What is Rewarding the Adolescent-Aged Cyberbullying Behavior

Online Aggression Essay
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The Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT) is a social psychology theory that can be used to explain the rewards for adolescent cyberbullying behavior. The UGT model is anchored in two primary justifications. First, individuals make rational decisions concerning social media usage anchored on their needs and wants. Second, adolescents are likely to recreate experiences when their needs are met via social media, leading to more frequent online activity (Wong et al., 2022). In this context, adolescent social media users are motivated by two forms of gratification; gratification sought and gratification achieved. Gratification sought can be conceptualized as the adolescent's expectations of the benefits derived from cyberbullying (Kircaburun et al., 2020). For example, adolescents may engage in cyberbullying for social gratification [i.e., to achieve a sense of belonging] (Wong et al., 2022). Gratification obtained is the adolescent's needs that would be satisfied by their engagement in online bullying behaviors (Kircaburun et al., 2020). For example, an adolescent is likely to engage in cyberbullying for entertainment [i.e., to achieve their need to have fun and pass the time] and self-presentation [i.e., fulfilling one's admiration needs] (Wong et al., 2022).
Cyberbullying adolescent perpetrators normally come from among their peers. Teenagers are likely to behave in a specific manner in order to elicit acceptance from their group of friends, even when the behavior is incongruent with their value systems (Wuryanningsih et al., 2019). Based on the UGT model, adolescents can engage in cyberbullying in order to obtain acceptance in their social group and thus maintain existing relationships (Kircaburun et al., 2020). Lastly, the UGT model explains a link between adolescent appetitive aggression and cyberbullying. For example, high expectations of rewards regarding views or likes may also boost an adolescent's sense of thrill to engage in cyber-aggression. There is also the potential for using anonymous comments. This may reduce the adolescent's sense of adverse implications for inflicting harm on others, thus driving them to focus on the anticipated popularity reward (Wong et al., 2022).
References
Kircaburun, K., Alhabash, S., Tosuntaş, Ş. B., & Griffiths, M. D. (2020). Uses and gratifications of problematic social media use among university students: A simultaneous examination of the Big Five of personality traits, social media platforms, and social media use motives. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 18, 525-547. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-018-9940-6
Wong, N., Yanagida, T., Spiel, C., ...