How do adolescents cope with cyberhate? Psychometric properties and socio-demographic differences of a coping with cyberhate scale

Cyberhate exposure can have serious negative impacts on adolescents' development. However, there has been scarce research on adolescents' coping strategies for cyberhate. Deepening the knowledge of how adolescents deal with cyberhate might help researchers, teachers, and parents find a way to alleviate negative effects of cyberhate on adolescents. Therefore, the present study investigates adolescents' coping strategies for cyberhate, while considering differences in adolescents’ sex, age, socioeconomic status (SES), and victim status. The sample consists of self-reports of 1480 participants who were between 12 and 17 years old (M_age = 14.21 years, SD = 1.22) and attended 7th through 10th grades. Results showed that six varying coping strategies could be confirmed, namely Distal advice, Assertiveness, Helplessness/Self-blame, Close support, Technical coping, and Retaliation. Technical coping was the most frequently used coping strategy followed by Assertiveness, Close support, Helplessness/Self-blame, Retaliation, and Distal advice. Girls more frequently used all coping strategies, except for Retaliation which had no sex differences. Younger adolescents reported more often using Technical coping than older adolescents. Distal advice and Technical coping were higher among participants with lower SES, compared with adolescents with higher SES. Distal advice and Close support were higher for non-victims than victims, whereas the mean of Retaliation was higher for victims than non-victims. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.