Online Discrimination and Mental Health Outcomes: The Moderating Roles of Ethnic Identity and Immigrant Generation Among Latinx Young Adults

In-person discrimination is robustly associated with negative psychological outcomes among Latinx young adults. However, less is known about the relations between online racial and ethnic discrimination (OR/ED) and mental health as well as potential protective factors (e.g., ethnic identity [EI]) that may mitigate these associations. Moreover, given that offline discrimination may be less strongly associated with mental health for 1stgeneration individuals, further research is needed to understand how relations between OR/ED and mental health may vary by immigrant generation. This study examined (a) the relations between OR/ED and mental health among Latinx undergraduates; and (b) the moderating effects of EI and immigrant generation on these relations. Participants were 522 Latinx undergraduates enrolled in a public university in the Northeast U.S. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that individual OR/ED (i.e., discrimination directed at the viewer) and vicarious OR/ED (i.e., discrimination directed at others) were significant predictors of mental health. Moreover, EI moderated the relationship between individual OR/ED and depressive symptoms as well as between vicarious OR/ED and social anxiety (SA). Additionally, both individual and vicarious OR/ED were more strongly related to SA for 1st generation students compared to students with two parents born in the U.S. Implications for supporting Latinx college students are discussed.