Cyberbullying Involvement, Resilient Coping, and Loneliness of Adolescents During Covid-19 in Rural China

Cyberbullying involvement can lead to internal health issues, especially mental health problems. Different coping strategies may reduce or enhance the strengths between cyberbullying experience and mental health problems. In this study, we examined the correlations between cyberbullying involvement and loneliness among a group of children and adolescents during the Covid-19 pandemic in China, focusing on investigating the protecting effect of the resilient coping strategy. The results demonstrated that 86.68% of the students were not involved in cyberbullying activities, 8.19% were victims only, 1.89% was perpetrators only, and 3.24% were both victims and perpetrators. Compared with the non-involved, the victims-only group had a significantly higher degree of reported loneliness and a lower score of resilient coping, while the differences of the other groups were not significant. Resilient coping strategy can significantly reduce loneliness and play a mediating role between cyberbullying victimization and loneliness, but such mitigating effect was relatively weak. Besides, peer relations were the primary protective factors, and age was the primary risk factor of loneliness among the controlled variables. This study can enrich current knowledge of cyberbullying involvement and the psychological health among children and adolescents, especially in the context of the pandemic.