Cyber Victimization, Smoking, and Non-Suicidal Self-Injury Among Chinese Adolescents: A Three-Wave Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Study

<title>Abstract</title> <p>Background: Cyber victimization is a salient form of peer-related adversity in adolescence and has been linked to non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), yet the within-person temporal pathways connecting cyber victimization, smoking, and NSSI remain unclear. Objective: This study examined whether smoking serves as a behavioral pathway linking cyber victimization and later NSSI, and whether a reverse indirect pathway from NSSI to later cyber victimization through smoking is also supported. Participants and setting: Participants were 1,835 adolescents from two junior high schools in Guangdong and Shandong provinces, China, assessed across three waves at six-month intervals. Methods: Cyber victimization, smoking, and NSSI were assessed by self-report. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were used to separate stable between-person differences from within-person temporal associations while controlling for gender, age, and family socioeconomic status. Results: At the between-person level, adolescents with higher cyber victimization also tended to report higher NSSI and smoking across waves. At the within-person level, cyber victimization predicted later NSSI in one interval. Smoking was involved in significant indirect associations from cyber victimization to later NSSI and from NSSI to later cyber victimization, but the component cross-lagged paths were mixed and time-specific. Conclusions: Findings provide partial evidence for transactional within-person links among cyber victimization, smoking, and NSSI. The associations should be interpreted cautiously because the pathways were not consistently replicated across adjacent intervals, and stable between-person vulnerability accounted for much of the observed co-occurrence.</p>