Exploration of bidirectionality in African American and Latinx adolescents’ offline and online ethnic-racial discrimination.

Objectives: The objective of the present study was to examine longitudinal relations between adolescents’ reports of offline (i.e., in-person) ethnic-racial discrimination and adolescents’ reports of online ethnic-racial discrimination. Method: The study was conducted among a sample of 570 African American and Latinx adolescents (58% female; 10–18 years) over three waves of assessments occurring at yearly intervals. Autoregressive cross-lagged analyses examined potential bidirectional relations of offline ethnic-racial discrimination and online ethnic-racial discrimination. Results: Results indicated that adolescents’ more frequent experiences of offline ethnic-racial discrimination predicted more frequent experiences of online ethnic-racial discrimination across time, but that the opposite direction was not supported. Conclusions: Findings may be used to redefine current theoretical frameworks that assert the bidirectional nature of online and offline experiences, particularly in the domain of ethnic-racial discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) Public Significance Statement—Teenagers experience ethnic-racial discrimination face-to-face and while they are online using the Internet. This study looked at what type of ethnic-racial discrimination teenagers experience first across time, face-to-face or online ethnic-racial discrimination. The results of this study suggest that African American and Latinx teenagers tend to first report more ethnic-racial discrimination face-to-face, before later reporting more ethnic-racial discrimination online. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)