Violencia digital y normalización de conductas agresivas en bachillerato: implicaciones neurobiológicas

Exposure to aggressive content in digital environments poses challenges for school coexistence and adolescents’ perceptions of harm. This study aimed to describe reported exposure to digital violence, attitudes towards its normalization, emotional sensitivity, empathy, and behavioural responses among high-school students in Durán, Ecuador. A non-experimental, cross-sectional, descriptive quantitative study was conducted using aggregated tabulations from 92 questionnaires. The survey comprised demographic questions and six thematic blocks. Absolute frequencies and percentages were examined; no causal or individual-level association analyses were performed. Within the seven-day reference period, 79.3% of respondents reported seeing videos of real-life fights on at least one day, and 76.1% had encountered posts featuring insults, humiliation or mockery. A total of 63.0% disagreed that an aggressive online comment causes no real harm, whereas 44.6% agreed that defending a person targeted online may create problems for the defender. Furthermore, 30.4% endorsed a retrospective perception of reduced emotional impact when viewing such content. The findings reveal the coexistence of exposure to aggressive digital material, rejection of several justifications of aggression, and ambivalent responses to peer pressure. Neurobiological considerations provide only a theoretical interpretative framework, as no direct physiological or neural measurements were collected.