Help,I Am Losing Control! Examining the Reporting of Sexual Harassment by Adolescents to Social Networking Sites

Abstract

Sexual harassment is often encountered by adolescents on social networking sites (SNS). One option to cope with a situation of harassment on SNS is to alarm the provider by reporting the transgressive content. It is yet unclear what the determinants of reporting a sexual harassment situation on SNS are, as well as the subsequent actions to these reports from the part of the SNS provider. In this article, we seek to address these gaps, and in particular examine whether control-by-the-self over the situation and negative emotions play a role in the reporting of sexual harassment on SNS. Findings indicate that a low situational control-by-the-self, indirectly (namely through a higher experience of negative emotions such as anger and shame) increases the reporting of sexual harassment by the victim. Public visibility of the incident and the impossibility to remove the content reduce the situational control-by-the-self. Results further suggest that SNS providers often ignore reported situations of sexual harassment. The study concludes with suggestions for responses to reported harassment on SNS, which should be directed toward increasing behavioral control and thereby alleviating negative emotions.

Introduction

Sexual harassment in cyberspace

Sexual harassment refers to conduct of sexual nature perceived as unwelcome by the targeted individual.^1,2 Studies demonstrate that 4 percent to 38 percent of adolescents (13–18 years) encountered sexual harassment in cyberspace.^3,4 Victimization rates vary significantly, as particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adolescents constitute a risk group for sexual harassment, whereas girls receive more sexual harassment in comparison with boys.⁴ Online sexual harassment can lead to emotional, educational, and health problems.^3,5

In this study, we focus on a wide range of unwelcome verbal/graphic sexual and gender-degrading comments toward someone through social networking sites (SNS).¹ We do not include online sexual solicitations, a specific form of sexual harassment, as this is perceived as less threatening, and can be ended easier by oneself (e.g., by blocking the person).^6,7 Since online sexual harassment of adolescents is often examined as part of general harassment, or sometimes occurs in the form of cyberbullying, this literature will be considered here.

Coping strategies: reporting on SNS

In general, sexual harassment often occurs on SNS,^8,9 since SNS use is ubiquitous among adolescents and a large part of their social activity has been shifted to this setting.¹⁰ When adolescents are victimized online, they apply various coping strategies to manage the stressful situation.¹¹ Different theories categorize these strategies as either approach versus avoidance strategies¹² or either as problem-focused versus emotion-focused.¹³ The first categorization distinguishes between cognitive and emotional strategies to deal with the stressor (approach) or on the other hand removing away from the stressor (avoidance).¹² Problem-focused strategies refer to active mechanisms to solve the stressful circumstances, whereas emotion-focused coping strategies involve efforts to regulate emotional consequences.¹³ With regard to cyber harassment, specific technical coping strategies are distinguished such as reporting harassment on SNS to alarm providers.^11,14 Most social networking providers will deal with these abuse reports by first evaluating if the content is violating their community standards.¹⁴ Next, if labeled as violating content, several actions can be taken such as deleting the message, sanctioning the harasser (e.g., providing a warning, suspending/blocking the account), or contacting law enforcement.^15–18 This coping strategy has been recommended by several authors.^11,19 Qualitative explorative results suggest that for stopping cyberbullying, adolescent victims do not perceive reporting as helpful due to insufficient reactions.²⁰ However, in contrast to cyberbullying, for less severe forms of online harassment, it was found that technical strategies such as reporting to the provider, were perceived as being helpful in buffering negative emotions and in stopping the harassment.²¹ Moreover, since a warning or sanction for the harasser can follow from reported abuse,^15–18 this might induce the harasser from continuing the harassment.

