Young people engaging in anti-social behaviour online seek social approval, a new study looking at Canadian University students has found
Researchers looked at data on more than 350 university students in Canada who completed an online survey about online anti-social behaviour.
Young adults engage in online anti-social behaviour for fun and social approval, and those who perpetrate this behaviour tend to have lower cognitive empathy scores than average, according to a new study by Felipe Bonow Soares of the University of the Arts London, UK, and colleagues.
Anti-social behaviour on social media, such as harassment and bullying, is on the rise.
For victims of cyber-aggression, the behaviour can lead to several negative outcomes including mental and emotional stress and reduced online participation that leads to further isolation.
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Online anti-social behaviour
In the new work, the researchers surveyed undergraduate students at Toronto Metropolitan University who signed up for a student research participation pool.
A total of 557 students participated in the survey between 9th March and 18th April 18 2022, providing information about their involvement in cyber-aggression or cyber-victimisation as well as personality traits including their disinhibition, self-esteem, empathy, and possible motivations for cyber-aggression.
A total of 359 students were included in the final analysis.
Overall, three factors were associated with the perpetration of online anti-social behaviour: recreation; reward; and cognitive empathy.
Reward and recreation were found to be motives for the behaviour, suggesting that young people engage in online anti-social behaviour for fun, excitement and social approval.
Cognitive empathy was negatively associated with the perpetration of such behaviour, suggesting that perpetrators have lower capacity to comprehend the emotions of others, and a lower understanding of how their targets might feel.
The authors concluded that empathy-building strategies and interventions that aim to make people think about their actions before posting online could help mitigate cyber-aggression.
The study is published in PLOS ONE .
Image: The authors suggest that empathy-building strategies and interventions that aim to make people think about their actions before posting online could help mitigate cyber-aggression. Credit: un-perfekt, Pixabay, (CC0) https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.
