Too Connected to Being Connected? Adolescents’ Social Media Emotional Investment Moderates the Association between Cybervictimization and Internalizing Symptoms

This study examined whether the association between cybervictimization and internalizing symptoms was moderated by adolescents’ emotional connectedness to their social media. Participants were 288 adolescents (54.9% male participants) with (n = 151) and without (n = 137) attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) between the ages of 13 and 15 years (M = 14.09, SD = 0.36). Adolescents reported on social integration and emotional connection (SIEC) to social media and parents reported on their impression of their adolescent’s SIEC to social media. Adolescents also reported on cybervictimization experiences and internalizing symptoms. Adolescents with ADHD had higher cybervictimization scores than adolescents without ADHD and were also more likely to report multiple experiences of cybervictimization over the past month. Emotional investment in social media moderated the relations between cybervictimization and internalizing symptoms such that cybervictimization was associated with higher anxiety and depression symptoms at higher levels of emotional investment in social media. Results were consistent across both parent and adolescent report of social integration and emotional connection to social media. These findings indicate that cybervictimization may be associated with negative outcomes specifically among adolescents with a strong emotional connection to their social media use.