ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Sleep Disorders
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Advance on Sleep Disorder: Mechanisms and InterventionsView all 18 articles
Loneliness and Nervousness Mediated the Longitudinal Association between Sleep Disorders and Cyberbullying Victimization in School-aged Adolescents
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanxishan Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guilin, China
- 2The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning, China
- 3Ningbo Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Ningbo, China
- 4People's Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nanning, China
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Background: This study investigated the longitudinal dose‒response relationship between sleep disorders and cyberbullying victimization in school-aged adolescents and explored the mediating roles of psychological factors (loneliness, sadness, and nervousness). Methods: A 2-year longitudinal design was used to collect self-reported data on sleep disorders, physical activity, screen time, smoking, alcohol use, and dieting behavior. Cyberbullying victimization was assessed during follow-up. Multivariate logistic regression analysis and restricted cubic splines (RCSs) were used to analyse the dose‒response relationship between sleep disorders and cyberbullying victimization. The mediation analysis explored indirect effects through loneliness, sadness, and nervousness. Results: Among the 1,910 adolescents (mean age: 12.2 ± 0.47 years), the mean sleep disorder score was 3.32 ± 3.68 (range: 0–27.0), and 196 (10.3%) engaged in cyberbullying victimization during the follow-up period. Sleep disorders were significantly associated with an increased risk of cyberbullying victimization (OR: 1.10, 95% CI: 1.06–1.14) after adjusting for confounders. Sensitivity analyses further validated the robustness of the results, which revealed that the risk of cyberbullying victimization increased approximately with increasing prevalence of sleep disorders. The RCS curve revealed that the risk of cyberbullying victimization increased approximately linearly with increasing prevalence of sleep disorders (P for overall<0.001, P for nonlinear=0.915). Compared with boys, girls with more sleep disorders presented a slightly greater risk of cyberbullying victimization (adjusted OR: 1.14 vs.1.08). Loneliness and nervousness partially mediated the association between sleep disorders and cyberbullying victimization, accounting for 25.00% (indirect effect β = 0.003, P < 0.001) and 8.33% (indirect effect β = 0.001, P = 0.038) of the total effect, whereas sadness had no significant effect. Conclusions: Sleep disorders independently predict cyberbullying victimization in adolescents, with stronger effects observed in girls. Loneliness and nervousness partially mediate this association. Targeted interventions to improve sleep, reduce
Keywords: Sleep Disorders, Cyberbullying victimization, adolescents, Loneliness, nervousness, mediation effect
Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 30 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lei, Jiang, Wang, Li, Gong and Xiao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xin Xiao, xiaoxi3891@163.com
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