Unveiling core symptoms and gender-specific patterns of cyber-deviance in adolescents with obesity: A cross-sectional study using network analysis

Abstract

Background:Cyber-deviance is widespread among adolescents with obesity; however, its core symptoms and network structure remain unknown.
Objective:To identify the core symptoms and intricate internal structure of cyber-deviance in Chinese obese adolescents using network analysis.
Study design: A cross-sectional study.
Methods:This cross-sectional study recruited 19,249 adolescents aged 12-18 years from 25 middle schools in Wuyuan County, Jiangxi Province, China, between June and July 2024. Cyber-deviance was assessed using the Scale for Adolescent Internet Deviance (SAID). Propensity score matching and network analysis were applied to adjust for confounding and to identify influential nodes within the network.
Results:Among obese adolescents (n = 1050), the symptom “Deception makes me happy” emerged as the central node, exhibiting the highest strength and expected influence in the network. Furthermore, “Deception is fun” was identified as a bridge symptom. Gender-specific analyses revealed distinct patterns: male participants exhibited heightened involvement in “internet pornography,” while female participants showed a stronger propensity for “cyber deception.” A significant difference in network structure was identified between genders (Mean [M] = 0.484, P < 0.05). However, there were no significant differences in global network strength (male participants= 15.880, female participants = 15.058; Statistic [S] = 0.770; P > 0.05).
Conclusions:This study highlighted the complex relationships in cyber-deviance among adolescents with obesity, identifying “Deception makes me happy” as a key target for intervention, and “Deception is fun” as a bridge symptom. Gender-specific differences emphasize the need for tailored prevention strategies, offering actionable insights for mitigating cyber-deviance in this vulnerable group.

Keywords

Cyber-deviance / Network analysis / Propensity score matching / Adolescents with obesity

Ethics approval

The study was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013, and approved by the Ethics Committee of the School of Nursing and Rehabilitation of Shandong University (2024-R-157). Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Funding

This work was supported by the Shandong Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas) (No. 2024HWYQ-010), and The Special Foundation for Taishan Scholars (No.tsqn202211034).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Linghua Kong: Writing-review & editing, Writing-original draft, Supervision, Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Project administration. Ying Yang: Writing-review & editing, Validation, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation. Shengxin Liu: Validation, Supervision, Writing-review & editing, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation. Xinran Xie: Project administration, Methodology, Writing-review & editing, Investigation, Data curation, Supervision, Validation. Feng Zhuo: Methodology, Investigation, Writing-review & editing, Data curation, Supervision, Validation. Tingting Fang: Writing-original draft, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization, Writing-review & editing, Data curation. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge all the students who participated in this study.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the online version at doi:10.1016/j.hcr.2025.100051.

Data availability

The datasets generated for this study are available on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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