Although reporting harassment to the SNS provider may be helpful, to date, no quantitative insights are available on the subsequent actions by providers to these reports. The present article seeks to address this gap. Moreover, determinants of reporting sexual harassment on SNS are yet unclear and insights in these can reveal what drives adolescents to seek help from providers. We examine the role of both situational and behavioral control in sexual harassment and their relation to reporting the situation. Situational control-by-the-self is conceptualized here as the degree to which the outcome of a situation is perceived as controllable by oneself (derived from the Stress Appraisal Measure).²² Perceived behavioral control includes one's beliefs in the ability to perform a behavior.²³ Moreover, we examine the determinants of the lack of situational control-by-the-self, as insight in these can tell us when assistance of SNS providers is required.

Theoretical framework

According to the transactional model of stress and coping, an individual cognitively appraises the stressor (primary appraisal), as well as the options for coping (secondary appraisal).¹³ A key aspect of this secondary appraisal is the situational control-by-the-self or the perception to which degree one can change the outcome of the situation. The degree of perceived situational control depends on certain situational characteristics of the stressor.²⁴ First, we will hypothesize three situational factors influencing the situational control-by-the-self (H1a, H1b, H1c).

In the context of cyberbullying, it has been suggested that a publicly visible incident is perceived as more severe due to its low controllability, since the content is likely to be forwarded.²⁵ In line with this, we hypothesize that the public visibility of the sexual harassment situation on SNS will be negatively related to the situational control-by-the-self (H1a). In addition, in cyberbullying an anonymous perpetrator tends to reduce the perceived control,²⁵ since anyone could be the perpetrator and there is a constant fear for being harassed, even at home.^25,26 We, therefore, predict that the anonymity of the harasser will be associated with lower situational control-by-the-self of the sexual harassment situation on SNS (H1b). Another important factor in explaining the situational control-by-the-self is whether the content can be removed by the victim. The control over the situation is rather low in cyberspace when a message cannot be removed.^25,27 Hence, we expect that the impossibility to remove content of the sexual harassment situation on SNS will be associated with lower situational control-by-the-self (H1c).

Next, the perception of situational control-by-the-self is linked to emotional reactions and coping responses,^13,28 determining our next hypotheses.

It has been empirically shown that control-by-the-self is not necessarily correlated with general controllability.²² For example someone can perceive a situation as unsolvable by the self, but on the contrary solvable by others. Therefore, low control-by-the-self can motivate adolescents to seek technical assistance to have it solved by others and gain more control.²⁹ Particularly, since we expect that situational control-by-the-self may be predicted by characteristics (including anonymity, impossibility to remove, and public visibility) for which SNS providers can play an assisting role. Therefore, since adolescents will feel in need of control, we hypothesize that situational control-by-the-self is negatively related to reporting sexual harassment to the provider (H2).

Specific emotions that are felt intensively when encountering sexual harassment are anger^30,31 and shame.³¹ Situations rated low in situational control have been associated with the emotion of shame.^32,33 With regard to anger, although appraisal theories consider controllability as a determinant of anger,^34,35 inconsistent empirical evidence exists.^36–38 Several studies have established an association between anger and powerless or low control-by-the-self^37,39 and thus anger may motivate to regain power. Thus, we hypothesize that for sexual harassment on SNS, situational control-by-the-self is negatively associated with these negative emotions (H3).

Additionally, negative emotions resulting from peer victimization have been directly linked to children's coping.^40,41 Shame is particularly experienced with sexual harassment occurring in public³¹ and thus may be a motivator for reporting the incident, since the victim may desire deletion of the content. In addition, anger can facilitate reporting as the angry victim has a desire for retaliation,^40,42 which may be achieved by sanctions on SNS. Therefore, we expect to find a positive association between negative emotions and reporting to the provider (H4). In particular, negative emotions resulting from peer victimization can act as a mediator between appraisal and coping.^40,41 We hypothesize that the relation between situational control-by-the-self and reporting the situation on SNS will be mediated by the negative emotions of shame and anger (H5).

