The Role of Individual, Family and Social Factors in Explaining Cyber-victimization

Social harms in any society is considered as one of the main threatening factors of the social system and is one of the factors slowing down the development cycle and in some cases its deterrent. Therefore, success in dealing with social harms represents success in developing and improving the social life of society. One of these harms, which is itself the result of the development of society and the spread of information and communication technology, is the victimization in cyberspace. Therefore, the present study was conducted to identify the relationship between individual and family factors as well as peers with victimization in cyberspace. The research population consisted of all adolescent girls 12 to 18 years old in Tehran, whom 326 adolescents were selected as samples with use of virtual snowball sampling. Participants in this study answered the online Cyber-Victimization Scale (Buelga et al., 2019), brief version of AF5 scale (García-Grau et al. 2014), Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (Purcell, 2007) and Multidimensional Peer-Victimization Scale (Joseph& Stockton, 2018). Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 22.0 and Pearson correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis (enter). Results indicated that self-concept, parent-adolescent communication and peer-victimization predict the experience of cyber-victimization among students, including problem-free communication and verbal victimization and social manipulation by peers as risk factors for increasing cyber-victimization; social & physical self-concept and open communicationas protective factors against cyber-victimization. These findings underscore the importance of paying attention to the use of cyberspace by adolescents and its dangers and planning and doing the strategies to reduce the negative effective factors related to cyber-victimization and harms and create and improve positive protective factors by the family and the education system.