Cyberbullying: a storm in a teacup?

Abstract

Cyberbullying has been portrayed as a rising ‘epidemic’ amongst children and adolescents. But does it create many new victims beyond those already bullied with traditional means (physical, relational)? Our aim was to determine whether cyberbullying creates uniquely new victims, and whether it has similar impact upon psychological and behavioral outcomes for adolescents, beyond those experienced by traditional victims. This study assessed 2745 pupils, aged 11–16, from UK secondary schools. Pupils completed an electronic survey that measured bullying involvement, self-esteem and behavioral problems. Twenty-nine percent reported being bullied but only 1% of adolescents were pure cyber-victims (i.e., not also bullied traditionally). Compared to direct or relational victims, cyber-victimization had similar negative effects on behavior (z = −0.41) and self-esteem (z = −0.22) compared to those not involved in bullying. However, those bullied by multiple means (poly-victims) had the most difficulties with behavior (z = −0.94) and lowest self-esteem (z = −0.78). Cyberbullying creates few new victims, but is mainly a new tool to harm victims already bullied by traditional means. Cyberbullying extends the reach of bullying beyond the school gate. Intervention strategies against cyberbullying may need to include approaches against traditional bullying and its root causes to be successful.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00787-017-0954-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Self-Harm, Suicidal Behaviours, and Cyberbullying in Children and Young People: Systematic Review (Preprint)

“…Individuals who, in the non-virtual world, were unlikely to be victimised since they were able to respond in person may be more vulnerable online where perpetrators may not be identified and are possibly emboldened in a way that they would not be face to face. Two recent cross-sectional studies have tried to shed some light on this issue, with one [55] finding that only 1% of adolescents reported being pure cyber-victims while the other [56] found traditional bullying to be far more common than cyberbullying, which should be taken into account when interpreting our findings.…”

Unraveling the long‐term links among adolescent peer victimization and somatic symptoms: A 5‐year multi‐informant cohort study

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Predicting dating behavior from aggression and self‐perceived social status in adolescence

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