Finally, another control-related construct is perceived behavioral control, or one's beliefs in the ability to perform a particular behavior.²³ Bandura states that the higher the self-efficacy or perceived behavioral control, the higher the likelihood that the behavior will be accomplished.⁴³ Individuals who demonstrate a general high self-efficacy level have been found to adopt increased problem solving when confronted with online bullying.⁴⁴ Reporting the harassment can be considered as a way to seek help of others to solve the problem. Therefore, we expect the degree of perceived behavioral control to report sexual harassment to the SNS provider to be positively related with reporting behavior (H6).

Methods

Participants of this study included 1,015 pupils (51% boys and 49% girls), aged between 11 and 19 years (M = 15.2; SD = 1.9), from 11 secondary schools in Flanders, Belgium. To adjust for over- and underrepresentation of some subgroups (according to gender, age, and education level) in our sample, weight procedures were applied to the data to represent the actual school population.⁴⁵

Participants were recruited from classes selected through a stratified convenient sampling method. Strata of the sample included grade (three grades) and education type (vocational, technical, and general education). After obtaining consent from the school principal, passive informed consent was obtained from parents. Parents were provided the possibility to object participation of their child after they received an information letter on the purpose of the study. Before completion of the questionnaires, adolescents were introduced to the study procedure and signed a consent form. This study protocol received approval from the Ethics Advisory Committee of the University of Antwerp.

We employed a cross-sectional survey design. Participants completed anonymously a paper-and-pencil questionnaire within their class group or grouped with a few classes in one room.

First, demographic information was obtained by asking for gender and age. Next, participants were asked how frequent they had encountered sexual harassment through SNS in the past 6 months preceding the survey (five categories ranging from “Never” to “Few times per week”). In particular, several categories of common sexual harassment forms on SNS were assessed, based on existing categorizations.^46–48 These included being harassed by the sending or posting of: pictures/videos containing a certain degree of nudity; sexual rumors; homophobic comments; comments/ratings related to sex life; unwanted comments on looks, body, or sexuality.

Those participants who reported they had been harassed at least once in the past 6 months, were asked to recall and briefly describe the most severe event (or the only event encountered) and to respond to questions regarding situational characteristics. Anonymity of the harasser was measured by asking: “By whom were you harassed?” with answer categories such as “someone/people I do not know.” The place of occurrence was asked based on several answer options and afterward recoded into two categories: “through a private message” or “through a publicly visible page.” Finally, participants were asked whether the content could be removed by themselves (Yes/No).

Situational control-by-the-self was measured using four items (α = 0.869, M = 3.0, SD = 1.25). An example is “I have the ability to stop the situation.” This scale was based on the Stress Appraisal Measure developed by Peacock and Wong.²² Answer options ranged from “not at all” (1) to “very sure” (5).

The negative emotions, anger and shame, were respectively measured as follows: “I felt angry” and “I felt ashamed,” with five answer options ranging from “Not at all” to “Extremely” (α = 0.636, M = 2.8, SD = 1.26). The PANAS scale measures emotions in this way.⁴⁹

To measure adolescents' perceived behavioral control in reporting the incident, one item was used (“I feel able to report the incident”) (M = 3.76, SD = 1.30).

The dependent variable, whether the event was reported to the SNS provider, was directly measured with one dichotomous item (“I reported the incident to the provider”).

Those adolescents who reported the situation of sexual harassment, were asked about actions taken by the provider. According to report abuse policies of several SNS providers,^16–18 possible actions were proposed and asked whether this was done (e.g., “No action was taken”).

Results

Descriptive statistics

In total, 29.8 percent (n = 303) of the participants had encountered any of the solicited forms of sexual harassment, through SNS in the past 6 months preceding the survey. Most incidents occurred on Facebook (78 percent), followed by Ask.fm (8 percent) and Instagram (3 percent). Findings indicate that 21.8 percent (n = 60) of them reported the incident to the SNS provider. The highest reported figures were for Facebook (70 percent), Ask.fm (13 percent), Netlog (former Belgian SNS) (6 percent) and Instagram (5 percent). Table 1 shows the subsequent actions by SNS providers, indicating that in nearly half of the reported cases (46.9 percent), no action was undertaken. Only in 29.4 percent of the cases, the content was removed.

