Full length articleAbuse of technology in adolescence and its relation to social and emotional competencies, emotions in online communication, and bullying
Introduction
Interpersonal relationships in modern societies, interconnected through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) experienced substantial changes over the past decades (Casas, Ortega-Ruiz, & Rodríguez-Hidalgo, 2017). Nowadays, ICT became one of the most important contexts for socialization of adolescents and young people (Amichai-Hamburger, Kingsbury, & Schneider, 2013). The Internet use is very common. Worldwide, more than 51% of the population uses the Internet (Internet World Stats, 2017). In Spain, 94% of children aged 10–15 years are Internet users (INE, 2016). On the one hand, technology can be used for both educational and prosocial purposes. On the other hand, technology can be misused and abused. Technology abuse has become a major social concern given the difficulty to distinguish its frequent use from abuse.
Beard and Wolf (2001, p. 378) defined the abuse of technology as “use of the Internet that creates psychological, social, school, and/or work difficulties in a person's life”. People who abuse ICT do not accurately estimate the amount of time that they spend online, they tend to believe that life without electronic devices would be useless and they easily become socially isolated after reducing face-to-face activities (Caplan, 2003, Davis, 2001, Weiser, 2001). The abuse of technology involves also intrapersonal problems such as affective problems, rage outbursts when an online activity is interrupted, feeling anxious when a connection is not available and low academic achievement (Casas et al., 2013, Davis, 2001).
There are several concepts that are considered similar to what was called the abuse of technology (see a review by Widyanto & Griffiths, 2006). Some authors use the term problematic use of technology (Caplan, 2003, Shapira et al., 2000), whereas others described it as an Internet addiction (Young, 1998), an addictive behavior on the Internet (Janikian, 2013), a compulsive use of the Internet (Meerkerk, Van den Eijnden, Franken, & Garretsen, 2010), or a pathological use of technology (Davis, 2001). Even though there are many studies that described this problem behavior, DSM-V did not recognize a diagnostic category referred to an ICT addiction (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Therefore, this problem behavior is not officially recognized as a mental disorder and many authors use the term abuse of technology (e.g., Pérez del Río, 2014) that is also used in the current study.
Adolescents, sometimes called “digital natives”, were born and educated with ICT (Prensky, 2005). Research revealed that adolescents are at high risk of technology abuse (Echeburúa and Corral, 2010, Echeburúa, 2012) since they tend to use electronic devices more frequently than adults (Armstrong, Phillips, & Saling, 2000). In addition, they are more familiar with different electronic devices such as smartphones. Adolescents are the age group with the most frequent use of the Internet and social networking sites (Sánchez-Carbonell, Beranuy, Castellana, Chamorro, & Oberst, 2008).
A European study with just under twelve thousand students in eleven countries (Durkee et al., 2012) reported a prevalence of technology abuse of 4.4% (5.2% in boys and 3.8% in girls). In Spain, research found that students at ages 12 to 18 were at the highest risk of this problem behavior (Arnaiz et al., 2016, Casas et al., 2013). Findings regarding gender differences were inconsistent; some studies reported higher rates in girls (Arnaiz et al., 2016) whereas other studies reported no gender differences (Casas et al., 2013). Thus, research found that the abuse of technology is prevalent in adolescence, although there are still many gaps in knowledge that need to be addressed to describe nature, dynamics, risk and protective factors and possible consequences of this problem behavior.
Social and emotional competencies refer to dimensions such as desirable and prosocial interpersonal interactions and relationships (Dirks et al., 2007, Gómez-Ortiz et al., 2017) together with competencies to perceive, understand and manage emotions (Fernández-Berrocal, Cabello, & Gutiérrez-Cobo, 2017). Being socially and emotionally competent is usually defined as being able to apply knowledge, attitudes and skills to understand and manage emotions in oneself and others, showing empathy, initiating and maintaining desirable interpersonal relationships and responsible decision making (CASEL, 2015). Different studies, including several meta-analyses (Durlak et al., 2011, Sklad et al., 2012) and narrative reviews (Zych, Farrington, Llorent, & Ttofi, 2017) found that a high level of social and emotional competencies is related to a low level of aggressive and antisocial behavior.
Some studies focused on social and emotional competencies in relation to the abuse of technology. LaRose, Lin, and Eastin (2003) showed that low self-regulation was related to more Internet use, and a low self-regulation when using the Internet had a positive relationship to frequent Internet use. Engelberg and Sjöberg (2004), and Smaeeli Far, Akhavi Samarein, Yekleh, Tahmasebi, and Yaryari (2014) found that high emotional intelligence was related to less abuse of technology. Caplan, 2003, Caplan, 2010 suggested that a self-perceived low social competence in face-to-face interaction might be related to preference towards online interaction and a higher risk of abuse of ICT. Casale, Tella, and Fioravanti (2013) and Casale, Caplan, and Fioravanti (2016) found that a low emotional intelligence and a high preference towards online interaction predicted the abuse of technology.
Emotions seem to “influence what we notice, learn, remember, and the kinds of judgments and decisions we make” (Forgas, 2006, p. 273). A literature review focused on emotions in computer mediated communication conducted by Derks, Fischer, and Bos (2008) suggested that emotions are frequently expressed and perceived in this context using different writing resources such as repeating certain characters (Kalman & Gergle, 2014) or emoticons (Jibril & Abdullah, 2013).
