Anxiety and self-esteem in cyber-victimization profiles of adolescents

Abstract

This study has two objectives: (1) Identify profiles of victimization in adolescence, depending on the levels of offline or online peer aggression suffered, along with the prevalence of each profile; and (2) Analyse the association of the victimization profiles with adolescents’ social anxiety and self-esteem. The sample was comprised of 3120 adolescents aged 12 to 18 (M=14.03; SD=1.40) from Asturias (Spain), who completed self-report questionnaires about traditional peer victimization and cyber-victimization, as well as social anxiety and self-esteem. We performed descriptive analyses, Latent Profile Analyses, and multivariate analyses of variance. We found a positive, moderate correlation between being a cyber-victim and being a traditional victim, along with four profile types: non-victims (77.8%), mainly cyber-victims (13.5%), mainly traditional victims (4.5%), and dual victims (4.3%). Traditional victims and dual victims exhibited greater social anxiety and less self-esteem than cyber-victims, who exhibited greater social anxiety and less self-esteem than non-victims. Dual victims and traditional victims do not differ in social anxiety and self-esteem. The results contribute to the identification of patterns of victimization in school-age adolescents, and their relationship with social anxiety and self-esteem.