Cybervictimization and Academic Achievement: The Unique Buffering Role of Academic and Social Teacher–Student Relationships

Background/Objectives: Cybervictimization is a pervasive developmental stressor with potential consequences for adolescents’ academic functioning. Drawing on stress-buffering and domain-specific motivation frameworks, the present study examined whether distinct dimensions of teacher–student relationships (TSR)—academic (instructional support) and social (socio-emotional support)—uniquely moderate the association between cybervictimization and grade point average (GPA). Methods: Participants were 1458 Omani adolescents (M_age = 14.04 years; 50% female) recruited from secondary schools. Students completed validated self-report measures of cybervictimization and TSR and reported their GPA. Moderation analyses were conducted using PROCESS v4.2 (Model 3), simultaneously testing academic and social TSR as moderators while adjusting for sex, age, father education, mother education, and household income. Results: Cybervictimization showed a small negative zero-order association with GPA; however, its conditional effect at the mean levels of both TSR dimensions did not reach conventional statistical significance. Academic TSR was positively associated with GPA and significantly buffered the negative link between cybervictimization and academic performance, such that the association was strongest at low levels of instructional support and attenuated at higher levels. In contrast, social TSR did not uniquely moderate the association once academic support was included in the model, and the three-way interaction was not significant. The local effect size for the Cybervictimization × Academic TSR interaction was small (f2 = 0.033). Conclusions: Findings support a domain-specific buffering hypothesis, although the incremental protective effect was modest. Results extend resilience models beyond Western contexts and highlight the centrality of academic-focused teacher support in promoting achievement in rapidly digitalizing educational systems.