Introduction: With the increasing use of cyberspace, communication between people occurs easily, which can be associated with problems. The aim of this study was to investigate the mediating role of alexithymia in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and cyberbullying in adolescents.
Methods: The method of the present study was descriptive-correlational through structural equation modeling. The statistical population included all adolescents aged 15 to 17 in the second and third grades of high school in Mashhad who were studying in the academic year 1399-1400. For this purpose, 471 people were selected by cluster random sampling method. Data were collected through an online questionnaire in schools in the second district of Mashhad. The research instruments included Patchin and Hindoja (2016) cyberbullying questionnaire, Bagbi et al. (1994) alexithymia questionnaire and child maltreatment of Mohammad Khani et al. (2013). Data analysis was performed using structural equations in Spss26 and Smart PLS3 software.
Results: The results of structural equations showed that the direct paths of child maltreatment-alexithymia, alexithymia-cyberbullying were significant, but the indirect path from childhood maltreatment to cyberbullying mediated by alexithymia was not significant and the model fits well did not have.
Conclusion: The results of the findings emphasized the need to pay attention to alexithymia in reducing cyberbullying.