A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Cyber-Victimization and Educational Outcomes for Adolescents

Adolescents’ Internet use is increasingly mobile, private, and unsupervised, which raises concerns given that the Internet increasingly serves as a medium for experiencing victimization. Although it is widely recognized that in-person victimization has a deleterious effect on adolescents’ educational outcomes, the extent to which cyber-victimization has similar effects is less well known. This systematic review and meta-analysis offers a synthesis of the relationship between cyber-victimization and educational outcomes of adolescents aged 12 to 17, including 25 effect sizes from 12 studies drawn from a variety of disciplines. A series of random-effects meta-analyses using robust variance estimation revealed associations between cyber-victimization and higher school attendance problems (r = .20) and academic achievement problems (r = .14). Results did not differ by provided definition, publication status, reporting time frame, gender, race/ethnicity, or average age. Implications for future research are discussed within context of theoretical, critical, and applied discussions.