An exploration of trolling behaviours in Australian adolescents: an online survey (Preprint)
Authors: Marrington Jessica Z , March Evita , Murray Sarah , Jeffries Carla , Machin Tanya , March Sonja 
Published: September 2021

BACKGROUND

Internet trolling (i.e., “trolling”) is an intentional, disruptive antisocial online behaviour, where an individual posts provocative and inflammatory content intended to distress and provoke their targets. Unique characteristics of trolling, such as meaningless disruption, distinguish the behaviour from cyberbullying. To understand why people “troll”, researchers have explored a range of individual differences including personality traits, social reward, and empathy. To date, these studies have primarily been conducted in adult samples. This is despite adolescents being highlighted as a particularly vulnerable group with regards to both experiencing and perpetrating trolling. Given the significant psychosocial impact of experiencing trolling, there is urgency to understand the experience of adolescents. Further, an understanding of why adolescents perpetrate trolling would inform development of effective management and prevention of the antisocial online behaviour.

OBJECTIVE

There are two primary objectives of the current study. First, we aimed to explore adolescents experience of trolling, by documenting how often they experience and perpetrate trolling and to explore the social media platforms on which this behaviour occurs. Second, we aimed to replicate adult research that has constructed a psychological profile of the Internet troll by exploring the utility of personality traits (i.e., psychopathy and sadism), self-esteem, empathy (cognitive and affective), and social rewards (negative social potency) and to predict perpetration of trolling in a sample of Australian adolescents.

METHODS

A sample of 209 Australian adolescents (59.1% male, 40.9% female, 0.5% non-binary) aged between 13 and 18 years of age (M = 15.87, SD = 1.60) completed the Adolescent Measure of Empathy and Sympathy (AMES), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), Youth Psychopathy Traits Inventory – Short Version (YPI-S), Social Rewards Questionnaire (SRQ), and Short Sadistic Impulse Scale (SSIS). The experience of being trolled and perpetration of trolling was measured via a series of questions.

RESULTS

Results indicated 34.4% of Australian adolescents reported they had been targeting by trolling in the previous year and 18.2% reported they had perpetrated trolling in the previous year. Experiencing trolling was most likely to occur on Tumblr (44.8%) and Twitter (39.7%) and perpetrating trolling was most likely to occur on WordPress (30.4%) and Twitter (20.5%). Psychopathy, sadism, self-esteem, cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and negative social potency explained 42.4% of variance in adolescents’ perpetration of trolling (p<.001). High negative social potency (β=.15, p=.020), high sadism (β=.29, p=001), high affective psychopathy (β=.17, p=.033) and low cognitive empathy (β=.-.28, p=001) were predictive of trolling. Boys were more likely than girls to troll (β = -.11, p=041).

CONCLUSIONS

The findings indicate personality and psychological traits important to trolling in adults also play a significant role in perpetrating trolling in adolescence. Future research should continue to examine adolescent trolling behaviour to develop targeted interventions to prevent or manage trolling in adolescence.