator, and psychological distress among a group of Chinese adolescents. A representative sample of 4978 students from Jiangsu province covering all types of pre-college schools was surveyed using a stratified sampling method. Both being a victim and being a perpetrator correlated with higher degrees of psychological distress, and the former’s effect is stronger. Family cohesion and school cohesion are protective factors of psychological distress, but only family cohesion plays a moderating effect between cyberbullying involvement and distress. Moreover, the positive correlations between cyberbullying involvement and psychological distress become non-significant when the interactions are included in regression models. Last but not least, female students and students in a higher grade or students with worse academic performance have higher degrees of distress. Our study reveals that, instead of school cohesion, family cohesion is more important to mitigate the psychological impact of cyberbullying involvement and eventually heal the trauma.