In a large nationally-representative sample of people aged 15 years and older living in Canada, we found a similar prevalence of cyber-victimization among immigrants and non-immigrants. Significantly, while most factors associated with cyber-victimization were similar between the two groups, we found important differences both according to immigrant status and further in subgroups defined by sex.
4.1 Cyber-victimization and immigrant status
Cyber-victimization was positively associated with being male among immigrants, and was not associated with being male (or female) among Canadian-born counterparts. Results further showed a very strong association between cyber-victimization and having a history of child maltreatment, which was most notable within immigrants. We also found that residing in an unwelcoming neighbourhood, rather than individual or interpersonal factors, was associated with the strongest association to cyber-victimization for immigrants, and did not find evidence of a similar pattern among non-immigrants. Additionally, while we found that having a history of IPV to be strongly associated with cyber-victimization among non-immigrants, there was no evidence of an association among immigrants.
4.2 Cyber-victimization, immigrant status and sex
Among immigrant females, we found those who were cyber-victimized tended to have significantly higher odds of being of younger age, a pattern that was also observed, though to a lesser degree, among non-immigrant females. Results also showed a positive association between cyber-victimization and having a mental health condition among immigrant males that was also evident among non-immigrant males and females, yet notably absent among immigrant females. Additionally, we found evidence of a strong association between cyber-victimization and perceived discrimination among immigrant females, which was far more modest among non-immigrants groups, and absent among immigrant males.
The link between cybervictimization and being male among immigrants suggests a differential vulnerability between immigrant men and women that is consistent with findings in one previous study of school-age youth that similarly showed immigrant males to have higher odds of both cyber and other forms of bullying than females (11). It is possible that this pattern speaks to processes by which resettlement experiences may differentially contribute to the risk of cyberbullying for immigrant males compared to females. One explanation could be that the increase in migration to Canada from non-European countries of origin, where gender norms are more likely to differ from those in Canada, is creating a heightened vulnerability for immigrant men characterized by a combination of stressful conditions, including less social acceptance and emotional maladjustment, which have been shown to be associated with increased rates of ‘traditional’ bullying victimization (38) and may also influence risk of cyberbullying. While the mechanisms through which mental health is linked to cyber-bullying remain a matter of some debate (1,8), our sex-stratified results within immigrants that show a link between mental health and cyber-bullying among males only, may further help explain why gendered differences in the resettlement process could be making immigrant men more prone to cyber-victimization. Sex-stratified-analyses within immigrants also identified increased risk for cyberbullying among young immigrant females that was not observed among male counterparts. Indeed, while being of younger age was also a risk factor among non-immigrant females, the appreciable association among immigrant females suggests that the developmental stage of adolescence may be a particularly sensitive period of heightened cyber-victimization risk for this group, of which the extent and impact require further investigation.
The high degree of overlap between cyber-victimization and other forms of victimization is consistent with prior literature on cyberbullying and poly-victimization among young people in the general population (39,40), which suggests exposure to one form of victimization is associated with exposure to other types of victimization(41). Notably, immigrants who reported a history of child maltreatment were more than three times as likely to experience cyber-victimization than those who did not experience child maltreatment. This marks an important extension of the literature on links between child maltreatment and cyber-victimization and further sheds light on another condition contributing to prevalence of cyberbullying risk among immigrants (42). Since prior literature strongly highlights the role of positive family support/relationships as a protective factor against cyber-victimization (43,44), it may be that the higher likelihood of cyber harms among immigrants with a history of maltreatment is linked to the centrality of family support in migration context. In this environment where there is elevated reliance on family, it is possible that the negative effects of child maltreatment, including higher dissatisfaction with family relationships, lower self-esteem, and social isolation (45), are more jeopardizing for immigrants, and thus also contribute to their increased likelihood of cyber-victimization (11,14–16). Furthermore, the positive association observed between cyber-victimization and perceived discrimination, which was most pronounced for immigrant females, could also indicate that poly-victimization, inclusive of cyber-bullying, may be more highly prevalent among immigrants compared to non-immigrants (46) The pattern of poly-victimization, however, did not include IPV, where we found a positive association between cybervictimization and IPV among non-immigrants that did not extend to immigrants. While we find this latter result counterintuitive, we suspect it could relate to the under-identification of IPV reporting among immigrants that may be related to group differences in perceptions and definitions of IPV based on culture of origin (47).
