Analysis of the Impact of Violent Content on Social Media on Adolescent Cyberpsychology Using Support Vector Machine and Random Forest

Abstract

Adolescent exposure to violent content on social media has emerged as a critical issue due to its potential impact on mental health and cyberpsychological well-being. This study aims to classify multiple cyberpsychological impacts experienced by adolescents as a result of exposure to violent content on social media using a multi-label machine learning approach. A quantitative method was employed using self-reported data collected from 550 Indonesian adolescents aged 12–18 years through an online questionnaire. Psychological impacts were measured using adapted instruments from the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) and cyberpsychology scales, then transformed into multi-label targets. Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest algorithms were implemented using a One-vs-Rest strategy. Model performance was evaluated using Hamming Loss, precision, recall, and Macro F1-score. The results indicate that SVM outperformed Random Forest with a Hamming Loss of 23.16% and a Macro F1-score of 0.42, particularly in predicting dominant labels such as anxiety and decreased self-confidence. However, both models showed limited performance in predicting minority labels such as depression and academic decline due to data imbalance. These findings highlight the importance of handling imbalanced data in cyberpsychology-based machine learning research and demonstrate the potential of multi-label classification in representing the complexity of psychological impacts of digital violence on adolescents.Adolescent exposure to violent content on social media has emerged as a critical issue due to its potential impact on mental health and cyberpsychological well-being. This study aims to classify multiple cyberpsychological impacts experienced by adolescents as a result of exposure to violent content on social media using a multi-label machine learning approach. A quantitative method was employed using self-reported data collected from 550 Indonesian adolescents aged 12–18 years through an online questionnaire. Psychological impacts were measured using adapted instruments from the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) and cyberpsychology scales, then transformed into multi-label targets. Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Random Forest algorithms were implemented using a One-vs-Rest strategy. Model performance was evaluated using Hamming Loss, precision, recall, and Macro F1-score. The results indicate that SVM outperformed Random Forest with a Hamming Loss of 23.16% and a Macro F1-score of 0.42, particularly in predicting dominant labels such as anxiety and decreased self-confidence. However, both models showed limited performance in predicting minority labels such as depression and academic decline due to data imbalance. These findings highlight the importance of handling imbalanced data in cyberpsychology-based machine learning research and demonstrate the potential of multi-label classification in representing the complexity of psychological impacts of digital violence on adolescents.