Cyber-victimization, online friendship and psychological adjustment among Hong Kong Chinese college students

Across 204 Hong Kong Chinese College stu-dents (Females = 121, Males = 83, Mage= 19.51, SD = 1.58), their experiences of cyber-victimization, online friendship, anddepression were studied. In traditional schoolsetting, positive friendship buffers the negative inuences of being victimized, however,relatively little is known about whether online friendship is benecial to the psychological adjustment of College students. Past studies suggested depression is one of the negative outcomes of experiencing cyber-victimization. This study aimed at studying the relation-ship among experiencing cyber-victimization, online friendship and depression. Results suggested that 53.9% of them experienced cyber-victimization. With demographic variables and time spent on the Internet being con-trolled, cyber-victimization experience positively explained 3.4% of the variance in depression, while online friendship negatively and uniquely explained an additional 5.7% of the variance in depression. This research demon-strates theoretical and practical importance of studying both positive and negative online social experiences among College students.