Introduction and state of the art

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a major crisis in many social spheres, especially amongst children (Stassart et al., 2021). As regards education, the state of health emergency led to the complete shut-down of face-to-face classes in over 200 countries in order to prevent the spread of the virus and alleviate its impact. Lockdown resulted in classes being given exclusively online, in which Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the Internet became vital tools and were, in fact, the only means of maintaining contact with school (UNESCO, 2020). The increased use of the Internet led to the greater vulnerability of individuals and exposed young people in particular to a greater degree of disinformation and manipulation on social networks, with its accompanying antisocial online behaviours, such as cyberhate (Ferrera et al., 2020).

Cyberhate consists of intentional aggression on the Internet, with the purpose of harming other people via online content, and it is motivated by issues such as sexual orientation, skin colour, nationality, religion, and political ideology, amongst others. Cyberhate has certain special characteristics such as the possibility of carrying out aggressive acts at any time, reaching a much wider audience and causing more long-lasting harm (Bedrosova et al., 2022; Hawdon et al., 2017). Added to these characteristics are the aggressor’s perception of anonymity as well as the victims’ lack of control over the situation in which they find themselves and the difficulties they face in defending themselves online (Wachs & Wright, 2018).

Over recent years, there has been a significant rise in cyberhate, with a high percentage of children and adolescents being exposed to personal attacks online (Blaya et al., 2020; Kansok-Dusche et al., 2022). The lockdown, with its massive increase in online communication, also boosted cyberhate. The consequences of cyberhate can be extremely harmful, and can affect individuals in different ways, such as losing trust in other people (Näsi et al., 2015), lowering individual well-being (Keipi et al., 2018) and a lack of academic motivation (Isik et al., 2018). Cyberhate is also a complement, in some cases, or an antecedent, in others, of hate crimes in real life, such as shootings, stabbings, and bomb attacks (Johnson et al., 2019).

However, further research is required into antisocial online behaviour in order to identify predictors of cyberhate among adolescents. Some interventions have been made in education, but these are still rare, as evidenced by a recent meta-analysis which discussed two quantitative interventions (Windisch et al., 2022). In this context, the Global Cybersecurity Report 2020 (ITU, 2021) made a clear reference to the field of education, proposing different measures to protect children on the Internet, such as innovations in the curriculum and specific teacher training in the compulsory stages of the school systems. The vital importance of the school’s stance towards cyberhate highlights the need to carry out studies to identify the most effective factors to ensure the success of educational interventions. Numerous educational interventions have already been carried out to reduce and eradicate antisocial online behaviour such as cyberbullying (Gaffney et al., 2019), all of which stress the importance of the pupils developing their social and emotional competencies. These competencies have also played a key role, directly and indirectly, in intervention programs against cyberbullying, according to one meta-analysis which included 50 studies with 320 effect sizes (Polanin et al., 2022). According to current scientific knowledge, social and emotional competencies are negatively related to antisocial online behaviour such as cyberbullying (Rodríguez-Álvarez et al., 2022), so we would expect there to be a similar relationship with cyberhate (Bedrosova et al., 2022; Wachs et al., 2022). Although, to date, no studies have verified this approach, it is certainly a high priority given the relevance of the topic. Different studies have found that high levels of social, emotional, and moral competencies are related to low levels of aggressive and antisocial behaviour, and that a high level of social, emotional, and moral competencies protects children and young people against different antisocial behaviour such as bullying (Gaffney et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2020) and cyberbullying (Rodríguez-Álvarez et al., 2022).

The social and emotional competencies are composed of the set of knowledge, skills and attitudes related to self-awareness, self-motivation, self-management, social awareness, pro-social behaviour, and responsible decision making whose role is to manage emotions and interpersonal relationships in various social contexts (Zych et al., 2018), including online interactions. Therefore, it may be possible to use social and emotional competencies as a protective factor to help improve measures designed to prevent and reduce cyberhate. These skills play an essential role in establishing a peaceful coexistence, are essential for learning and knowing how to relate properly with others and enable us to resolve conflicts peacefully through mutual respect (CASEL, 2012).

One of the key social and emotional competencies—which are, in turn—related to moral aspects (Allemand et al., 2015), is empathy. Empathy facilitates social relationships and can be defined as the ability to understand and share another person's emotional state. It consists of two dimensions: cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Low levels of empathy are associated with antisocial behaviour and are a predictor of aggressive behaviour (Campos et al., 2022; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004). Moral growth, on the other hand, involves effectively managing the emotions learned through the experiences or relationships gained from moral events, and is what prompts us to do good and avoid evil (Kroll & Egan, 2004), and to defend people’s general interests and well-being (Haidt, 2003). Moral development is an essential complement to the social and emotional field and helps promote coexistence and respect for diversity (Caurín et al., 2019).

