Although technology provides numerous benefits to young people, it also has a ‘dark side’, as it can be used for harm, not only by some adults but also by the young people themselves. E-mail, texting, chat rooms, mobile phones, mobile phone cameras and web sites can and are being used by young people to bully peers. It is now a global problem with many incidents reported in the United States, Canada, Japan, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. This growing problem has as yet not received the attention it deserves and remains virtually absent from the research literature. This article explores definitional issues, the incidence and potential consequences of cyber bullying, as well as discussing possible prevention and intervention strategies.
Children and adolescents now communicate online to form and/or maintain relationships with friends, family, and strangers. Relationships in "real life" are important for children's and adolescents' psychosocial development; however, they can be difficult for those who experience feelings of loneliness and/or social anxiety. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in usage of online communication patterns between children and adolescents with and without self-reported loneliness and social anxiety. Six hundred twenty-six students ages 10 to 16 years completed a survey on the amount of time they spent communicating online, the topics they discussed, the partners they engaged with, and their purposes for communicating over the Internet. Participants were administered a shortened version of the UCLA Loneliness Scale and an abbreviated subscale of the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS-A). Additionally, age and gender differences in usage of the online communication patterns were examined across the entire sample. Findings revealed that children and adolescents who self-reported being lonely communicated online significantly more frequently about personal and intimate topics than did those who did not self-report being lonely. The former were motivated to use online communication significantly more frequently to compensate for their weaker social skills to meet new people. Results suggest that Internet usage allows them to fulfill critical needs of social interactions, self-disclosure, and identity exploration. Future research, however, should explore whether or not the benefits derived from online communication may also facilitate lonely children's and adolescents' offline social relationships.
While the subject of cyberbullying of children and adolescents has begun to be addressed, less attention and research have focused on cyberbullying in the workplace. Male-dominated workplaces such as manufacturing settings are found to have an increased risk of workplace bullying, but the prevalence of cyberbullying in this sector is not known. This exploratory study investigated the prevalence and methods of face-to-face bullying and cyberbullying of males at work. One hundred three surveys (a modified version of the revised Negative Acts Questionnaire [NAQ-R]) were returned from randomly selected members of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union (AMWU). The results showed that 34% of respondents were bullied face-to-face, and 10.7% were cyberbullied. All victims of cyberbullying also experienced face-to-face bullying. The implications for organizations' "duty of care" in regard to this new form of bullying are indicated.
While it is recognized that there are serious sequelae for students who are victims of cyberbullying including depression, anxiety, lower self-esteem and social difficulties, there has been little research attention paid to the mental health of students who cyberbully. It is known that students who traditionally bully report they feel indifferent to their victims, showing a lack of empathy and that they themselves are at increased risk for psychosocial adjustment. However, there is scant research on the mental health associations for students who cyberbully or their awareness of their impact on others. The current study sought to ascertain from Australian students who reported cyberbullying others in school years 6 to 12 (10–19 years of age), their perceptions of their mental health and the harm they caused to and the impact their actions had, on their victims. Most students who cyberbullied did not think that their bullying was harsh or that they had an impact on their victims. They reported more social difficulties and higher scores on stress, depression and anxiety scales than those students who were not involved in any bullying. The implications of these findings for the mental health of the cyberbullies and for psychologists in schools who assist them, are discussed.
Is there a point where parental effort can be too much? While the link between parenting effort and the wellbeing of children has been firmly established, contemporary discussion has proposed that extreme levels of parental protection of and responsiveness to children could be counterproductive. Research has not yet addressed this phenomenon to ascertain if overparenting is a genuinely different type of parenting approach. The purpose of the present study was to gain insight into the parenting actions considered by parenting professionals (psychologists and school guidance counsellors) to be overparenting. One hundred and twenty-eight professionals responded to an online survey about their observations of overparenting, with eighty-six respondents providing lists of the types of actions they believed were behavioural examples of the term. The survey data revealed that certain types of actions were considered to be indicative of overparenting, and that particular beliefs and outcomes may be involved in this parenting approach. Implications for parenting advice and education programs, and further research are discussed.
Keywords: overparenting, children, helicopter parenting, parentingResearch has established the link between particular parenting approaches and children's behavioural and emotional wellbeing (Baumrind, 1965(Baumrind, , 1991. Baumrind's (1965 and1966) seminal parenting research, extended by Maccoby and Martin (1983), established parenting styles based on combinations of high or low scores on two aspects of parenting posited as necessary for a child's wellbeing -parental responsiveness, the amount the parent responds to the child's needs, and parental demandingness, the parent's tendency to have rules, and demand responsible and mature behaviour from their child. Most findings have shown that the authoritative parenting approach, which is high in demandingness and high in responsiveness,
The present study investigated the way in which feared outcomes are organized in long-term memory in children and adolescents. A list of items relating to threatening outcomes, originally generated by children, was given to an additional 560 children (aged 6 to 16) and rated for the degree to which they worried about each. Factor analysis revealed two interpretable factors of feared outcomes. The first factor centered on concerns about physical harm while the second factor centered on social consequences that children and adolescents worry about. The two factors were consistent across gender, age, and clinical status. A scale involving the maximally discriminating items showed good internal consistency and test-retest reliability.
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