Cyberbully: Why Me?

This study aimed to investigate the mediating role of social self-efficacy in the relationship between parental control and social anxiety. The study population comprised all first and second-year high school students studying in Ahvaz County during the academic year 2020 to 2021. A total of 373 (53.08% female and 46.92% male) students were selected using multistage cluster sampling. The mean age ( SD) of the participants was 15.06 (2.4) years. The data were collected using the Parental Psychological Control Scale (PPCS), the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A), and the Self-Efficacy for Social Situations Scale (SESS). The reliability of the research tools was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha method, and path analysis was used to analyze the data. The results showed that both achievement-oriented and dependency-oriented parental control was directly related to social self-efficacy, which, in turn, was significantly related to social anxiety. Moreover, social self-efficacy completely mediated the relationships between achievement-oriented and dependency-oriented parental control with social anxiety. Therefore, reducing parental psychological control can increase adolescents’ level of social self-efficacy, which can subsequently decrease their social anxiety.

Cybercrime is significantly growing as the development of internet technology. To mitigate this issue, the law enforcement adopts network surveillance technology to track a suspect and derive the online profile. However, the traditional network surveillance using the single-device tracking method can only acquire part of a suspect’s online activities. With the emergence of different types of devices (e.g., personal computers, mobile phones, and smart wearable devices) in the mobile edge computing (MEC) environment, one suspect can employ multiple devices to launch a cybercrime. In this paper, we investigate a novel cross-device tracking approach which is able to correlate one suspect’s different devices so as to help the law enforcement monitor a suspect’s online activities more comprehensively. Our approach is based on the network traffic analysis of instant messaging (IM) applications, which are typical commercial service providers (CSPs) in the MEC environment. We notice a new habit of using IM applications, that is, one individual logs in the same account on multiple devices. This habit brings about devices’ receiving sync messages, which can be utilized to correlate devices. We choose five popular apps (i.e., WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ, and Skype) to prove our approach’s effectiveness. The experimental results show that our approach can identify IM messages with high F1-scores (e.g., QQ’s PC message is 0.966, and QQ’s phone message is 0.924) and achieve an average correlating accuracy of 89.58% of five apps in an 8-people experiment, with the fastest correlation speed achieved in 100 s.

The use of smartphones and IM has the potential to transform the delivery of health services by providing an easy to use, cost-effective tool for remote doctor-to-doctor and patient-to-doctor consultation and diagnosis. Whilst the introduction of new technologies has improved access to healthcare, it has also created new challenges. The aim of this paper was to review the literature on the use of Instant Messaging (IM) and IM applications (apps) in dermatology.

Abstract: The problem of study was determined by the following question: What are the social and psychological problems of university youth as members of virtual communities? The research importance was due to the increase in the number of members of virtual societies, and the study aimed to identify the social and psychological problems of young university members virtual members of the and to come up with a proposed planning vision to address the social and psychological problems of university youth member virtual communities, and the study questions were what are the social problems of university youth member of the virtual communities? What are the psychological problems of university youth as a virtual community member? What is the proposed planning vision to address the social and psychological problems of university youth as a virtual community member? The type of study descriptive and its methodology social survey sample, and the sample was 176 university youth members of virtual communities, and the study achieved its objectives and answered its questions and reached its proposed planning picture, and recommends the study to invest the free time of university youth, and recognize the social and psychological problems resulting from the use of virtual communities, and advice to retire the default sites annoying, and deal with virtual communities useful only, and scientific methods in confronting and solving social and psychological problems resulting from the use of virtual sites And family cooperation in solving problems arising from virtual communities. Keywords: Social planning - social problems - psychological problems - virtual societies - university youth.

Coordination of an emergency response team is an important determinant of prompt treatment for combat injuries in hospitals. The authors hypothesized that instant messaging applications for smartphones could be appropriate tools for notifying emergency response team members. The objective of this study was to investigate the efficiency of a commercial instant messaging application (WhatsApp, Mountain View, CA) as a communication tool for the emergency team in a level-I trauma center. We retrospectively evaluated the messages in the instant messaging application group that was formed to coordinate responses to patients who suffered from combat injuries and who were transported to our hospital via helicopter during an 8-week period. We evaluated the response times, response time periods during or outside of work hours, and the differences in the response times of doctors, nurses, and technicians among the members of the emergency team to the team leader's initial message about the patients. A total of 510 emergency call messages pertaining to 17 combat injury emergency cases were logged. The median time of emergency response was 4.1 minutes, 6 minutes, and 5.3 minutes for doctors, nurses, and the other team members, respectively. The differences in these response times between the groups were statistically significant (p=0.03), with subgroup analyses revealing significant differences between doctors and nurses (p=0.038). However, no statistically significant differences were observed between the doctors and the technicians (p=0.19) or the nurses and the technicians (p=1.0). From the team leader's perspective, using this application reduced the workload and the time loss, and also encouraged the team. Instant messaging applications for smartphones can be efficient, easy-to-operate, and time-saving communication tools in the transfer of medical information and the coordination of emergency response team members in hospitals.

