The longitudinal relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and the university student cyberbullying related online aggression

Cyberbullying-related online aggression is an important online interpersonal problem among university students. Prior studies suggest that childhood psychological maltreatment is associated with later aggression and maladaptive online behavior, but the possible indirect association through current global happiness and the exploratory direct-path interaction involving difficulty describing feelings require cautious testing. This study examined the association between retrospectively reported childhood psychological maltreatment and cyberbullying-related online aggression, including a statistical indirect association through subjective well-being. Using convenience-based cluster recruitment through course classes, this study conducted a two-wave prospective survey among university students from six collaborating universities in southern, southwestern, and central China. The first wave, administered in June 2025, collected retrospective reports of childhood psychological maltreatment before age 16 together with current subjective well-being and difficulty describing feelings. The second wave, administered in January 2026 (approximately seven months later), assessed cyberbullying-related online aggression during the past six months. A total of 2,019 valid matched cases were retained, with a mean age of 18.97 years. SPSS and AMOS were used for descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and an observed-variable mediation model with an exploratory direct-path interaction. Models adjusted for gender, age, grade, only-child status, paternal educational level, and maternal educational level. Percentile bootstrap resampling with 5,000 resamples was used to estimate indirect effects and confidence intervals; HC3, ordinal-logistic, and binary-logistic sensitivity checks were conducted for the exploratory interaction. Childhood psychological maltreatment was positively associated with cyberbullying-related online aggression (beta = 0.279, p < 0.001). A statistically significant but small indirect association through subjective well-being was observed, with an indirect effect of 0.020 and a percentile bootstrap 95% CI of [0.003, 0.037], accounting for 6.69% of the total effect. In the conventional linear observed-variable model, the childhood psychological maltreatment x difficulty describing feelings interaction was small but statistically significant (beta = 0.055, p = 0.004, Delta R2 = 0.0036). However, the interaction was not statistically significant with HC3 robust standard errors ( p = 0.071), ordinal logistic regression ( p = 0.718), or binary logistic regression ( p = 0.178). Thus, the interaction was not supported consistently across plausible estimators. Childhood psychological maltreatment was associated with higher cyberbullying-related online aggression among university students. Subjective well-being accounted for a statistically significant but small indirect association. The conventional linear model produced a small interaction involving difficulty describing feelings, but this result was not robust to alternative specifications. Because childhood maltreatment was retrospectively assessed, the mediator and difficulty-describing-feelings indicator were measured at the same wave, and no baseline outcome was controlled, the findings should be interpreted as preliminary associational evidence rather than as proof of causal or developmental mechanisms.