Diminishing Delinquency: Social Support as a Moderator Between Exposure to Community Violence and Delinquency in Adolescents

BACKGROUND Adolescents experience community violence at concerning rates in the United States. Exposure to community violence (ECV) often portends negative outcomes, like delinquency, but social support has been found to lessen such outcomes in youth exposed to similar experiences. OBJECTIVE Expanding on the buffering hypothesis, we assessed whether social support could lessen delinquency associated with ECV. METHODS We examined the roles of family, friend, and adult social support as moderators between primary and secondary ECV (PECV, SECV) and delinquency in a large U.S.-based sample. Negative binomial regressions were used to determine the effects of ECV and social support on delinquency and to assess the impact of cross-product interactions between ECV and social support on delinquency. RESULTS ECV was positively associated with delinquency. All forms of social support were negatively associated with delinquency. Initial moderation models suggested that at higher levels of family and adult support, the positive associations between ECV and delinquency increased. Upon reinterpretation, we found that ECV moderated the effects of family and adult support on delinquency such that their protective effects were diluted as PECV and SECV increased. Conversely, ECV did not moderate the effect of friend social support on delinquency. CONCLUSIONS ECV’s moderation of the associations between family and adult social support and delinquency outlines its deleterious impact despite the presence of such supports. As ECV did not moderate the association between friend social support and delinquency, friend social support may be a viable avenue to consistently reduce the negative effects of ECV and delinquency.