A Study reveals how Cyber-dating Aggression is growing among Adolescents
The study conducted by researchers Virginia Sánchez-Jiménez, María-Luisa Rodríguez-deArriba, and Noelia Muñoz-Fernández examined adolescents’ understanding of cyber-dating aggression in terms of frequency and aggressiveness: how prevalent they perceived cyber-dating aggression among adolescents to be and how aggressive they perceived such behaviors to be.
Researcher Janine Zweig, from the Justice Policy Center in Washington, defines cyber aggression during relationships as “the use of new technologies to harm and harass a partner”. A practice that scientist Phyllis Holditch Niolon, from the Violence Prevention Division of the United States Centers for Disease Control, does not hesitate to describe as “a public health problem.”
The forms of violence towards couples are grouped into verbal or emotional aggression to insult, harass or threaten; control and surveillance, and sexual assault, which includes coercion, pressure, insults, comments and unwanted exchange of texts or images. These categories have been examined during the study of universities through conversations designed to be neutral in terms of gender and sexual orientation.
Verbal Aggression
Both boys and girls responded that they had experienced the three categories of aggression in public and private conversations “often”, a category only one point below the consideration of “always”.
The perception of aggressiveness varies according to the category of violence and whether it occurs in public or private. In this way, both men and women consider insulting conversations to be “slightly aggressive” if they remain within the sphere of the couple and “aggressive” if they transcend the group. None of the control scenarios was rated with the highest degree of severity, neither in public nor in private.
Monitoring and Surveillance
The authors of the study explain that control through networks “seems more acceptable than other forms of aggression, such as sexual and face-to-face aggression. Some teens find certain acts, such as sharing passwords or checking their partner’s social media contact list, acceptable under certain circumstances and even as evidence of mutual trust and concern for the partner. Although it can be irritating and increase conflict within the relationship, some adolescents perceive this aggression as less severe than others and justify it in some circumstances.
“Controlling the partner”, explains Sánchez-Jiménez, “is the behavior that is perceived as less serious. Knowing where he is, why and to answer quickly is more normalized in the adolescent couple. It even looks positive, as a proof of love: “I call you and insist so much on the messages because I’m worried about you and therefore you have to answer.” On the part of the person who answers, the code is: “The priority is you and I have to answer quickly”.
Sexual Assault
Where the perceptions between boys and girls vary the most is in the scenarios of sexual aggression through the Internet, understood as the unwanted exchange of sexualized images and texts. While they do not consider it “very aggressive” either in private or in a group, they do not hesitate to attribute greater seriousness to these events, although they do not reach the highest rating in the study carried out.
For the private WhatsApp sexual harassment conversation, the aggressor resorted to emotional blackmail to obtain an erotic image of the couple, despite the victim’s insistent refusal to send it. The public sexual assault analyzed was the sending of a private photo of the couple to a group.
The study highlights that the consequences of this violence are also different: “Adolescent girls are at greater risk of associated psychological disorders” and “experience it more negatively than boys”. For its part, always according to the study, although the boys consider that sending images is “inappropriate behavior”, they describe it as a fairly common practice.
According to the researcher from the University of Seville, “adolescents are more aware than boys. They suffer more and are more aware of what is happening because the consequences are greater. That makes them more sensitive.”
The study introduces a little-studied factor in this field: moral disconnection, a process of self-conviction through which ethical principles do not apply to oneself in a certain context, an intentional deactivation to maintain coherence between values and behaviors. In this sense, according to the research, adolescents with high levels of moral disconnection perceive aggression as less aggressive.
In this sense, Sánchez-Jiménez explains: “The Internet facilitates and amplifies certain types of aggression, which can pass from the private to the public sphere very quickly. Psychological aggression also has particular characteristics, such as disinhibition. For the person who attacks, it is more difficult to see the consequences in the other person, they do not see the direct impact on the victim and that minimizes empathy. Furthermore, aggression can be present 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is very difficult to escape aggression on the Internet, especially if it is public. Even if it happened once, it is repeated as many times as it is shared and so is the victimization”.
The way to prevent them is, in the opinion of the researcher, intervention from the family and from the school. “The sooner the better,” she warns. And he adds: “Having a partner is something we have to learn and we are seeing that, if we teach how to manage expression and desire to those who have more difficulties in their sentimental lives and in an evolutionary moment in which we experience love for the first time , involvement in violent behavior is greatly reduced”.
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