Friday, Sep 11, 2026 The claims desk. Receipts included. POWERED BY LENZ ↗
IsThis

The 2020 Kowalski paper links lower empathy mainly to cyberaggressors.

The Claim

A 2020 publication authored by Kowalski and coauthors reported that adolescents often lack empathy and awareness of the harm caused by their online actions.

Verified by Lenz ·

The Short Version

The cited 2020 Kowalski publication did not report that adolescents in general often lack empathy or awareness of online harm. It examined empathy and related traits in cyberaggressors/cybervictims, with the strongest signal applying to youth involved in cyberaggression. The claim therefore misstates the paper’s scope and overgeneralizes a subgroup finding into a broad statement about adolescents.

Caveats

  • The wording wrongly generalizes from adolescents involved in cyberaggression to adolescents overall.
  • Support for the broader claim relies on mismatched or weak evidence, including a 2021 publication and non-citable background text rather than the specified 2020 paper.
  • The phrase “often lack empathy and awareness” is stronger and less precise than what the 2020 study supports.

The Receipts

  1. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence in Adolescent Cyberaggressors and Cybervictims

    PubMed Central

  2. Empathy and moral disengagement in adolescent cyberbullying

    Studia Edukacyjne (via mentalhealthpromotion.net)

  3. Current perspectives: the impact of cyberbullying on adolescent health

    PMC (National Library of Medicine)

  4. Are children involved in cyberbullying low on empathy? A systematic review and meta-analysis

    ScienceDirect

  5. Empathy and Gender Effects on Cyber-violence among Croatian Youth

    Council of Europe – Pestalozzi Programme (PDF)

  6. Bias-Based Cyberbullying Among Early Adolescents

    Sage Journals

  7. Empathy online and moral disengagement through technology as longitudinal predictors of cyberbullying victimization and perpetration

    Children and Youth Services Review (ScienceDirect)

  8. Concurrent relations to belief in a just world and to empathy to cyber-bullying perpetration and victimization

    SpringerLink

  9. Empathy and Emotional Intelligence in Adolescent Cyberaggressors and Cybervictims

    International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (MDPI)

  10. Greater Empathy in Adolescents Helps Prevent Bias-based Cyberbullying

    Florida Atlantic University Newsdesk

+ 13 more sources — see the full list on Lenz

Filed Under

Kowalski