62 Spirituality Studies 11-2 Fall 2025 4 Discussion and Conclusions Cybervictimization poses a serious threat to adolescents’ psychological well-being. Our aim was to examine the extent to which adolescents’ cybervictimization is linked with spirituality and resilience while simultaneously accounting for social and emotional loneliness. We discuss this issue within a framework that views cyberbullying as intentional aggressive behavior mediated by information technology, characterized by power imbalance, anonymity, repetition, and intent to harm (Tokunaga 2010, 283; Hinduja and Patchin 2008, 150; König, Gollwitzer and Steffgen 2010, 217). This concept encompasses various behaviors, from ridicule to online exclusion, occurring in digital media environments (Nocentini et al. 2010, 137). In our sample, about one-third of adolescents (36.3%) reported at least occasional experiences of cybervictimization. This proportion suggests a frequent yet unevenly distributed phenomenon. In fact, the frequency distribution was significantly positively skewed, consistent with a floor effect in which most participants scored low and a minority reported higher victimization. Our finding confirms that cyberbullying is a significant phenomenon of the digital age (Cassidy, Faucher and Jackson 2013, 581). It may be an attempt at repetition compulsion: an effort to recreate past traumas within a new relationship. For example, a person may subconsciously create or maintain conflicts that reflect their previous conflictual interactions. There may also be an attempt to achieve a different outcome to a conflict experienced in the past, to resolve it, or to feel a sense of control in a new situation (Sedláček, Králová and Poliaková 2024, 4). No significant gender differences in the rate of cybervictimization were found between boys and girls (girls comprised 81 % of our sample). This result aligns with evidence that characteristics of cyber-victims (e.g., low self-esteem or social withdrawal) are not tied to gender (Kumar and Goldstein 2020, 90). One possible explanation is that the anonymity and accessibility of cyberspace blur the traditional differences observed offline. Therefore, preventive measures should target both boys and girls equally. Our results showed that cybervictimization had a weak positive association with feelings of social and emotional loneliness. In other words, victims of cyberbullying felt somewhat lonelier, consistent with prior findings on their limited social contacts and isolation (Kumar and Goldstein 2020, 89; Coelho and Romão 2018, 221). Although this effect size was small, it indicates the need to attend to social support for victims. On the other hand, we found no significant relationship between cybervictimization and either spirituality or resilience, meaning that an adolescent’s spirituality or resilience alone did not directly reduce the risk of becoming a victim. The protective role of these variables appears to manifest rather indirectly – for example, by mitigating the negative consequences of cyberbullying on psychological well-being (Chai 2022, 21; Shukla and Chouhan 2023, 12) – than in the incidence of victimization itself. Within this indirect pathway, translating adolescents’ spirituality into lived, relational micro-practices is likely to matter most where our data identify vulnerability – namely, emotional loneliness. In school or clinic encounters, spirituality can be operationalized as youth-led, values-informed routines that explicitly cultivate closeness and trust: brief meaning-making check-ins after online incidents; identification of a personally trusted adult or mentor; small peer circles for mutual support; and short, identity-congruent practices (e.g., gratitude reflections or acts of service) that increase perceived connectedness. Framed this way, spirituality becomes a conduit for intimacy and belonging rather than an abstract belief system, aligning with our finding that the lack of an intimate bond – not merely network size – tracks with cybervictimization. Importantly, any spiritually oriented supports should be voluntary, non-coercive, and culturally safe, with adolescents choosing which communities and practices feel authentic to them. However, we observed a weak but significant correlation between higher spirituality and both better stress coping and lower social loneliness. Spirituality supports personal growth and self-knowledge (Dojčár 2017, 71) and facilitates building relationships and mutual help in the community (Nowsky 2007, 62). Thus, spiritually oriented adolescents may be slightly more resilient and less socially isolated. Since all observed correlations were weak, they should be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, our findings point to the importance of strengthening social support and considering the spiritual dimension in prevention and interventions for cyberbullying victims (Apostolides 2017, 3; Chai 2022, 21). Our regression model explained 4 % of the variance in cybervictimization, indicating that the risk of adolescent cybervictimization is related to other factors. The literature highlights, for example, the role of individual victim characteristics (e.g., low self-esteem, psychological difficulties) that may better explain who becomes a target of cyberbullying (Kowalski and Limber 2013, 19; Athanasiou et al. 2018, 6). In our model, emotional loneliness emerged as
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