Irene Montiel

While extensive research has documented the detrimental effects of multiple violent experiences on children's psychological well-being, studies exploring protective factors remain limited. This longitudinal study examines how children's positive perceptions of family and school environments mitigate the impact of poly-victimization on psychological well-being and explores whether these mechanisms operate differently for boys and girls. The sample includes 971 students aged 7 to 13 years (52.6% boys, 46.9% girls; M = 9.72, SD = 1.16), with data collected in Spain between 2022 and 2024. Correlations among study variables were analyzed, followed by a path analysis that modeled family and school perceptions as mediators between poly-victimization and psychological well-being. After confirming a significant mediating effect, conditional process modeling was used to examine gender as a moderator of these relationships. Positive perceptions of both family and school environments mediated the association between poly-victimization and psychological well-being. This effect was not moderated by gender. Positive family and school perceptions mitigate the negative associations between poly-victimization and well-being for all youth, regardless of gender. These findings underscore the importance of interventions aimed at strengthening family and school support systems to enhance the resilience of victimized children and early adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Despite recent legislative and social progress, violence against children and adolescents remains a serious and unaddressed public health issue. This article examines the prevalence of child and adolescent victimization in Spain assessed using different versions of the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ), framed in the developmental victimology approach. The JVQ assesses multiple forms of violence (including conventional crime, caregiver maltreatment, peer victimization, sexual victimization, community violence, and electronic victimization) based on minors’ self-reports. Several Spanish-adapted versions of the JVQ are examined and data presented from different regions and at-risk populations. The findings reveal a high prevalence of polyvictimization, particularly among adolescents in clinical, judicial, or child protection settings. The article concludes that there is an urgent need for enhanced early detection and assessment of child victimization using tools adapted and grounded in developmental victimology. It also calls for expanded research on vulnerable groups and children under the age of 12. The importance of translating empirical findings into professional practice and evidence-based public policy design and evaluation is also highlighted.

In September 2023, “An umbrella review of the benefits and risks associated with youths’ interactions with electronic screens” was published in Nature. This review aimed at understanding the influence of electronic screens on the health and educational outcome of children and adolescents from 0-18 years old. The authors concluded that current screen use guidelines may be too simplistic, that they mischaracterize the strength of the evidence or do not acknowledge the important nuances of the issue. As a result, they supported the trend of moving away from recommendations to reduce screen use and instead focus on the type of screen use. Our contribution focuses on answering the question of whether the results of this review are sufficient to challenge current screen use guidelines. To do so, we explain the current literature on screen use guidelines that the review generically referred to as well as the rationale behind them, and then we proceed to explain why the review’s findings are insufficient to challenge these guidelines. We demonstrate that some of the review's main conclusions are not consistent with its own findings and that they fail to explain the relationship between their findings and the discreditation of current guidelines. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and investigators should be careful in questioning public health recommendations based on incomplete evidence.

The objective of this study is to compare the prevalence of bullying victimization and perpetration between a sample of gifted students and a sample of nongifted students, and their relationship in both groups with depression, stress, anxiety, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). A cross-sectional design was performed with two comparison groups: 449 Spanish adolescents identified as gifted ( M_age = 11.72, S D = 1.89) and 950 nongifted Spanish students ( M_age = 12.72, SD=0.79). Results reveal that 41.1%, 1.1%, and 9.5% of the gifted sample were pure-victims, pure-bullies, and bully-victims, respectively, compared to 21.8%, 2.4%, and 5.8% of the nongifted students. It is observed that gifted students are more likely to be victims (OR = 3.20[2.40, 4.28]). Gifted pure-victims have significantly higher stress scores than nongifted pure-victims ( p < .001). In general, pure-victims and bully-victims of gifted and nongifted students both have higher stress, anxiety, and depression scores and lower HRQoL scores than other profiles.

In recent years, viral challenges on the Internet have become a very frequent phenomenon. These allude to the actions that are proposed to Internet users to record themselves performing a challenge and disseminate it on different online platforms so that other users will also perform it. Despite its rapid expansion, there is no evidence of any validated assessment tool of this phenomenon. To meet this need, the Viral Internet Challenges Scale (VICH-S) was designed. The main objective of this study was to establish the psychometric properties of this scale, the prevalence of different types of challenges (social, solidary, and dangerous), as well as the single or conjoint performance of these types of challenges using the VICH-S. Furthermore, the construct validity of the scale was tested with these variables: Fear of Missing Out, Loss of Connection (nomophobia), Self-Online, and Emotional Attention Online. Participants were 417 preadolescents (41.2% boys) with age ranging from 10 to 14 years. Exploratory factor analysis of the VICH-S scale revealed the existence of two factors: Challenge Satisfaction and Social Motivation. Convergent validity indicators showed positive and significant correlations between these two dimensions and the Fear of Missing Out, Loss of Connection (nomophobia), Self-Online, and Emotional Attention Online. The most frequent challenges were social challenges (80.3%), followed by solidary (20.6%) and dangerous challenges (7.7%). This study has relevant implications, as the VICH-S presents adequate psychometric properties to evaluate this barely explored and growing phenomenon of viral challenges on the Internet in preadolescence.

Background: Loot boxes are a type of random microtransactions that are increasingly common in videogames, so there is some concern about its true extent and entailed risks. Although many papers have been published recently about this topic, the actual prevalence of loot boxes use is uncertain and there is still controversy over the nature of its relationship with problematic gaming and gambling. Objectives: The aims of this scoping review are to summarize the characteristics and findings of published primary research studies about the prevalence of loot boxes and/or its relationship with problematic gaming and gambling, taking into account the operationalization of loot boxes use in these studies. Methods: The Joanna Briggs Institute Guidance for conducting a systematic scoping reviews and the systematic reviews and meta-analysis extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) are followed. Searches in three academic databases provided 299 articles. Results: Sixteen primary studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. All the studies were cross-sectional, only four used samples of adolescents and males were overrepresented in ten of the samples. The annual purchase prevalence rate in gamers is higher in adults than in adolescents (22.7 - 44.2% and 20 - 33.9%, respectively), but in general samples (gamers and non-gamers) it is just the opposite (from 24.9% among 13-14 to 7.8% in adults). Prevalence rates are also higher in the samples made up of gamers and gamblers and in studies that measured monthly or lifetime prevalence. In general, studies suggest a positive and significant relationship between loot boxes and problematic gaming and gambling. Conclusions: The overrepresentation of male adults with gaming and/or gambling problems in study samples do not allow to generalize their results. An enhanced standardization in measurements and methods for future research in this field is recommended. Also, further longitudinal research is needed to improve the understanding of these problems.