According to the review of the scientific literature, high levels of social, emotional, and moral competencies could safeguard against cyberhate among adolescents. However, to date, few studies have been conducted in this area and, therefore, further research is needed to look at the relationship between cyberhate and social and emotional competencies in greater depth, given the potential these competencies have for prevention of and intervention in different antisocial behaviours.

The objective of this research is therefore twofold: firstly, to find out what impact the lockdown had on cyberhate and, secondly, to analyse the usefulness of social, emotional, and moral competencies as a protective factor for children in Primary Education. The break from face-to-face schooling and the increased use of ICT during lockdown support the formulation of the following hypotheses:

H1: Five months into lockdown, cyber-hate among pupils will have increased. Social, emotional, and moral competencies are vital for the respectful and peaceful promotion of interpersonal relationships and help to improve inclusion; therefore, they are expected to be negatively related to cyberhate, which leads us to hypothesis H2: Social, emotional, and moral competencies are protective factors against cyberhate.

Method

Results

Comparative analyses of cyberhate before lockdown and after five months of lockdown showed significant changes. Cyberhate and its two factors increased significantly during lockdown, with considerable effect sizes (Table 1).

Gender, school year, and type of school showed a significant relationship with cyberhate in all cases, particularly with Perpetration of aggression and total Cyberhate. In the case of the ethnic-cultural group, the only correlation which appeared was with the Propagation of cyberhate after five months of lockdown (T2).

The correlations of the different social, emotional, and moral variables showed a significant, negative relationship with cyberhate, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, except for the absence of any correlation between affective empathy and cyberhate and its dimensions (Table 2).

Linear regression analyses, in which socio-educational characteristics gender, school year, type of school, and ethnic-cultural group) were included as control variables, take into account social, emotional, and moral competencies (using the scales of social and emotional competencies, empathy, and moral emotions) at T1 to predict cyberhate and its factors.

The predictive role of social and emotional competencies in Perpetration of cyberhate (Table 3), Propagation of Cyberhate (Table 4) and the total of Cyberhate (Table 5) were analysed cross-sectionally (before lockdown) and longitudinally (after five months of lockdown).

From the analysis of cross-sectional relationships with cyberhate (T1), where the independent variables belong to T1, all the models proposed are significant. A higher level of Perpetration of cyberhate before lockdown can be predicted (R²=.08, F=5.76, p<.001) for being male, being in the highest school year (seventh year), and having a low score in Moral emotions. Also, a greater Propagation of cyberhate before lockdown can be predicted (R²=.05, F=3.91, p<.001) for being in the highest school year (seventh year), attending a state school and having a low score in Moral emotions. Finally, a higher score in the total of Cyberhate before lockdown can be predicted (R²=.07, F=5.24, p<.001) for being male, being in the highest school year (seventh year), attending a state school, and having a low score in Moral emotions.

The longitudinal analysis of the independent variables (T1) with cyberhate and its dimensions (T2) reveals that all the linear regression models are significant. A higher level of cyberhate aggression after five months of lockdown can be predicted (R²=.12, F=9.16, p<.001) for being male, being in the highest school year (seventh year), attending a state school, and obtaining a low score in Moral emotions. Also, a higher level of Promotion of cyberhate after five months of lockdown can be predicted (R²=.05, F=3.67, p<.001) for being male, being in the highest school year (seventh year), attending a state school and obtaining a low score for Moral Emotions. Finally, a higher total of Cyberhate after five months of lockdown can be predicted (R²=.10, F=7.27, p<.001) for attending a state school, belonging to the ethnic-cultural minority, and obtaining a low score for Moral Emotions.

Discussion and conclusions

The lockdown which was imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a significant upheaval in people's lives, especially for children (Stassart et al., 2021). The educational process took place at home, online classes replaced face-to-face education and, as a result, all face-to-face contact between teachers and pupils came to an end, which was a cause for concern worldwide (UNESCO, 2022).

However, the lockdown also provided a unique opportunity to study how communicating almost exclusively through ICT affected social relationships among children. Therefore, the objective of the current study was to find out the impact of lockdown on cyberhate and to analyse the protective factor of the social, emotional and moral competencies among children in Primary Education. Fortunately, the basis of this study also involved discovering the relationship between social and emotional competencies and antisocial online behaviour, of which cyberhate is one of the most recent, worrying forms (Hawdon et al., 2017; Keipi et al., 2018).

