Parental Attachment and Digital Self-Harm

Recent estimates suggest between 5-10% of U.S. adolescents report engaging in digital self-harm. Despite these troubling figures, there remains a paucity of empirical work investigating factors contributing to this relatively new yet harmful behavior. Guided by the robust research base linking weak parental attachment to self-harm, this study uses Agnew's general strain theory to investigate whether parental attachment influences adolescents' propensity to engage in digital self-harm, and whether this relationship occurs indirectly through negative affective states. Using data from the 2019 Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey, the results of this study indicate that even after adjusting for a range of potential confounding influences such as age, family drug problems, race, and self-control, weak parental attachment significantly increased one's odds of engaging in digital self-harm, with most of this relationship occurring indirectly through adolescents' negative emotions. The results of this study provide researchers and families with important information that may help them in reducing the prevalence of this destructive behavior.