Profiles of Digital Parenting Styles: Associations With Cyberbullying Among Adolescents

INTRODUCTION: Cyberbullying is a growing concern in the digital age, posing serious threats to children's mental health, social relationships, and overall well-being. Parents raising children in a highly digitalized world employ a range of digital parenting strategies, including active monitoring, content regulation, and technology control, to guide children's online experiences. However, little research has examined the presence of heterogeneous profiles of these parenting strategies and examined how they influence children's involvement in cyberbullying behaviors. Guided by neo-ecological theory, an extension of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory into the digital context, this study investigated profiles of digital parenting styles and their associations with cyberbullying. METHODS: Data were drawn from 306 parent-child dyads in the U.S. (parents: M age = 38.52, 60.8% mothers; children: M age = 11.80, 50.7% boys). Parents completed surveys regarding digital parenting practices, while children reported their cyberbullying experiences. Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify distinct parenting profiles, and group differences in children's cyberbullying perpetration and victimization were examined. RESULTS: The analysis revealed four distinct digital parenting profiles: low engagement (10%), discordant (24%), trust-based (32%), and high engagement (34%). Children of parents with discordant and low-engagement profiles reported higher levels of cyberbullying perpetration compared to those in high-engagement and trust-based profiles. Similarly, children of discordant parents showed the highest levels of cyberbullying victimization, followed by those with low-engagement, trust-based, and high-engagement parents. CONCLUSIONS: These findings underscore the importance of consistent, engaged, and trust-oriented digital parenting in reducing children's risks of becoming involved in cyberbullying, as perpetrators or victims.