Table 1.

Actions by Social Networking Site Providers Following the Reported Content

Variable	N (%)
No action was taken (e.g., no message, no removal)	28 (46.9)
Automatic reply after reporting	9 (14.2)
Content was removed	18 (29.4)
The perpetrator was contacted (e.g., with warning)	5 (9.1)
The perpetrator's account was blocked	10 (16.2)

The total percentage does not equal 100 as more than one answer was possible.

Multivariate data analysis

To investigate our proposed hypotheses, we utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) in Mplus 6.11.⁵⁰

We calculated parameter estimates to test whether the latent constructs are reliable for the observed variables (Table 2). Correlations between the variables are presented in Table 3. Next, the proposed model was estimated (Fig. 1). Because “reported” is a non-normal distributed dichotomous dependent variable, weighted least squares means and variance adjusted estimation was used.⁵¹

FIG. 1.

Structural model. Note: The pathway of the mediation (H5) is not represented. *p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001.

Table 2.

Unstandardized and Standardized Parameter Estimates

Latent construct	Observed variables	β	B
Negative emotions	Shame	0.750	1.082
	Anger	0.625	0.924
Situational control-by-the-self	Item 1	0.831	1.272
	Item 2	0.642	0.768
	Item 3	0.856	1.043
	Item 4	0.786	0.916

Table 3.

Correlations Between Main Study Variables

Variable	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1. Sex
2. Age	−0.023
3. Reported	0.137^*	−0.116
4. Perceived behavioral control to report	−0.009	0.116^***	0.243^***
5. Control	−0.092	0.076	−0.132^*	−0.004
6. Negative emotions	0.235^***	−0.054	0.200^**	0.057	−0.430^***
7. Public visibility	−0.013	−0.099	0.109	0.014	−0.179^**	0.087
8. Anonymity	0.141^*	−0.080	0.133^*	0.000	0.058	−0.084	0.110
9. Possibility to remove	−0.028	0.024	−0.013	−0.018	0.417^***	−0.274^***	−0.081	0.157^*

p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.01; ^***p < 0.001.

Structural model

Next, data for the harassed subjects (n = 303) were entered into a SEM model (Fig. 1). We controlled for age and gender in the model. The model had an acceptable fit: CFI = 0.897; RMSEA = 0.038 (90% CI: 0.017–0.056) x²(47) = 69.977, p < 0.05) and explained 37.7 percent of the variance in the reporting behavior of sexual harassment on SNS. Findings furthermore indicate that situational control-by-the-self is higher when the content is not publicly visible (β = −0.40, p < 0.05) (confirms H1a) and when the content is possible to be removed by the victim, him or herself (β = 1.15, p < 0.001) (confirms H1c). Whether the harasser was anonymous did not influence the degree of situational control-by-the-self (rejects H1b).

As hypothesized, the situational control-by-the-self had a significant effect on negative emotions (H3) (β = −0.52, p < 0.001) and negative emotions were furthermore predictive for reporting behavior (β = 0.35, p < 0.05) (H4). The direct effect between control and reporting behavior was found to be nonsignificant after controlling for negative emotions (β = 0.05, n.s.) (H2), but was found significant without controlling for emotions (β = −0.13, p < 0.05), suggesting a full mediation or indirect-only mediation^52,53 by emotions (H5).

In addition, perceived behavioral control to report was positively related with reporting the event (β = 0.31, p < 0.001) (H6).

Discussion

This study addressed the gap surrounding one of the technical solutions available to victims of sexual harassment on SNS. This is the first study to particularly examine the coping strategy of reporting sexual harassment to SNS providers, unraveling that low situational control-by-the-self indirectly predicts the reporting through negative emotions.

