Regular family dinners could help kids better cope with being bullied on the internet.
Spending more time communicating with parents could help kids deal with difficult situations such as being bullied, which can lead to psychological problems down the road, McGill University reported.
"One in five adolescents experience cyberbullying," said McGill professor Frank Elgar. "Many adolescents use social media, and online harassment and abuse are difficult for parents and educators to monitor, so it is critical to identify protective factors for youths who are exposed to cyberbullying."
The study looked at the impact of frequent family meals on how bullying affected the mental health of adolescents. To make their findings the researchers surveyed 20,385 Wisconsin adolescents; they looked at both exposure to cyber and face-to-face bullying and other mental health outcomes such as "depression, anxiety, substance use, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and suicidal attempts," McGill University reported.
"We found that emotional, [behavioral], and substance use problems are 2.6 to 4.5 times more common among victims of cyberbullying," Elgar said. "And these impacts are not due to face-to-face bullying; they are specific to cyberbullying"
The research team found cyberbullying victimization relates more strongly to these problems in individuals that have fewer family meals, suggesting there may be a link between family time and ability to cope with bullying.
"The results are promising, but we do not want to oversimplify what we observed," Elgar said. "Many adolescents do not have regular family meals but receive support in other ways, like shared breakfasts, or the morning school run."
"Checking in with teens about their online lives may give them tools to manage online harassment or bullying that can easily go undetected," he concluded.
The findings were published Sept. 1 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics; it was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Canada Research Chairs programme.
