Prospective Relations Among Supportive and Victimizing Social Interactions, Cognitive Reactivity, and Depressive Symptoms

Abstract

Among adolescents, in-person social support has been widely associated with reduced concurrent depressive symptoms, and online and in-person peer victimization have been associated with increased concurrent depressive symptoms. Few studies, however, have investigated these relations longitudinally. Fewer still have studied the prospective effects of online social support. Cole has hypothesized that cognitive reactivity, the strength of association between negative mood and negative self-referential cognitions, may mediate the relation between peer victimization and depressive symptoms. The current study addresses these gaps in the literature with a two-wave, cross-lagged longitudinal study of middle school adolescents. Analyses found that cognitive reactivity is not a prospective mediator of the relation between social interaction predictors and depressive symptoms. However, additional analyses found that prior depressive symptoms are predictive of reduced online social support, reduced in-person social support, and increased in-person victimization, and both types of prior victimization also predict depressive symptoms. Additional analyses also found an interaction between online and in-person victimization in the prediction of later depressive symptoms, over and above prior depressive symptoms. Theoretical implications are discussed in light of Coyne’s interactional model of depression and Nesi and colleagues’ transformational framework for online experiences.