Routledge (Taylor and Francis) is making some of their copyrighted journal articles available at no cost through June, and our research piece entitled “Cyberbullying: An Exploratory Analysis of Factors Related to Offending and Victimization,” published in Deviant Behavior, is one of those and is available here. To date, it is one of the most downloaded articles from that journal.
Here is the abstract:
Victimization on the Internet through what has been termed cyberbullying has attracted increased attention from scholars and practitioners. Defined as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the medium of electronic text,” this negative experience not only undermines a youth’s freedom to use and explore valuable online resources, but also can result in severe functional and physical ramifications. Research involving the specific phenomenon – as well as Internet harassment in general – is still in its infancy, and the current work seeks to serve as a foundational piece in understanding its substance and salience. Online survey data from 1,378 adolescent Internet-users are analyzed for the purposes of identifying characteristics of typical cyberbullying victims and offenders. While gender and race did not significantly differentiate respondent victimization or offending, computer proficiency and time spent online were positively related to both cyberbullying victimization and offending. Additionally, cyberbullying experiences were also linked to respondents who reported school problems (including traditional bullying), assaultive behavior, and substance use. Implications for addressing this novel form of youthful deviance are discussed.
The creation of policies and monitoring adolescences in today’s society will hardly put a damper on cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is now done on a national level which makes it very difficult to control. However, I do believe that it is a good idea to start educating adolescences about cyberbullying early in their childhood and it should begin at home. But, if you think about this situation how can many parents teach their kids about cyberbullying if they are unaware of it themselves. Not knowing a clear definition of what cyberbullying is will be a road block for many parents. Therefore, I do believe the community needs to come together and educate the parents, school teachers and many other individuals in the community about cyberbullying. Once the role models in the community are aware of cyberbullying, what it is, and how to handle it then they can effectively help adolescences avoid and protect themselves from being bullied.
If I had to really say it I would be incline to say that an individual who is cyberbullied needs to put their self esteem on a higher level and start by defending themselves. Being on the outside and not being the individual who is actually bullied that can be an easy thing to say. But what I can say is it were to ever happen to me I am not really sure exactly what I would do. I know for a fact the last thing I would actually think about is hurting myself. Maybe it’s because I have a do not care type of attitude. Today many individuals worry about the way they look, and what other people think about them. Parents need to step their kids back into the times when these things did not matter. Just think about it. When and where I grew up these types of things would not even matter. Cyberbullying on any level would have been just laugh at one minute and forgotten about the next minute. But today most kids are competing for the fabulous life. Many kids these days wants to see who will be the most popular, the best dress etc. Therefore, I believe until parents help their kids understand that these types of things are not important it would be a very difficult task to try and control cyberbulyling.