The objective of the present study was to analyze the extent to which violent peer behavior and victimization, both traditional and cybernetic, and predict certain indicators of psychological maladjustment in adolescents, such as self-concept, satisfaction with life, feeling of loneliness, depressive symptomatology, perceived stress, social anxiety, empathy, and emotional intelligence. Participants in the study were 1318 adolescents of both sexes, aged between 11 and 18 years and enrolled in Compulsory Secondary Education schools. The design of the study was cross-sectional. The results indicated that the victims generally present greater maladjustment than the aggressors. Both victims and cybervictims showed a greater decrease in all the dimensions of self-concept, compared with aggressors and cyberaggressors. However, the two types of aggressors showed a higher likelihood of presenting low levels of empathy. Feeling of loneliness, depressive symptomatology, perceived stress, and degree of life satisfaction was more probable to be present in all groups of aggressors and victims. Finally, with regard to emotional intelligence, victims had a higher probability of obtaining low scores in all the dimensions of this construct; this was the case for traditional aggressors only in the dimension of emotion regulation. These results contribute to our understanding of the consequences of harassment in the adaptation of the students involved, with relevant practical implications.

The results of this study suggest that adolescents may have a distorted view of the reality of adult patterns of alcohol use. As an explanation, we hypothesize that, faced with conflicting information, adolescents prioritize the information that best fits their view of what is socially acceptable and what meets their own hedonistic and social needs.

We have obtained, not only an overview of what is working (or not) from the view of adolescents and experts, but also the key points that should be taken into account for designing effective prevention policies.

The distinction between subtypes of passive and aggressive victims in studies of bullying has been a cornerstone of research in recent decades. However, some aspects of victimization still need further elaboration, such as the differentiation of subtypes of aggressive victims of bullying, the dynamics of the process of victimization, and the perceptions that participants have of their victimized classmates. The objective of this qualitative research is to distinguish between different types of aggressive victims, taking account of the testimonies of secondary school students. Focus groups and in-depth interviews have been conducted with 72 adolescents from the second, third and fourth years of Compulsory Secondary Education and the information has been analysed following the steps proposed by Grounded Theory; a systematic methodology involving the discovery of theory through the analysis of data. The results identify six types of aggressive victims: due to the accumulation of stress, provocative victims, victims through contagion, passive tell-tale victims, academically gifted victims protected by teachers, and finally, displaced aggression victims.