It is known that communication between parents and instructors has decreased significantly due to the lockdowns and distance education implemented due to Covid19. This shortcoming is being attempted to be remedied via instant messaging applications. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to learn what parents' opinions are of parent groups that math teachers have created using online instant messaging applications like WhatsApp, Bip, Telegram, etc. during the Covid-19 pandemic. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data for the study, which was planned as a case study, and content analysis was used to analyze the data. Five male and five female parents of secondary school-aged children make up the study group, they were chosen using the criteria sampling method. The parent groups created using instant messaging applications are commonly used for announcements, homework, homework controls, the distribution of course materials, video URLs, reminders, and the delivery of lesson URLs and passwords for online courses. Students in certain groups also sent mathematics questions to the parent groups, where the problems were answered by the students' teachers. Although it is clear that these groups are helpful for parents in general, there are some drawbacks, including teachers' loss of interest in the groups towards the end of the school year, concerns about security of personal information, late-night messages, and unnecessary talks.

This chapter presents an analysis of how first-year studentsFirst-year students use mobile instant messaging applicationsMobile instant messaging applications during their transition into a South African university of technology. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’sDeleuze and Guattari concept of nomadism, the study unpacks how mobile instant messaging platforms supported students in new ways of living, thinking, and accessing spaces where they shared their experiences, and generated new knowledge and ways of learningLearning. The study used a qualitative research approach. Data was collected from a first-year WhatsApp chat group at the university of technology that was purposefully selected. The data was analyzed using content analysis. Research findings showed that first-year studentsFirst-year students used the mobile instant messaging platform in imaginative ways of interacting with their peers and lecturers to support their process of becomingBecoming in a new educational setting. The first-year students used the mobile instant messaging applicationMobile instant messaging applications to overcome learningLearning structural constraints, find new ways of learning, and raise concerns to management about issues that affected their well-being. The findings offer a better understanding of the way first-year students use mobile instant messaging applications in the context of higher educationHigher Education.

Peer-to-peer networking has allowed the development of new applications that couln’t have been built on the client/server model. Having a good operation of such applications implies a considerable support of underlying networks and services. A typical application is instant messaging and we present an instrumentation of one of the existing one. In order to do that, we use the abstract model for such a service defined in the IETF context. Finally, this work is materialized by the instrumentation of a basic service: the presence service. We have used a particular Instant messaging application that is JXTA based: JIM. This last is built on the JXTA development environnement and allows our instrumentation to be reusable for other instant messaging applications.

IntroductionParent-adolescent relationships play a crucial role in influencing high-risk behaviors among adolescents. In Malaysia, there is limited research exploring the influence of parent-adolescent relationships on adolescent risk behaviors. This study aims to determine the role of parent-adolescent connectedness and parental monitoring against high-risk behaviors among Malaysian adolescents.MethodsThis study utilized data from the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2022: Adolescent Health Survey, a cross-sectional study conducted from June to July 2022 among secondary school students. A two-stage stratified cluster sampling method was applied using a national sampling frame of 2,798 schools to ensure state and national representativeness. The Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) Malaysian version was used to collect data on health risk behavior and protective factors including parent-adolescent connectedness and parental monitoring. Descriptive analysis and multivariable logistic regression were used to analyzed the data.ResultsAmong 33,523 adolescents, a total of 24.2% (95% CI: 23.7–24.7) of adolescents reported parental connectedness, while 33.4% (95% CI: 32.9–33.9) reported parental monitoring. By sociodemographic factors, Indians ethnicity had the highest odds of reporting both parental connectedness (aOR: 1.94, 95% CI: 1.65, 2.28) and parental monitoring (aOR: 2.21, 95% CI: 1.82, 2.70), while adolescents in Labuan Federal Territory (a federally administered island region of Malaysia) had significantly lower odds for both measures. Adolescents with parents married and living together had significantly higher odds of reporting both parental connectedness (aOR: 1.28, 95% CI: 1.18, 1.40) and parental monitoring (aOR: 1.35, 95% CI: 1.26, 1.44). Parental connectedness and monitoring were strong protective factors against all eight high-risk behaviors, including reduced odds of sexual activity (aOR: 0.63 and 0.58), e-cigarette use (aOR: 0.68 and 0.55), smoking, drug use, alcohol use, physical fights, being bullied, and cyberbullying.ConclusionThis study found that parental connectedness and monitoring were significantly associated with lower odds of engaging in high-risk behaviors among Malaysian adolescents, with notable variations by ethnicity, parental marital status, and region. Strengthening parental involvement and addressing disparities in family dynamics are essential strategies for promoting adolescent health and well-being in Malaysia.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-025-24598-9.

