Cyber victimization, parent adolescent conflict and social anxiety among adolescents

Abstract

Present study aimed to study the relationship between cyber victimization, parent- adolescent conflict, and social anxiety among adolescents. Moreover, these variables were also explored with reference to different demographic variables like age, gender, institute, family income, family system, no. of hour spend on internet, time spend online other purpose than studies, social media network, no. of gadgets, no. of unknown friends added in friend list on social media, preferred means of communication, activity for which internet is used, parental supervision on online activity, and the ability to use the computer. A sample of 278 adolescents from different schools and colleges in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Cyber victimization parent-adolescent conflict and social anxiety were measured through Cyberbullying Victimization Scale (Lee et ai., 20 15), Conflict Behavior QuestiOlmaire by (Prinz 1979) and Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (La Greca & Lopez, 1998). Alpha reliabilities were found to be acceptable for all the measures. Results indicated that cyber victimization is positively related to social anxiety. Similarly, parent-adolescent conflict is also negatively related to social anxiety. Findings related to gender differences showed significant differences where boys were high on cyber victimization and parent-adolescent conflict as compare to girls and whereas, girls were high on social anxiety. In addition, significant differences observed were found on family system, institution, parental supervision, internet usage, social media networks and computer usmg ability in relation to study variables were also noted.