P3.007: Digital Racial Trauma and Mental Health Among Black Adolescents: Protective Factors

Background: Social media serves as both a platform for raising awareness of racial injustice and a source of exposure to race-based violence and discrimination. For Black adolescents, repeated exposure to such content online may lead to cumulative psychological distress—referred to as digital racial trauma. While prior research has identified how interpersonal and environmental risk and protective factors influence trauma responses, few studies have explored how these factors operate in digital contexts, where exposure is often repetitive and graphic. This study examines how exposure to racial trauma via social media impacts mental health outcomes—specifically post-traumatic stress (PTS), anxiety, and depression—among Black adolescents. It also investigates whether protective factors (e.g., ethnic identity, youth empowerment) moderate these associations.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 89 Black and/or African American adolescents (ages 13–17 years) from Pittsburgh, PA between 2023–2024. Participants completed validated measures of PTS symptoms (CPSS), depression (PHQ-9), anxiety (GAD-7), youth psychological empowerment (YPE), and ethnic identity (MEIM). Exposure to digital racial trauma was measured through self-reported frequency of viewing traumatic race-related content on social media. Binary logistic regressions examined associations between exposure and mental health outcomes, adjusting for relevant demographic variables. Interaction terms were included to test moderation effects. Bootstrap analysis was conducted for interaction models given the small sample size in this study.

Results: Higher exposure to digital racial trauma was associated with significantly greater odds of posttraumatic stress (OR = 4.69, p < 0.05), Anxiety (OR = 4.38; p< 0.05), and Depression (OR = 3.44; p < 0.05). Interaction analysis showed that high ethnic identity significantly buffered the impact of trauma on PTS (interaction OR = 0.12, p< 0.05), while high empowerment significantly buffered the effect on anxiety (interaction OR = 0.09; p < 0.05). High empowerment also showed a marginally protective trend for PTS symptoms (OR = 0.15, p < .10). Interestingly, while higher levels of empowerment and ethnic showed an overall protective trend in interaction models with digital racial trauma, higher levels of empowerment and ethnic identity were also linked to higher mental health symptoms.

Conclusion: This study underscores the harmful mental health impact of digital racial trauma and the importance of protective factors such as ethnic identity and youth empowerment. Notably higher ethnic identity and empowerment showed significant higher mental health symptoms, highlighting the complex interplay where stronger racial identity and youth empowerment may both protect and sensitize youth to digital racial trauma and may operate differently across varying levels of exposure. Future research with larger and more diverse samples is needed to deepen understanding of the complex role that socio-ecological factors—such as racial and ethnic socialization—may play in shaping youth responses to racial trauma encountered in digital environments.