Individual, family, and community predictors of cyber-aggression among adolescents

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the predictive capacity of some individual, family, and community variables concerning the likelihood that a teenager will engage in aggressive behavior toward others using a mobile phone or the Internet, occasionally or intensely, controlling for the effect of potential confounding variables. To that end, the Cyber- Aggression Questionnaire for Adolescents (CYBA) as well as previously validated scales for the evaluation of the potential indicators analyzed were applied to 3,059 adolescents 12 to 18 years of age (M = 14.01, SD = 1.39). The aforementioned scales include sociodemographic variables (age and sex) and variables referring to the use of the Internet (social networks, instant messaging programs, and the Internet for non-school tasks), parental control (behavioral control, rules for the use of the Internet, Internet use monitoring, and affection and communication), personality (impulsivity and empathy), antisocial behavior (frequency of aggression toward others at school, antisocial behavior outside the school, and antisocial friendships), and frequency of cyber-victimization. Multivariate regression analyses highlight the predictive capacity of impulsivity, aggression at school, and cyber-victimization as risk factors of cyber-aggression. They also suggest the existence of indirect or even spurious relationships between some of the variables analyzed and cyber-aggression. We discuss the practical implications of these results.