Online aggression and romantic relationships in adolescence

In adolescence, individuals undergo many changes; peer relationships grow in importance, and puberty sparks a growth in sexual maturity, both of which encourage the initiation of romantic relationships. Adolescents must learn, practice, and acquire the social and relationship skills that are essential to initiating, maintaining, and sometimes terminating close, meaningful romantic relationships. In this chapter, we focus on negative experiences such as dating aggression in online spaces because social media is an important social context in the lives of adolescents. Our approach is to review the current research literature on three forms of online aggression that may occur among romantic partners in adolescence: cyberstalking, revenge porn, and cyberbullying. A conceptual model will be proposed that will aim to integrate the uniqueness of each form of online aggression and identify why adolescents may be involved in these forms of aggression in romantic relationships.