The role of impulsivity, social relations online and offline, and compulsive Internet use in cyberaggression: A four-country study

Abstract

Cyberaggression is a harmful behavior, but cross-national studies on cyberaggression including relations among its individual and social predictors are limited. This study aimed to discover the direct and indirect relations among individual and social predictors of cyberaggression in socio-demographically balanced survey data set of 4816 15-25-year-old participants from Finland (n = 1200, 50.0% female), South Korea (n = 1192, 50.34% female), Spain (n = 1212, 48.76% female), and the United States (n = 1212, 50.17% female). Both, impulsivity and involvement in online cliques (i.e., identity bubbles) were related to more cyberaggression in the four countries. The relation between impulsivity and cyberaggression was partially mediated by compulsive Internet use in Finland, Spain, and the United States, but not in South Korea. The relation between identity bubble involvement and cyberaggression was mediated via compulsive Internet use only in the Spanish sample. Findings of this study can be used for policy and practice against cyberaggression.