Cyber Bullying and Social Conduct: A Mediating Role of Depression and Social Anxiety

Abstract

Social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, and Chat Rooms are becoming more popular day by day. Adolescents and others use these sites for the sake of interacting with others and enhancing their social circle. Due to the rapid advancement in technology and increasing accessibility to the internet, people these days are getting more involved in sending offensive messages, emails, pictures, video clips, etc. to a specific person or about another person with the deliberate intention of harming their name. This practice ultimately causes negative psychological and emotional effects on that person. With the gradual development in communication technology, real-world bullies have been turned to cyberspace and thus terms like cyberbullying and cyber-victimization have emerged. For that reason, this study is aimed to explain the relationship between cyberbullying and the social conduct of university students. Moreover, the mediating role of social anxiety and depression in this regard is also explored in this study. For this purpose, the Adolescent Cyber-Victimization Scale, Depression Scale, Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents, and Social Adjustment Scale are used. The findings of the study indicate that there is a negative relationship between cyberbullying and the social conduct of university students. Furthermore, both the mediators; depression and social anxiety have positive mediating roles between two variables of the study i.e. if a student is depressed and anxious due to his/her experience of cyberbullying his/her social conduct will decline.