Our results also point to an important role of neighbourhood-level experiences in explaining patterns of cyberbullying, and show these links to be more strongly and stably observed among immigrants than among non-immigrants. Most significantly, we found that residing in an unwelcoming neighbourhood was very strongly associated with cyber-victimization across all immigrants regardless of sex, but found no discernible association among non-immigrants, for whom neighbourhood-level discrimination instead appeared to be more commonly associated with cyber-victimization. These results and recent research encourage consideration of how cyber-space intersects with neighbourhood/place (48), including the distinct experiences of immigrants. Of particular importance, the apparent divergence between neighbourhood ‘welcome’ and ‘discrimination’ in explaining cyberbullying risk among immigrants and non-immigrants could indicate that cohesion within a neighbourhood may be associated with risk through separate pathways for immigrants compared to non-immigrants. For example, an individual’s perception of an ‘unwelcoming’ neighbourhood may be a more adequate proxy than ‘discrimination’ in explaining the link between inclusion/exclusion and risk of cyber-victimization for immigrants, and could reflect how rising anti-immigration sentiment in North America (31,49) is operating in subtler ways in the Canadian context than more overt neighbourhood-level discriminatory acts. Conversely, it is also plausible that the absence of an association between neighbourhood discrimination and cyber-victimization for immigrants reflects underlying differences in socialization processes related to time since arrival among immigrants (50). This interpretation is consistent with prior research showing that recent immigrants are generally less likely to report discrimination than their native-born counterparts and more established immigrants who have different expectations of societal inclusion and are more sensitive to instances of unequal treatment (51).
4.3 Strengths and limitations
Our findings are an important extension of prior literature in several ways. First, our stratified approach allowed for interpretation of differences by immigrant status and sex, making it possible to examine comparisons that were not explored in previous studies. Second, our leveraging of a demographically and geographically dispersed weighted sample improved generalizability of findings to the entire country-level population. Third, our analysis expands consideration of cyber-victimization beyond youth to include older adults, a population whose experiences of the internet and social media are often overlooked. Lastly, we incorporated a broad social-ecological analytic approach, including neighbourhood factors, which attempted to respond to cautions raised in recent studies about the tendency for an overly narrow focus on individual and family-level factors to try and explain patterns of cyber-victimization.
Results, however, must also be interpreted within the limitations of our study. The study’s primary limitation is the cross-sectional study design and data, which implies the direction of certain associations found, are still unknown. We were also not able to identify how associations may vary over time, especially for immigrants whose experiences and perspectives on what constitutes bullying, may change the longer they are in the host country. Second, there was a lack of available variables related to our cyber-victimization outcome. For example, we could not know the types or sources (medium and perpetrators) of cyber-victimization in order to better understand this phenomenon across immigrant/non-immigrants and males/females. Third, we have only a crude measure of biological sex in available data and not a measure of gender, which precluded capturing various aspects of gender identity and how these may also intersect with our outcome. Additionally, English/French language ability for the GSS was an inclusion criterion, so the most marginalized immigrants, who may be at greatest risk for cyber-victimization, were excluded. In future, national-level data that are not limited by language ability are needed to better represent immigrants’ experiences.
4.4 Future research
Our findings highlight the need for additional research of this phenomena in several areas. Importantly, our main finding underscores the need to explore the complex manner in which immigrant status and gender appear to place immigrant men at higher risk than women. Also, though we did not find an association between cyber-victimization and visible minority status, a finding that is consistent with some prior research examining race and cyber-bullying (9,22), we suspect this surprising result may reflect a limitation of the visible minority measure, which aggregates many different racial/ethnic groups. Certainly, the degree to which race/ethnicity may operate and contribute to risks for cyber-bullying merits consideration in future research, along with consideration of other dimensions of migration (i.e., refugee status, time since arrival, region of origin), and additional factors, such as socioeconomic status and sexual orientation. Additional investigation into how and for whom neighbourhood/place-based factors affect cyber-victimization risk, including how mechanisms associated with anti-immigrant sentiment and social inclusion may act to exacerbate or buffer risk. Lastly, a more complete study of cyber-victimization and immigrant status should also examine the characteristics of perpetrators and mediums used for bullying, including attention to how immigrants’ cyber-worlds may potentially also encompass cyber-victimization perpetrated by sources in countries of origin.