The Latrobe Healthy Relationships Online (HeRO) Project

Project details:
Project commencement: September 1, 2022
Funded by: The Latrobe Health Assembly
Project delivered by: Federation University

Project summary:

The HeRO Project, in partnership with Federation University, is a psychosocial research project that aims to support adolescents and emerging adults in the Latrobe Valley to develop and maintain healthy online relationships. Cyber dating abuse disproportionately impacts adolescents and emerging adults, especially those who may have low levels of digital literacy.

There is a critical need for evidence-based interventions to support these vulnerable groups, especially in communities that markedly experience systematic intimate partner abuse. Phase One of the HeRO Project is currently underway. This phase aims to address the following objectives:

To gain an understanding of how adolescents and emerging adults in the Latrobe Valley perceive healthy and unhealthy online relationships.
How these adolescents and emerging adults use features of online platforms (e.g., social networking sites such as Instagram and TikTok, and location-based real time dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble, and Clover) to cause or mitigate Cyber Dating Abuse, and how inequalities in digital literacy and education impact the use of such features.
How individual differences, such as attitudes, empathy, self-esteem, and identity, relate to the perception and experience of healthy and unhealthy relationship behaviours online in adolescents and emerging adults in Latrobe Valley.
How parental/caregiver modelling of forms of Cyber Dating Abuse influence and normalise Cyber Dating Abuse. The subsequent phases of this project include:
- Phase Two: Create educational resources to address these gaps in knowledge, including a mobile phone app alongside resources for parents, clinicians, and those working with young people most at risk, as well as to the public more broadly.
- Phase Three: Evaluate the effectiveness of those resources to assess impacts on social and digital literacy, online relationship behaviours, and mental health outcomes including depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and self-harm.