We aimed to assess the effect of a theory of planned behavior (TPB)-based educational intervention on attitude, norms, parental control, behavioral control, and intention in high school girls in Tehran, Iran. Randomized controlled trial. This study was conducted among 578 high school girls, 12 to 16 yr, in Tehran, Iran in 2016. The subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental (n=289) and control (n=289) groups using multistage random cluster sampling. TPB is the basis for both education and evaluation; therefore, the TPB-based questionnaire was used before and after the intervention. The intervention included three months education and six months follow up. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS version 16 through statistical tests and analysis of covariance. Significant improvement in attitude (difference=16.8; 95% CI: 15.3, 18.3), subjective norms (16.4; 95% CI=14.83 to 18.11), perceived behavioral control (18.0; 95% CI: 16.6, 19.4), perceived parental control (17%; 95% CI: 15.1, 18.9), behavioral intention (18.4%; 95 CI: 14.8, 18.3), and behavior (18.5; 95% CI:16.8, 20.2) was observed in experimental group compared to control group (P<0.001). Theory-based educational intervention in sexual and reproductive health can effectively reduce the high-risk behaviors related to sexual and reproductive health in adolescent girls. Health and education policy-makers are advised to review the current education programs and replace them with new influential education programs related to sexual and reproductive health in the school system.

Finding the core members of a virtual community is an important problem in community analysis. Here we presented an simulated annealing algorithm to solve this problem by optimizing the user interests concentration ratio in user groups. As an example, we test this algorithm on a virtual community site and evaluate its results using human gold standard method.

Knowledge management exploits the new opportunities of sharing knowledge among members of virtual communities in distributed computer networks, and knowledge-management systems are therefore modeled and designed as multiagent systems. In this paper, normative multiagent systems for secure knowledge management based on access-control policies are studied. It is shown how distributed access control is realized by means of local policies of access-control systems for documents of knowledge providers, and by means of global community policies regulating these local policies. Moreover, it is shown how such a virtual community of multiple knowledge providers respects the autonomy of the knowledge providers

This study aims to integrate the Qur'an and its translation in an instant messaging application. The method used This research uses a mixed method, which combines qualitative and quantitative methods. This study resulted in a product in the form of a chatbot named Quran Live Chat and concluded that there were benefits felt by users in searching for the latest verses and translations belonging to the Ministry of Religion for the 2019 edition of the refinement by using instant messaging applications such as Whatsapp and Telegram. This study recommends that further research be carried out related to the integration of the book of interpretation.

Research examining associations between social media use behaviors and psychosocial well-being among older adults are limited. To explore associations between older adults' social media (social networking services and instant messaging applications) use behaviors and psychosocial well-being. This was a secondary data analysis. All data were retrieved from the Taiwan Communication Survey database, an annual survey that examines trends in Taiwanese residents' communication behaviors and social media use. The original investigation was conducted in Taiwan from September to December 2019. Data from 647 older adults aged over 60 years were extracted for the analyses. Social media use behaviors (users/non-users and time spent using), positive psychosocial outcomes (life satisfaction, self-determination, subjective well-being, and happiness), negative psychosocial outcomes (loneliness, depression, and anxiety), and demographic variables were included. Social media users had significantly higher levels of subjective well-being and lower levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness compared with non-users. Time spent on social networking services was significantly and positively correlated with negative psychosocial outcomes (β = 0.103, p = 0.044, f2 = 0.011), and it was significantly and inversely correlated with positive psychosocial outcomes (β = -0.063, p = 0.049, f2 = 0.004). Time spent using an instant messaging application was significantly positively associated with positive psychosocial outcomes (β = 0.068, p = 0.031, f2 = 0.005). The proposed path model had an acceptable model fit. Study results indicated that older adults' social media use behaviors were associated with their psychosocial well-being. Older adults are recommended to use social media for appropriate time periods as an important way to promote social engagement for their psychosocial well-being.

The increasingly popular minimalist consumption concept makes more people reflect on the harm of excessive consumption behavior to sustainability. In particular, the phenomenon of excessive apparel consumption is more obvious, resulting in the waste of resources and environmental pollution. In China, more and more bloggers publicize the life change and spiritual decompression brought by a minimalist lifestyle on the Internet. However, whether this guidance could have an impact on consumers’ rational consumption intention and its driving path are still unknown. This study explored the role of bloggers’ minimalist consumption guidance in influencing residents’ intention to reduce excessive apparel consumption in Web 2.0. Considering the bloggers’ guidance on reshaping the self-awareness of members in virtual communities, a comprehensive model is constructed, including bloggers’ attractiveness, bloggers’ minimalist consumption guidance, community belonging perception, (self-monitoring) self-efficacy perception, and (self-worth) ascription of environmental responsibility. Data were collected through questionnaires and the analysis results indicate that there is no significant relationship between bloggers’ minimalist consumption guidance and the intention to reduce excessive apparel consumption. This non-coercive media campaign does not directly affect residents’ behavior, but indirectly increases consumers’ intention to consume apparel rationally by acting on community belonging perception, self-efficacy perception, and ascription of environmental responsibility. In the Internet age, this study not only provides suggestions for guiding residents to consume apparel rationally in China, but also possibly serves as an inspiration for related research in other emerging economies.