Offline and Online Peer Violence: Significance for Child Well-Being in Southeast Europe

Cyberbullying in COVID-19 Pandemic Decreases? Research of Internet Habits of Croatian Adolescents

“…For a group of children, and especially adolescents in different stages of adolescence, peer group and social status play a very important role. Given the developmental stage at this age, the development of one's own identity also occurs through interactions with others, so future research should check the relationship between these constructs with regard to involvement in online and offline forms of violence [6,11,14,30,67]. However, the findings of this research are pointing out that preventive activities should implement comprehensive, multisector cooperation and a joint approach.…”

“…Studies during lockdown also show that staying at home and following classes in an e-learning environment due to epidemiological measures had a significant impact on reducing the bullying rate [33][34][35][36]. Cyberbullying and bullying are in many ways very similar phenomena involving almost the same behaviors, such as gossiping and insulting or excluding someone, and they often co-occur and experts agree that they both have similar antecedents and outcomes [6,10,67]. Furthermore, Velki and Kuterovac Jagodić state that many studies found a strong link between traditional bullying and cyberbullying, with many perpetrators and victims of traditional peer violence overlapping with cyberbullying [68,69].…”

“…Although anonymity has been cited as a factor that makes cyberbullying a "unique phenomenon" resulting in different challenges to traditional bullying, this refers to the feeling of anonymity for both the perpetrator and the victim. Some studies confirm that cyberbullying may be encouraged by traditional bullying and vice versa since perpetrators and victims of cyberbullying usually know each other offline [6,11,24,25]. The findings of several studies point out that about half of the participants or more know who the perpetrator is, or at least they know that they come from their school [24,[26][27][28].…”

“…Research in the field of cyberbullying has been present for 15 and more years and experts have been unable to agree whether cyberbullying is just a prolonged form of bullying or a completely new form of violent behavior in the online environment and a phenomenon in itself [6,[9][10][11][12][13][14]. The most-used definition of cyberbullying is Patchin and Hindujas's definition that refers to cyberbullying as "wilful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices" [15] (p. 615), with clear reference to Olweus's definition of bullying in the physical environment [16].…”

“…Child digital well-being includes several domains [6] starting from the following: (1) availability of the Internet, devices and digital competence to use devices and tools;…”