The longitudinal results of the study show an increase in cyberhate after five months of lockdown among Primary Education pupils, thus validating Hypothesis 1. This research therefore supports the assumption that the Internet and, in particular, social networks are a setting in which the general population usually encounters hate speech. During lockdown, the Internet use skyrocketed to hitherto unknown levels (UNESCO, 2020). In line with previous research (Wright et al., 2021), the longitudinal nature of this research has been able to verify that during lockdown, cyberhate also increased, both in its level of perpetration and the extent of its propagation.

In order to facilitate the design of new strategies to prevent cyberhate, it is vital to detect risk and protection factors which can help to protect children and adolescents and contribute positive effects to this population. In this study we have sought to discover, in addition to the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on cyberhate in children in Primary Education in Ecuador, the role of social, emotional, and moral competencies as a protective factor against cyberhate. As can be seen in the results of this research, cyberhate, together with its dimensions of perpetration and propagation, could be predicted after five months of lockdown for being male, being in the highest school year, attending a state school, and for obtaining low scores in social, emotional, and moral competencies, in particular in moral emotions. The effects of lockdown have highlighted the importance of face-to-face social relationships and, possibly, the importance of school in the development of social, emotional, and moral competencies.

Male pupils seem to be more likely to engage in cyberhate than their female counterparts, as has already been found in the case of other types of antisocial behaviour and online behaviour (Bachman et al., 2008; Jaggers et al., 2016; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2006; Shollenberger, 2015). These results show the need for training at school to address these differences by gender and to facilitate prevention and educational intervention.

The pupils in the highest school year, of the two groups that participated in this research, generated more cyberhate than the lower year. To an extent, this is logical, if we consider that older pupils have more access to devices and better-developed ICT skills and so can engage in cyberhate more effectively. In turn, this finding is in line with studies on the development of antisocial behaviour, which show that they increase from childhood to adolescence (Farrington, 2020).

State schools are also a setting in which cyberhate is more prevalent than in private schools. This may be due to the more limited socio-educational and economic resources available to state schools in Ecuador, and in Latin America in general, compared to private schools, which can constitute a serious obstacle to academic progress. Thus, a state school population made up of educational communities with a lower average income than their counterparts in private schools, together with the greater socioeconomic and ethnic-cultural diversity, may account for the more serious educational obstacles encountered in state schools. In addition, the idea of working in state schools appears to be less attractive to teachers (Delprato & Antequera, 2021). All of these factors in state schools must be taken into account when preparing to design different educational initiatives to promote equality, coexistence, and positive, non-violent social relations, and to prevent cyberhate and other forms of antisocial behaviour.

Moral emotions are also a recurring factor in the cross-sectional and longitudinal prediction of cyberhate, which partly validates Hypothesis 2. These results are in line with previous studies on the predictive role of social, emotional and moral competencies in other types of antisocial behaviour (Gaffney et al., 2019; Mazzone et al., 2018). These findings also encourage perseverance in the goal of developing social, emotional, and moral competencies in the general public, and promote their better development in the curriculum from Primary Education onwards.

This study has several limitations. Firstly, the sample, although large, is not representative. Another limitation is the use of self-reports, which, in future research, should be complemented with other types of instruments. A further limitation is the difference in procedures used for the two rounds of data collection (one face-to-face and the second, due to lockdown, online): here, several reliability indices for certain dimensions indicate that we should be cautious in drawing conclusions. The second round of data collection was carried out during lockdown, firstly, because we aimed to learn how cyberhate had evolved over the same school year and secondly, to collect the data, where possible, in full lockdown conditions, without extraneous variables such as the end of year holidays, especially since nobody could tell exactly how long lockdown would last.

Despite these considerations, the study gives us a genuine insight into the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on cyberhate in primary school children from a longitudinal perspective. This research has also highlighted the role played by social, emotional, and moral competencies in preventing cyberhate. In the light of these results, we would recommend that all interventions to prevent and reduce cyberhate prioritise the promotion of social, emotional, and moral competencies, with special emphasis on the moral elements, and with particular attention to male pupils, while at the same time assessing the socio-cultural factors mentioned above. Education, specifically in schools, plays a key role in fostering gender equality, since any sociocultural differences in family, social, and non-formal education between male and female pupils could be reduced through training promoting social, emotional, and moral competencies, which in turn, help to check antisocial behaviour such as cyberhate. It is therefore essential to continue striving to achieve a comprehensive education among the general public, starting at the initial stages of formal education, to nurture the social, emotional, and moral sphere of each individual and thus help society to progress towards greater equality, coexistence, and respect for diversity. (1)