Previously submitted to: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (no longer under consideration since May 03, 2022)
Date Submitted: Mar 23, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Does Cyber-Dating Abuse Cause Trauma in College Students: An Online-Survey?
ABSTRACT
Background:
With cyberspace making it possible to establish also romantic relationships, new possibilities as well as new problems arise. As each facete of social life is represented digitally nowadays, also dating and its downsides like cyber-dating abuse are. Prior research offers contradicting findings regarding forms, prevalence, and gender differences.
Objective:
The present study aimed on the one hand to explore cyber-dating abuse forms college students experience with their respective event-prevalence and gender differences regarding distress and the overall sum of critical events. Additionally, it explores the occurrence of post-traumatic stress following these events. On the other hand, this study tried to confirm the hypothesis that college students with and without suspected post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) differ in how many abuse-forms they experienced as well as in the height of self-reported distress associated with the abuse events. Last, it was a goal to confirm a supposed negative association of support and traumatic distress in connection with cyber-dating abuse.
Methods:
Data of 200 (mean age = 23.54, SD = 2.76, range = 18 to 33; gender: female (68%)/male (30.5%), response rate = 12.2) college students were collected via an online survey that used standardized questionnaires (IES-R for PTSD), own questions deduced from prior research, and distress ratings.
Results:
Unwanted sexual messages, ghosting, fake profiles are among the most common, sharing of own sexual photos, abuse of trust to obtain sex, sharing of secrets among the least common events. Gender differences for the overall sum of cyber-dating abuse events (t(137.60) = 3.57, P<.001) as well as for the overall distress (t(166.03) = -4.88, P<.001) following these events were found with women having higher values in both variables. Suspected PTSD (Prevalence=36.8 %) is most likely followed: cyberstalking, pressure for mailing own sexual photos, humiliation, and sharing personal secrets. First hypothesis was confirmed by showing significant differences in the sum of cyber-dating abuse events and in the height of the associated distress between college students with and without suspected PTSD.
Conclusions:
High prevalence of suspected PTSD shows that dating abuse is not only in real life, but also in digital life, a serious issue. The fact that not only the amount of distress is relevant for developing a suspected PTSD, but also the total sum of events, indicates that every event including the common and at first glance less harmful events should be part of a preventive strategy. Since high prevalence rates were found at this young age, a general necessity for early education in the existence of cyber-dating abuse can be inferred. In addition, young student women should be in special focus for preventive measures and offers for counselling.
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