Studies suggest that an emotional content in online communication is present and relevant. Krämer, Guillory, and Hancock (2014) manipulated the frequency of emotional content on Facebook walls and found that reducing the positive emotional content was related to a lower positive emotional expression and a higher negative emotional expression in the users, and vice versa. Zych, Ortega-Ruiz, and Marín-López (2017) showed that the emotional content in online communication includes expression, perception, use, understanding, and management of emotions during online interpersonal interactions.
A growing body of research (e.g., Bayer et al., 2016, Berger, 2011, Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013) suggests that the experience of emotional arousal promotes sharing information online which might be related to high use of ICT (Joyce & Kraut, 2006) and more social sharing online (Berger & Milkman, 2012). Berger (2011) induced people to feel high anxiety and enjoyment and found that participants were more likely to share an unrelated article or video with others than after inducing sadness and contentment. Bayer et al. (2016) found that people feel a high emotional arousal after posting or commenting on Facebook. Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan (2013) focused on emotions as key source of content virality and found that emotionally charged tweets were positively related to more retweets. Thus, it is possible that emotionally charged content in online communication is related to more use of technology that could become abuse. These possible relationships are still to be discovered.
Bullying is an unjustified aggressive behavior (Smith & Brain, 2000), in which some students intentionally hurt others, transgressing moral principles (Ortega-Ruiz, 2010). This behavior is frequently repeated and there is an imbalance of power between the perpetrator and the victim (Olweus, 1996, Smith et al., 2002). Studies focused on bullying described different bullying roles such as perpetrators, victims, bully/victims, bystanders and uninvolved (Hymel and Swearer, 2015, Salmivalli, 2010). Bullying has a detrimental effect on peer relationships and it deteriorates the normative social and emotional development (Gómez-Ortiz et al., 2017).
Several studies showed that high level of social and emotional competencies is related to less involvement in bullying (Elipe et al., 2012, Farrington and Baldry, 2010, Zych et al., 2016). Social competencies protect children from being involved in bullying as perpetrators, victims or bully/victims (Casper and Card, 2017, Cook et al., 2010).
Research showed that children involved in bullying victimization and perpetration might sometimes avoid face-to-face relationships and interactions (Arnaiz et al., 2016, Gámez-Guadix et al., 2013). This could refer to a self-regulation strategy to escape and avoid negative thoughts, feelings, or sensations that occur during a face-to-face interaction with their peers. García-Oliva and Piqueras (2016) found that avoidant coping strategy is strongly related to the abuse of technology. Thus, it is plausible to suggest that children involved in bullying (i.e., victims, bullies, and bully/victims) might increase their use and possibly abuse of technology. This could be a strategy used as a tool to cope with emotionally difficult situations or to find a distraction from off-line problems in life (Panova & Lleras, 2016). Nevertheless, it is still necessary to confirm whether involvement in bullying victimization and perpetration is related to the abuse of ICT and to explore a possible interplay among school bullying, social and emotional competencies, and the abuse of technology.
Although several studies suggested possible relationships between technology abuse and social and emotional competencies, emotional content in online communication, and school bullying, the dynamic relationships among all these variables are still to be discovered. Thus, the aim of the study was to describe and explain the relationships among social and emotional competencies, emotional content in online communication, school bullying and the abuse of technology. Low level of social and emotional competencies was expected to be related to more technology abuse (hypothesis 1). High level of emotional content in online communication was expected to be related to more ICT abuse (hypothesis 2). Involvement in school bullying was expected to be related to more technology abuse (hypothesis 3). A dynamic relationship among all these variables was also expected to be found.
Section snippets
Participants
This study was conducted with a sample of 2139 secondary education students enrolled in 22 public and private schools in Andalusia (Spain) between 11 and 19 years old (M = 13.79, DT = 1.40); 51.5% were girls. Participants were equally distributed among the grades (Grade 1: 25.3%, Grade 2: 25.9%, Grade 3: 24.7%, and Grade 4: 23.7%). A randomized multi-stage stratified probabilistic sampling with proportional affixation was performed taking into account the distribution of the population among
Results
The correlation matrix including social and emotional competencies, school bullying, emotional content in online communication, and the abuse of ICT is presented in Table 1. It was found that the Abuse of technology (including Interpersonal and Intrapersonal dimensions) was related to lower level of Social and emotional competencies, including lower Self-management and motivation, and lower Responsible decision-making. In addition, the Intrapersonal dimension of technology abuse was also
Discussion and conclusions
Research shows that the abuse of technology is a damaging problem behavior that is prevalent in adolescents. Notwithstanding its importance, little is known about possible risk and protective factors against technology abuse. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe and explain the relations between social and emotional competencies, emotional content in online communication, school bullying, and technology abuse. Findings are consistent with previous research (Bianchi and Phillips, 2005
Conflicts of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgements
The current work was supported by a research grant for the project “Addiction to the new technologies: The role of cyber emotional competencies and emotional intelligence” [BIL/14/S2/163] granted by the Fundación Mapfre; and the project “E-Intelligence: risks and opportunities of the emotional competencies expressed online” [PSI2015-64114-R] granted by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness within the I + D + I 2015 National Program for Research Aimed at the Challenges of the
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