Furthermore, most of our hypotheses were confirmed. Only anonymity of the harasser was not found as a significant predictor for situational control-by-the-self. This may be explained by previous contrasting results regarding the anonymity of the perpetrator in cyberbullying. An anonymous perpetrator can evoke powerlessness and frustration⁵⁴ because of the victim's limited possibility to stop the incident,⁵⁵ whereas also knowing the perpetrator can be distressing because of their direct access to the victim's social network.⁵⁶

Our findings indicate that SNS often do not respond to reported sexual harassment (in 46.9 percent of the cases) confirming previous evaluations of self-regulating measures by SNS indicating there is room for improving responses.⁵⁷ An explanation for the low response from providers may be the high number of reports.¹⁴ Nevertheless, responses are critical. In particular, since this study found that negative emotions contribute to the reporting of sexual harassment to SNS providers. The contribution of negative emotions to reporting on SNS is in line with previous research showing that negative emotions play a role in help seeking from teachers, friends, or family for bullying.⁵⁸ These findings highlight the importance for SNS providers to offer responses directed toward alleviating negative emotions. We argue for the provision of emotional support, in addition to technical assistance (e.g., remove the content; block/trace the harasser). One strategy may consist of providing the victim, who reported the harassment, with automatic messages containing emotional support and links to support organizations,⁵⁹ thereby reducing the step to find help by advising whom to contact.^59,60

In addition, following our results indicating the role of situational control in reporting behavior, we recommend to increase control mechanisms on SNS for publicly visible incidents, such as empowering users through technological features (e.g., premoderation of content about yourself).⁶¹ In general, SNS are recommended to provide technical features on their platform for youngsters to manage risks.^62,63 New techniques must be examined that could allow people to delete/moderate content (related to themselves) generated by their network.

Results further indicate that only in 29.4 percent of the reports, the content had been removed according to the adolescents. This may be particularly problematic for two reasons. First, we can assume that adolescents reporting the event may expect the content to be removed as we found this to be an important predictive factor for low control-by-the-self. Second, we found that publicly visible incidents are perceived as less controllable. Reacting upon reports of public incidents is important, since publicly visible harassment in cyberspace has been related with higher perceived severity due to bigger audiences.^25,27,64

Content may not be removed when it does not violate their terms of use, as SNS state in their abuse report policies.^16–18 However, since sexual harassment is defined by the victim's individual perception,² SNS providers should adopt a more individual approach when it comes to harassment reports rather than to respond in an algorithmically rule-bound way according to their content violation policy.¹⁴ Better evaluation of the industry's implementation of self-regulatory initiatives⁶¹ may foster efforts in dealing with reports.

Finally, perceived behavioral control to report was found to be an important predictor in whether the incident was reported to the SNS provider. Previous research highlighted the importance of one's beliefs in the behavioral control or self-efficacy for the effectiveness of coping.^65,66 It will be important to increase adolescents' perceived ability to report by informing them on how to report a situation online as well as how to manage their safety online.

Limitations

A first limitation relates to the self-reported nature of data, which may have affected the accuracy of our data. Moreover, the use of a recall method may suffer from memory distortion. For instance, even though participants were asked to report emotions specifically experienced at the time of encountering sexual harassment, we cannot exclude that these emotions have been affected by the outcome of the incident, for instance whether the coping responses were effective.

In addition, future research should take into account the trust that users have in receiving responses from SNS providers. One's trust in a complaint to be taken seriously has been proven to be an explaining factor in general help-seeking by adolescents⁶⁰ and in reporting sexual harassment at work.⁶⁷ Moreover, other characteristics of reported harassment should be examined.

Conclusion

In conclusion, empowering adolescents by providing more control mechanisms and increasing their knowledge on how to manage SNS features can be viable strategies for better coping with sexual harassment. Moreover, new methods must be sought to increase effective responses on reports of harassment, directed toward increasing behavioral control and thereby alleviating negative emotions.

Footnotes

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) under Grant 120007.

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

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