Pathways from Cyberbullying Victimization to Negative Health Outcomes Among Elementary School Students: A Longitudinal Investigation

Purpose: Growing concern about the negative effects experienced by youth exposed to cyberbullying victimization has led to a rapid increase of scientific inquiry in this area in recent years. However, few studies have focused on younger children despite some evidence suggesting substantial technology use among children in elementary school. To that end, the purpose of the present study was to explore change in cyberbullying victimization across time among a sample of elementary school students and to examine how such change impacted later social, emotional and academic outcomes.

Method: A total of 660 and 960 3^rd through 5^th grade students in seven elementary schools participated in year one (fall/spring) and year two (fall/spring) of the study respectively. Students self-reported their exposure to cyberbullying victimization, involvement in traditional bullying and victimization, depressive and anxiety symptoms, self-esteem, perception of peers, and school connection. Latent-variable growth curve modeling (LGM) was used to examine changes in cyberbullying victimization across four waves of data and the impact of these changes on developmental outcomes, controlling for age, gender, and traditional bullying and victimization involvement.

Results: Findings revealed no consistent pattern of growth in victimization among participants over the course of the study. However, initial levels of cyberbullying victimization were significantly different from zero, suggesting that a notable number of participants reported exposure to this form of victimization at baseline data collection. Further, initial levels of cyberbullying victimization were found to have a significant impact on later health outcomes, including self-esteem and school connection with depressive symptoms approaching significance.

Conclusions: Although no consistent pattern of growth was found, initial levels of cyberbullying victimization at T1 were found to predict poor developmental outcomes at T4. It is possible that exposure to cyber forms of victimization, while occurring during elementary school, is stable until students transition into adolescence, which is consistent with some prevalence studies on adolescent samples. Notably, the impact of initial levels on later outcomes suggests the need for developmentally appropriate cyberbullying prevention and intervention strategies to be implemented at the elementary school level rather than delaying until middle school. Moreover, these findings indicate that those targeted by cyberbullying may require more targeted interventions to limit the immediate negative impact of early exposure to cyberbullying victimization and prevent this exposure from causing further emotional and psychological harm in later adolescence and adulthood.