Online sexual harassment and negative mood in Croatian female adolescents

Abstract

Online sexual harassment (OSH) appears to be a relatively frequent phenomenon, particularly for older adolescents. It is also a gendered experience. Compared to their male peers, female adolescents are more likely to experience OSH and find it upsetting. This study sought to explore the role of resilience in explaining the association between online sexual harassment (OSH) and negative mood (i.e., depression and anxiety symptoms) among female adolescents. Using data from a panel sample of 477 female Croatian adolescents (age at baseline = 15.8 years; SD = 0.48) and two-wave cross-lagged path analysis, we investigated OSH, changes in depression/anxiety symptoms, association between OSH and negative mood, and the role of resilience. During the 26-month period under observation, OSH and negative mood were associated cross-sectionally, but not longitudinally. This suggests the negative mood effects of OSH exposure may be short-lived or that factors other than OSH explain changes in negative mood over time. Resilience was consistently and negatively associated with negative mood, but not OSH. In adolescent girls with low levels of resilience, OSH was associated with negative mood; no such relationship was observed among their highly resilient peers. Experiences other than OSH appear to be more pertinent in predicting symptoms of negative mood in older adolescent girls over time. Given that resilience attenuated the relationship between OSH and negative mood, efforts to increase resilience to online challenges may be more helpful than efforts to limit or control young people's online exposure.

The Perceptions of Sexual Harassment among Adolescents of Four European Countries

“…Verbally expressed sexual harassment seems to be more common than invasive, physically expressed harassment [ 2 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]. The literature has also identified online sexual harassment, for example, in a study among female adolescents in Croatia, the lifetime prevalence of online sexual harassment was 43 percent [ 31 ]. Another study among sexually active adolescent females, the majority (68 percent) reported at least one form of cyber sexual harassment, including receiving unwanted sexual messages or photos (53 percent), receiving unwanted messages asking them to do something sexual (49 percent), being pressured to send sexual photos (36 percent) and having sexual photos shared without permission (6 percent) [ 32 ].…”

Positive and negative mood states mediated the effects of psychological resilience on emotional stability among high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…People with low psychological resilience tend to have negative mood states when they experience negative life events (Li et al, 2020 ). A significant negative correlation was found between psychological resilience and negative mood states (Mitchell and Stulhofer, 2021 ). Therefore, the third of the three hypotheses that we tested in this study was that negative mood state plays a mediating role in the relationship between resilience and emotional stability.…”

Effects of Blended Learning Program for Cyber Sexual Harassment Prevention among Female High School Students in Bangkok, Thailand

“…Adolescents who experience cyber sexual harassment suffer negative impacts, particularly in terms of their mental health and health-related behaviors. The victims show anxiety, depression, poor academic performance, and absenteeism from school [11].…”