College Students’ Perceptions of Digital Dating Abuse: Insights From Gender Schema Theory

Abstract

As dating in the online setting becomes increasingly prevalent, the potential for engaging in abusive behaviors within this context also rises. Digital dating abuse (DDA) is a repeated pattern of digital media use to threaten, harass, pressure, monitor, control, or coerce a dating partner. Building on previous work examining gender schema theory and intimate partner violence, this study aims to extend the inquiry into the digital realm to better understand college students’ perceptions of what behaviors constitute DDA and the correlates of these perceptions. Participants were undergraduate college students (aged 18–25), including 320 women and 166 men (N = 486), from the southeastern region of the United States, who completed online surveys. Results demonstrated that participants, on average, reported that acts of digital direct aggression, digital sexual coercion, and digital monitoring/control were abusive. However, young women generally rated these behaviors as more abusive than young men, male perpetrator-to-female victim DDA was viewed as more abusive than female perpetrator-to-male victim DDA, and digital direct aggression was considered the most abusive form of DDA, followed by digital sexual coercion, which was rated as more abusive than digital monitoring/control. Among participants with a history of DDA perpetration and victimization, DDA acts were generally perceived as less abusive. These data underscore the importance of the inclusion of psychoeducation about the seriousness of all forms of abuse in DDA prevention programming and the importance of situation-specific and targeted DDA prevention messages.