Harmful Online Exposure, Peer Reinforcement and Perceived Cyberdelinquency among Secondary School Adolescents in Ghana

Harmful online content is encountered within peer environments in which attention, approval and encouragement may shape how students interpret online conduct. This article examines associations between harmful online exposure, perceived online peer reinforcement and perceived peer cyberdelinquency using aggregate results from a cross-sectional survey of 384 secondary school students in Ghana. Exposure and reinforcement were represented by six-item agreement scales, and perceived peer misconduct by an eight-item scale. The reported total exposure–misconduct coefficient was 0.563 (95% confidence interval [0.461, 0.665]); the coefficient conditional on reinforcement was 0.279 (95% confidence interval [0.179, 0.379]). The reported indirect association through reinforcement was 0.284 (95% bootstrap confidence interval [0.203, 0.373]; 5,000 resamples). The outcome concerns perceptions of misconduct among students generally rather than respondents’ own perpetration or verified offending. The results are consistent with a perceived peer environment in which harmful exposure and social endorsement occur together. Interpretation remains exploratory because of the cross-sectional design, overlapping item content, lack of covariate adjustment and inconsistencies in the source model summaries. The findings support further investigation of peer responses within school digital-citizenship and safeguarding research, including longitudinal designs with independently validated measures.

Harmful Online Exposure; Peer Reinforcement; Perceived Peer Cyberdelinquency; Adolescents; Ghana; Cross-Sectional Associations

1. Afriyie, S. (2026). Digital social ecologies and the formation of cyberdelinquent behaviour among secondary school adolescents in Ghana. Unpublished doctoral manuscript, Africa Research University. [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

2. Clark, L. A., & Watson, D. (2019). Constructing validity: New developments in creating objective measuring instruments. Psychological Assessment, 31(12), 1412–1427. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000626 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

3. Flake, J. K., & Fried, E. I. (2020). Measurement schmeasurement: Questionable measurement practices and how to avoid them. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 3(4), 456–465. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245920952393 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

4. Kyei-Arthur, F., Kyei-Gyamfi, S., & Sarpong, S. (2024). Internet usage, access, and supervision among Ghanaian children: A cross-sectional study. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, Article 962. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03482-8 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

5. Machackova, H. (2020). Bystander reactions to cyberbullying and cyberaggression: Individual, contextual, and social factors. Current Opinion in Psychology, 36, 130–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.06.003 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

6. Marciano, L., Schulz, P. J., & Camerini, A. L. (2020). Cyberbullying perpetration and victimization in youth: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 25(2), 163–181. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmz031 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

7. Maxwell, S. E., & Cole, D. A. (2007). Bias in cross-sectional analyses of longitudinal mediation. Psychological Methods, 12(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.12.1.23 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

8. Nesi, J., Choukas-Bradley, S., & Prinstein, M. J. (2018). Transformation of adolescent peer relations in the social media context: Part 2—Application to peer group processes and future directions for research. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 21(3), 295–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-018-0262-9 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

9. Patel, M.-G., & Quan-Haase, A. (2024). The social-ecological model of cyberbullying: Digital media as a predominant ecology in the everyday lives of youth. New Media & Society, 26(9), 5507–5528. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221136508 [Google Scholar] [Crossref]

10. Polanin, J. R., Espelage, D. L., Grotpeter, J. K., Ingram, K., Michaelson, L., Spinney, E., Valido, A., El Sheikh, A., Torgal, C., & Robinson, L. (2022). A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions to decrease cyberbullying perpetration and victimization. Prevention Science, 23, 439–454. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-021-01259-y [Google Scholar] [Crossref]