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

Abstract 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. Objective Expanding on the buffering hypothesis, we assessed the moderating role of social support in the positive association between ECV and delinquency. Methods We examined family, friend, and adult social support as moderators between primary and secondary ECV (PECV, SECV) and delinquency in a U.S.-based sample of adolescents. Negative binomial regressions were used to assess associations between ECV and social support on delinquency and to examine 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. Moderation models suggested that at higher levels of family and adult support, positive associations between ECV and delinquency were greater. Upon reinterpretation, we found that ECV moderated the links between family and adult support on delinquency such that negative associations became more positive as PECV and SECV were higher. Conversely, ECV did not moderate the link between friend social support and delinquency. Conclusions ECV’s moderation of cross-sectional associations between family and adult social support and delinquency suggest a potential deleterious impact despite the presence of such supports. As ECV did not moderate the association between friend social support and delinquency, future research could clarify directionality through longitudinal designs to understand if friend social support could reduce the negative effects of ECV and delinquency.